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View Winners → Beacon Celebrates 20th Anniversary With Special Edition Dec. 29
Arcadia Weekly Dec 17, 2016
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It Was 20 Years Ago Today…
A message from Beacon Media editor Terry Miller
As the classic Beatles’ song goes… “It was 20 years ago today that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play…”
Well, in Beacon Media’s case Sgt. Pepper is, in fact, our visionary leader Von Raess who recognized a critical need in the local communities for a newspaper that concentrated on city politics and entertainment as well as a vehicle for local merchants and cities to get their message out to the masses.
In 1996 Raess along with long-time columnist Dorothy Denne and the late Floretta Lauber would put their vision to its test and Arcadia Weekly was born.
Late nights and countless hours in a tiny office cutting and pasting articles and photos…using a hot wax device to layout the pages… and then at 4 in the a.m. drive to the printer with the ‘flats’ – the actual pages of the paper.
It was exhausting but rewarding in so many ways. The system in ’96 was mildly computerized but nothing like it is today. A lot has happened in 20 years.
Most people who helped create Arcadia Weekly didn’t have cell phones, nor email addresses…let alone smart phones. Twitter accounts and a hashtag meant something completely different.
Who could have predicted the gargantuan digital growth spurt, especially in news media?
As we covered the news, the staff grew and we expanded into new communities including Sierra Madre, Monrovia and then Pasadena. We offered local cities the opportunity to publish their legal notices in our newspapers at competitive prices.
We continued to develop business relationships / friendships and garnered a reputation for accurate, award winning news and photography on a regular basis. On Dec. 29 we are going to take a look back at some memorable moments and will be running lots of photos we’ve made over the past twenty years.
We encourage you to participate in this special issue by calling your ad representative to reserve some space for this special publication. A lot has happened in 20 years, nationally and locally … we hope to share some of our memories with you.
