Welcome Back, Danville

Bring Your Own Chair

There is some good news to share this week at The Bridge Weekly Sho-Case: we're coming back to Danville.

With the addition of approximately 1,000 Danville homes to our weekly mailing, more kitchen tables, coffee tables, and probably a few piles of mail that somebody promises they'll get to eventually will now have The Bridge Weekly Sho-Case arriving each week.

For me, this isn't simply about adding another town to our mailing list. Danville fills in an important piece of the community we've been working to serve, and in many ways it feels like a natural next step for the paper. Readers in West Danville, Barnet, and Peacham have already been receiving the paper and reading about what's happening throughout our region. Moving directly into Danville gives us an even better opportunity to connect the stories happening across Orange County, the southern half of Caledonia County, and western Grafton County in New Hampshire.

If you look at a map, it makes sense. More importantly, if you actually live here, it makes even more sense. Our towns aren't islands. People who live in Danville work in neighboring communities. Families travel between towns for school events, sports, church, restaurants, businesses, concerts, fairs, and community events. We cross county and state lines all the time without giving it much thought. Around here, the Connecticut River may technically separate two states, but it has never been particularly successful at keeping neighbors apart.

That's what I want this newspaper to reflect. From Danville south toward Fairlee and across the river into western Grafton County, we have small communities with their own identities but many shared stories. Our kids compete against one another in a myriad of school sports. We visit the same businesses, attend the same events, support the same nonprofits, and occasionally end up behind the same tractor when we're already running five minutes late. That's our community.

Danville isn't exactly new territory for us, either. Our sister radio station, WYKR, already has a relationship with the community through our coverage of Danville basketball. We broadcast Danville games along with other area schools including Rivendell, Woodsville, Oxbow, and Blue Mountain. High school sports have always been one of the ways our small towns stay connected, and anyone who has attended a local basketball game knows the community extends well beyond the lines painted on the court. Putting The Bridge Weekly Sho-Case on Danville kitchen tables feels less like moving into a new community and more like completing a connection that was already there.

This is also very good news for the businesses that make this newspaper possible. Adding approximately 1,000 homes means another 1,000 households will have the opportunity to see the messages local businesses share in these pages. For a small business, getting your message in front of more local families matters. It gives people a chance to learn who you are, what you do, and why they might want to give you a call, stop through the door, or remember your name the next time they need your services.

The businesses you see throughout this paper employ our neighbors, sponsor local teams, donate to fundraisers, support nonprofits, help with community events, and keep our downtowns and villages alive. When a local business chooses to share its message through a community newspaper or local radio station, it's making a decision to communicate directly with the people who live, work, shop, and raise their families here. With Danville added to our circulation, those businesses now have another 1,000 households where that message can be seen.

I encourage our new Danville readers to pay attention to those local businesses. You may discover a restaurant you've never tried, a contractor you didn't know about, a shop worth visiting, or a local service that can save you a long drive. These are businesses investing in the same communities they serve, and supporting them helps keep more of our dollars, jobs, and opportunities right here at home.

Growing our circulation also comes with another responsibility: we want to hear from Danville. We want to know about the fundraiser at the church, the student doing something remarkable, the longtime volunteer who deserves recognition, the new business opening its doors, the upcoming community event, and the neighbor quietly doing something good without expecting recognition. Those stories matter.

And it works both ways. Danville readers will now have another opportunity to learn what's happening with their neighbors to the south and across the river. A story from Peacham may give someone in Danville an idea. An event in Fairlee may bring a family down for an afternoon. A business in Barnet may find a new customer. The more we know about the communities around us, the smaller the distance between those communities becomes.

So, to everyone in Danville receiving The Bridge Weekly Sho-Case: welcome back. Read about your neighbors. Take a look at the local businesses sharing their messages throughout these pages and, whenever you can, support them in return. Send us your events, announcements, photographs, and story ideas. If something is happening in Danville that your neighbors ought to know about, we want to hear about it.

From Danville to Fairlee, and from Vermont across the river into western New Hampshire, we're fortunate to live among small towns where being a neighbor still means something.

We're glad Danville is back at our table, and we're pretty excited to have a place at yours.