You’re ALL invited!
It was on October 15 or 2022 when I received a telephone call I didn’t expect. Kathy Svidal called me and reminded me of a promise I had made to her long ago. “Remember you promised to come back and help me at the Devils Lake Journal if I ever bought it?”
“Yeah…” I responded with some hesitancy.
I had been retired for the past two years and although I had caught up on all the TV shows I wanted to watch, and many of the books I’d been saving to read in retirement, I wondered what this would mean.
Instead of receiving a gold watch when I retired on Nov. 2 of 2020, I was given a two-year subscription to the Devils Lake Journal, so I was able to keep up on what was happening in DL and how the paper was covering the local news of the Lake Region.
I had been considering putting together my own little newsletter so local County and City Commission meetings, School Board meetings and other local events would get covered but hadn’t really negotiated with anyone to begin that process IF it were ever to happen. Who would print it? How would we distribute it? How would we fund it?
Then Kathy called.
She and her partner at Champion Media were in the process of purchasing the DLJ, but it wouldn’t be finalized until Nov. 1 and THAT would be the day we would want our first issue to come out, because then we would own the building and the business, everything.
So from my home I set up a number of appointments to get interviews done for those first two issues. Most of them came to my house and we sat at my dining room table visiting about the issues of concern in the up-coming election.
I didn’t have access to a computer, so I wrote all my stories in long hand and had photos ready to go.
Somehow we gathered enough local news for the Nov. 1, 2022 issue: on the front page – Four running for Ramsey County Commission; Stuff-A-Truck 2022 begins and Change is Coming to Devils Lake Journal. Inside we featured photos from the St. Olaf’s Men’s Club Lutefisk and Meatball fundraiser, James Leevers honored as ND Grocer of the Year, a story I found promoting giving blood and plasma, Marijuana on the ND ballot, Tony Bender’s column, an AP story about what’s at play in the 2022 midterm elections, a full page of local obituaries, and a stand-alone photo of a local family being helped financially through a medical crisis.
We had to figure out a process for laying out the newspaper, getting it to a designer and then getting it printed.
Today we follow that same process; gathering all the stories and photos and ads locally, sending them to one of our papers in North Carolina where they design each page, once we approve each page then they send the pages to Bismarck to be printed and someone from the print shop drives the bundles of the Devils Lake Journal to Devils Lake. That’s why a few times when the Interstate was closed due to bad winter weather, our paper didn’t always arrive on time, but maybe a day late.
If you compare those early issues to what we are able to produce now I hope you see an improvement and our commitment to continue to make the DLJ better and better with each issue.
The reaction from the community has been overwhelmingly positive. Everyone is so glad we are back and covering local news and meetings and issues. November 1, 2023 marks our first year here – we have planned an Open House celebration at the Journal so we are asking you to stop in between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Nov. 2 – have a cup of coffee and a bar with us and celebrate our locally owned and operated newspaper with us. Let us know how we’re doing and remember we are open to your suggestions and story ideas, as well. The coffee and treats are on us!
