You may have noticed that your Wednesday paper last week was larger than normal. That’s because we published our annual Progress Edition on Wednesday.

This is the largest single product that we publish all year. This is our once-a-year opportunity to talk about many of the good things that have happened in our community over the last year.

If you take the time to peruse the entire section, you should share our pride in all the good things that are happening in our community.

I want to say “thank you” to all the businesses that advertised in this year’s Progress Edition. The majority of businesses that have significance to this community were represented in the Progress Edition.

We would not be able to publish this large of a section, which is such a good representation of our community, without the advertising support.

We give extra copies to the hospital so when they are recruiting doctors or professional workers they give them a copy of the Progress Edition. There is no better snapshot of the community once a year than this edition. We also give extra copies to the Lake Superior Community Partnership for people looking to find out more about this community.

For the people advertising in the section, this gives them an opportunity to make a first impression on potential newcomers to our area. If someone is moving here and looking to buy a home or possibly build a new home, they can find a realtor or a builder advertising in the section.

For the people who live here, the Progress Edition simply gives you a chance to get excited about the growth and positive things that are happening in our community. Every year after the special edition comes out I hear from people telling me that they had no idea there were so many good things happening in our community. We are happy to continue to provide the vehicle to spread all this good news.

I also want to thank our loyal readers for continuing to subscribe to the newspaper. We could not continue to publish a daily newspaper or a Progress Edition without your support. Now that we have our website, we have increased the number of people who read our newspaper by over four times the amount that we had before the newspaper went online.

The problem with our website readers is that they don’t contribute to the revenue necessary to continue to run a successful newspaper. To keep a large editorial staff you need a strong revenue base through circulation and advertising. There are several businesses like Facebook and Craigslist that are constantly attacking our advertising base, which makes it more of a challenge to continue to publish a high-quality newspaper.

Luckily, rural newspapers like The Mining Journal are doing better than metro newspapers because of readership loyalty. So, as I stated earlier, I want to give a huge thank you to our loyal subscribers for your support of The Mining Journal.

I also want to say thank you to The Mining Journal staff. To publish an additional 108 pages in the Progress Edition along with their normal duties is no small task. We start work on the Progress Edition with assignments the first week of January.

We continue to work on the special section through the day of publication, which this year was March 28.

Once we are done and the product is published, we then count on our independent contractors (carriers) to get extra help on the day of delivery in order to handle the volume of newsprint it takes to produce the Progress Edition. We want to thank our carriers for the part they play in getting the Progress Edition to our customers.

We are consistently recognized by our peers in the industry as producing one of the best Progress Editions, not only in the state of Michigan but among other papers throughout the United States.

I hope you enjoyed reading the Progress Edition. Work has already begun on the planning of next year’s section. If anyone you know ever says something to you like there is not much exciting news happening in our area, please take the time to hand them a copy of the 2018 Progress Edition.

After reading the Progress Edition, they will have a much-improved perspective on our area.

Editor’s note: Jim Reevs is publisher of The Mining Journal.