From the ‘Eagle’: Over 150 years of community commitment

For more than 150 years, Associated Newspapers has brought local news to communities in this area. These publications have won hundreds of both state and national journalism awards during that century and a half of publishing and have weathered some serious challenges.
We’ve endured power outages, equipment failures, printer catastrophes, economic downturns, the COVID pandemic and the changing media environment. Through it all, we have adapted and endured.
The past two weeks have presented some of the most unique and monumental challenges we have faced in many years. Our publisher, and single editorial staff member, suffered a serious injury and is unable to produce even the slightest amount of news copy to fill the local pages. In addition, a serious weather event shut down electrical power to our production facilities and several crucial pieces of equipment simply died.
Those circumstances, we hope, explain the few pages online this week as we attempt to make decisions and plans for the future. Our publisher will be incapacitated for several weeks which can be a lifetime in the newspaper business.
It is and has been for many, many years, an honor and a privilege of our publications to be entrusted with the publication of legal notices from several communities in the area. Above all else, we plan to honor that trust and publish the vital legal notices this week, although our news coverage is severely lacking in both our usual quality and quantity.
These serious circumstances will impact our plans for the future, but those plans will include, as they have for more than 150 years, our constant commitment to best serve our readership and our communities.
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The above text was published on page one of the Eagle newspaper’s three-page online weekly publication of Jan. 11. The Eagle is Sumpter Township’s announced “newspaper of record” although it publishes only online.
The “vital legal notices” published on the two inner pages on Jan. 11 had seven from Sumpter Township. The legal notices included notice of a Jan. 25 public hearing for the Zoning Board of Appeals, plus the approved township board meeting minutes for June 13 and 27, 2023; July 11 and 25, 2023; and Aug. 8 and 22, 2023.
Also printed was one auto auction from Brownstown, one Romulus invitation to bid on road repairs, and one Canton request for proposals for paving of golf course paths.
Associated Newspapers includes the Belleville Enterprise among the eight publications in its group. Associated Newspapers stopped printing paper editions in May 2020.