Celebrate with us: Creemore Echo marks 25th anniversary
The Creemore Echo newspaper is celebrating 25 years in print, and its continuation of a long legacy of local news reporting, ensuring the community has been well covered for 140 years.
On Saturday, May 23, The Echo is hosting a casual come-and-go birthday party to celebrate the milestone and the loyalty of readers, contributors, and advertisers.
“Our community really shows up for us, whether it’s advertising or submitting information for the community calendar or the stories, all the elements that it takes to run a newspaper, they’re here for us – the financial elements, the community elements, and there’s always a story to be told,” said publisher Sara Hershoff, who joined the staff in 2002. “We started out as a very humble one- sheet newsletter, and over the years, as the community has supported us, we’ve been able to develop the paper into something that’s more dynamic with better stories, better community coverage. We really hope to see everybody there.”
The current incarnation of The Creemore Echo was born in 2001, when retired businessmen Craig Simpson and Phil Stevenson purchased the business from John and Sylvia Wiggins, who were shutting down the newspaper. After The Creemore Star, established in 1886, was shuttered, Sylvia Wiggins launched The Creemore Echo in 1997. At a time when people relied almost entirely on newspapers for news and information, and with an election on the horizon, she felt a need to fill the void left by the closure of the local paper. And the rest is history.
When The Echo was resurrected by Simpson and Stevenson, with the help of Georgi Denison, it was circulated by mail as a double sided one-page print-out with a community calendar, classifieds and advertising. By 2002, it was eight or more pages with news, photos and contributed articles and in June of that year, it was printed as a broadsheet on newsprint.
Eventually, The Echo was purchased by Jim Vandewater. At the time of the change in ownership, Simpson stayed on as publisher and, with editor Brad Holden and assistant Fred Mills the team continued on its mission to provide a professional newspaper to serve the community.
Since 2012, Mills has contributed 52 jokes per year for his popular Fred’s Funnies feature – that’s about 700 jokes. The Echo has had other long- time contributors including poet Tim Armour, and Helen Blackburn, who wrote for The Creemore Star and whose history columns continue to delight readers to this day.
The Echo has also had numerous longtime advertisers including Terry Nash Plumbing and Stephens Fuels who have run their ads consistently since publication began – and their ads have not changed.
“Without all of the people who have backed us from the very beginning, we couldn’t be here today,” said Hershoff. “It takes a long time to build the momentum needed to be publishing a newspaper, and there’s people that have believed in us from the very beginning, and there are people who are coming to us now and helping out. We need everybody involved.”
Each spring The Echo holds a subscription drive to encourage voluntary subscriptions from those who receive their newspaper in the mail. The party will also serve as the kick-off to this year’s drive.
Help us celebrate on Saturday, May 23, from 10 a.m. to noon at Creemore Village Green. Join us for cupcakes and outdoor activities.
Maja Mackenna photo: The Creemore Echo team is in party planning mode, from left, sales rep Natalie deRuiter, editor Trina Berlo, publisher Sara Hershoff, and reporter Bonnie MacPherson.
