The Betsie Current, flows again in Benzie
From staff reports
Spring, as the cliché goes, is a rebirth. The snow, darkness and cold leave us, and the birdsong, green grass, morel mushrooms and asparagus return to our forests and kitchens. Soon we’ll don t-shirts and swim trunks and jump in our great lake.
Another sort of rebirth took place down the road in Benzie County last month—the rebirth of a community newspaper. The Betsie Current returned in April after an eight-year hibernation to chronicle Benzie’s news and events, businesses, characters and culture. The Current enjoyed a brief run in 2005-06, and Glen Arbor Sun editor Jacob Wheeler and friend Jordan Bates have brought it back by popular demand—and based on the sincere belief that a community needs local media to rally its citizens and tell its stories.
Journalism’s depression in recent years is well documented. Corporate media consolidations, declining revenues and online news have killed many papers, and forced others, such as the Detroit News, Free Press and Ann Arbor News to scale back their frequency or go exclusively online. But we think this model of hyper local, community-driven and community-supported news has staying power.
Concurrent with the Sun, the Current will publish 11 editions between now and January 2015. If you’re down in Benzie, we hope you’ll pick up a copy and read it at the beach, the brewery, on the boat or in your backyard. Use our stories, upcoming events calendar and website, BetsieCurrent.com, as a community resource. And please send us story ideas, missives and constructive criticism, to editor@betsiecurrent.com. Our story coverage area will stretch from the beaches of Elberta to the slopes of Crystal Mountain, and include the vibrant communities surrounding Crystal Lake — Frankfort, Beulah and Benzonia.
We’ll cover upcoming events including art, music and film festivals. You’ll also find feature stories about favorite local businesses and the devoted characters who make these towns thrive, both as summer boom towns and as tight-knit communities in the fall and winter. We’ll run in-depth stories that analyze larger trends in our towns and in the region at large: what’s happening with the charter fishing industry; what’s happening at the southern end of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore; what direction the Benzie Bus is taking, and how it will impact riders; how Stormcloud brewery and the Oliver Art Center have become new community anchors in downtown Frankfort, and what ideas might take hold in Beulah and Honor to help revive those communities.
Tell your Benzie friends to keep current with the Current. And check it out online at BetsieCurrent.com.
