By Popular Demand, Selah, Wash., Is Getting A Paper

By: Mark Fitzgerald Back in April, the Chamber of Commerce president and some other local leaders in Selah, Washington, called a town meeting for an unusual purpose -- to lobby for the establishment of a newspaper Selah could call its own.

Come the Fourth of July, the little town in the Upper Yakima Valley gets its wish: Yakima Valley Newspapers is launching the Selah Independent.

Yakima Valley owner Mike Lindsey, the newspaper broker, said the weekly will have an initial press run of 4,000 copies.

The paper will be given away free for its first three issues. The annual subscription will be $36, with $15 of each subscription going to a church or non-profit organization. The single copy price will be 75 cents.

"For the last four weeks we have been contacting advertisers and have commitments from one month to one year and have enough inches contracted to support the initial 16-page tab that should grow to 24 pages," Lindsey told E&P. "The two grocery stores have been giving out flyers in market bags offering free classified ads for the first two issues so we can have some local identification on the classified page."

The bedroom community is served by the nearby Yakima Herald-Republic, but organizers of the newspaper drive argued that only a local weekly would report on all the small-town news of Selah.

Lindsey said two Yakima Valley Newspapers staffers will work full time out of the newly rented Selah office. He and his wife Pat are the publishers of the new paper.

Martha Goudey, who has been editor of the Review Independent in Toppenish, Wash., will be the editor of the Selah Independent. Fernando Aceves will replace her at the Review Independent, while continuing as editor of the company's Spanish-language paper, Viva.

Larry Watkins, a Selah native, will be the advertising manager, with L.D. Chavez handling management of the office. Samuel will assume the new editor position and resign her editor position of the Review Independent in Toppenish. Fernando Aceves will become the new Review Independent editor as well as staying as editor of our Spanish language weekly, Viva. We also have a stringer living in Selah. Our main office is only 30 minutes away.

Larry Watkins, from Selah, is the advertising manager, and LD Chavez will transfer to Selah to handle office management. Samuel Small will be the paper's operations manager.