Dear Friends,
When we launched Tualatin Life 15 years ago, one of the primary reasons for starting the local newspaper was to give Tualatin residents a voice of their own, a newspaper devoted to what is happening in Tualatin, and often being overlooked by other local media. Today, with the advent of various online media sources, many of which are controlled by national and international corporations, we feel a local community newspaper is more important than ever.
But at the same time, printing and delivering a physical newspaper has become more challenging than ever. Make no mistake. Newspapers are in decline. According to a Medill School of Journalism report, an average of 2.5 U.S. newspapers closed every week in 2023, and a third of all newspapers have been lost in the last twenty years.
At Tualatin Life, we’ve been fortunate to have an excellent business community that believes in our mission and has supported our efforts to bring community journalism to Tualatin.
But four years ago, forced COVID-19 shutdowns caused much of that support to evaporate overnight. Facing the prospect of going out of business, we reached out to our readers and asked them to help support us via a voluntary subscription donation of $24 a year. Many of you contributed, and for that, we are forever grateful. A few of you have continued that support through an annual donation. But much of that support has dried up.
Although the brunt of the COVID fallout is behind us, inflation has reared its ugly head, and our expenses for everything that goes into producing a newspaper have skyrocketed. While I’d like to be able to ask the business community to pay more for their ads to offset these additional expenses, many of them are also dealing with rampant inflation, and to be frank, they have many options when it comes to advertising.
I absolutely love what I do. I’ve been in the newspaper business my entire life. Ten years from retirement, I’m unsure what else I would do if I weren’t publishing Tualatin Life (and our sister newspaper, Tigard Life).
My goal over the next ten years is to make sure Tualatin Life continues after I’m gone, and for that to happen, I need to make sure we’re on solid financial footing.
So, after much thought, I’ve made some hard choices.
Effective immediately, we will no longer distribute Tualatin Life to every single mailbox in Tualatin free of charge. Producing, printing, and mailing the paper has just gotten too expensive. Initially, we’ll continue mailing the paper to MOST households, but each month, we’ll skip a few neighborhoods throughout Tualatin. This will help moderate our expenses, and I hope to encourage some of you to subscribe, which will guarantee delivery of Tualatin Life in your mailbox each month.
Additionally, effective February, we will start producing a second monthly newspaper delivered EXCLUSIVELY to subscribers. This means subscribers will receive TWO papers every month! Those who choose not to subscribe will still receive an occasional paper in their mailbox, which we hope will serve to encourage additional subscriptions.
We also understand that some people, especially younger people, prefer to receive their news digitally. We’ve been working behind the scenes on our digital footprint, so look for exciting improvements to our website and an increased presence on social media sites in the near future.
For now, we’ll continue to make additional copies of our papers available for pickup (free of charge) at the Tualatin Library, and our website, tualatinlife.com, continues to be free of a paywall. If you haven’t already done so, please follow us on Facebook, where we’ll announce new issues.
Sincerely,
Michael Antonelli - Publisher
PO Box 55
Tualatin, OR 97062
mike@tualatinlife.com
503-692-9215