About Outpost
There's something to be said about hard work and determination. The first issue of The Outpost was published Friday, December 31, 2005. Since then, this small town, community newspaper has flourished into a hub of news and information which now prints 8,000 copies a week.
Owner-publisher Dana Michie created the newspaper out of his basement. “I saw a need in the community for a more centralized source of information,” he said. “I also wanted to provide an outlet for local businesses to become successful right in their own backyards.”
Michie and his wife Suzy took up the endeavor of developing a newspaper from scratch. Michie assumed it would be a project to fill the time in between multi media projects. What it became was something much more.
“From the very beginning the community response to the paper was just awesome,” he said. “Now they've become spoiled and I guess they just expect it every week!” Joking aside, Michie and his family have worked hard to transition this basement publication into the weekly paper that now serves communities as far as Deer Park and Riverside.
In it's seven years of existence, The Outpost has grown tremendously. In 2007, the paper moved out of Michie's basement and into an office front. That same year, the paper ushered in their first full color pages and now, three years later, the newspaper is printed in entirely full color. Over time, the paper went from a biweekly 14.5-inch tabloid size publication, into a weekly, full color tabloid publication.
The new format has increase the paper to 24 pages, and several times throughout the year special inserts – home and garden ideas or Relay For Life activities – are shown. Postal changes and petitions have allowed The Outpost to efficiently distribute to more readers throughout Stevens County and the newspaper is now printed at Wenatchee World Publishing.
“Sometimes we cover information doesn't seem important to some folks,” Michie said. “But our goal is to be more local, to be more personal and it shows. Newspapers across the country are starting to realize the best way to stay in business is by catering to your readers.”
From soccer games, to farmers markets to sheriff's races, The Outpost covers it all. The little office is alive and buzzing with activity and community news. As the community grows, so too will the paper. The Outpost is working to provide more coverage, to develop a high functioning website, to provide more articles, better content, multimedia projects and keep to the crucial balance between people, businesses and events.
“In order to provide the quality of news coverage we want to provide we need to grow,” Michie said. “But at the same time that we're trying to get more readers, we are also working hard to sharpen the business we currently have.”
