Before Christmas, my husband and I found ourselves in a bit of a pickle. And by “pickle,” I mean “panic.” (Jeff wouldn’t call it that. He doesn’t do panic.)

First, a little history. I married a Renaissance man who is also a dreamer. I know that sounds doubly trite, but I’m not sure how else to say it. Jeff is a San Francisco-born, internationally-raised Army brat who had already worked as an actor, a chef, a restorer of Victorian houses (aka “construction worker”), and a video producer by the time I met him in his late 30s.

By then, he was on Hilton Head running a small video production company, but his “hobby” – really his passion, his raison d’etre – was producing Shakespeare in the Park, using local talent. For twelve years he did this – first on Hilton Head, then in Beaufort. Each production was magical madness… and a monumental task.

When we met, I’d been working as the editor of Beaufort Magazine for six years, but that gig soon ended – along with the magazine itself – and I began working for a new arts & entertainment paper called “Lowcountry Bi-weekly.” The owner wanted to sell it, and – long story, short –  my whimsical new husband decided we should try our hand at publishing. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing.

And now here we are, almost 25 years later, still doing it. We changed the name early on to Lowcountry Weekly. “Bi-weekly” sounded clunky to us, but more importantly, we had high hopes of going weekly soon. Again, we had no idea what we were doing.

Reader, I’ll confess it’s been a hard way to make a living. When we bought this paper, alternative newsweeklies were in their heyday – remember Creative Loafing? – and we had grandiose plans. But soon, this invention called The Internet would change the media landscape forever. Moguldom remained beyond our grasp. Still, we hung in there, eking out a living and considering ourselves lucky to be serving our community doing work we both loved. To make ends meet, we produced annual publications for clients, and had other various “side hustles,” but Lowcountry Weekly remained our mother ship.

Until six years ago, when we took another madcap leap – and a loan – and bought The Island News. At the time, it had a part-time editor, a part-time designer, and a part-time salesperson – who worked on commission – and with almost zero overhead, the publishers were doing pretty well for themselves. Even though we’d read all the same stories you have – about print being “dead” – we hadn’t found that to be the case with Lowcountry Weekly, and we still don’t think it’s the case. Not here in our neck of the woods, anyway. Here in Beaufort County, with our older population and our street-strolling tourists, print publications were – and still are – alive and kicking.

But my husband had a dream for The Island News. He dreamed of transforming the sweet little community paper – one that mainly published press releases, school menus, and society photos – into a real newspaper. His dream was contagious. I signed on and we went “all in.”

Today we have a full-time editor, a full-time production manager/designer, a sports editor, a reporter, a couple of photographers, a host of contributing columnists, three salespeople, and a humble (i.e. unpaid) webmistress – yours truly. We’ve won a slew of awards from the SC Press Association, and we even took home The President’s Cup in 2022, which gave us the right to call ourselves “the best newsweekly in South Carolina.” (We beat out the Charleston City Paper and the Columbia Free Times that year, which tickled us pink!)

As we grew into a serious independent news source, we tried hard to maintain our “sweet little community paper” feel, as well. We assigned our photographers to all the festivals and food drives and football games they could lift. When the Beaufort Gazette stopped printing the weekly list of graduates from Parris Island, we took up that mantle. (We now send out hundreds of papers a week to Marine families all over the country who want to frame that page.) When obituaries in the Gazette became unaffordable for so many, we decided to publish them for free.

When I say “we,” I should really be saying “Jeff,” because this has been his vision all along –this vision of a hard-hitting yet heart-warming hometown paper, made by locals, for locals. He put in place a fantastic team, and he supports them every step of the way. To this day, if you make a phone call to The Island News, for any reason – and many people do, every day – Jeff answers the phone… and typically has a long chat. I don’t care what time it is; he answers. (Weirdly, it’s often during dinner.) People seem stunned to hear a real human voice.

But I didn’t start this column to rave about my husband or our newspaper. I had to get through all that background so I could rave about our READERS, many of whom read this publication, too.

You see, before Christmas we found ourselves in a real bind. Inflation had hit our business very hard – starting, but not ending, with the price of paper and printing – and at the risk of sharing TMI, we weren’t sure how we could afford to keep going.

So we wrote a heartfelt letter to our readers, asking for their help, and published it on page 2 of The Island News. We had no idea if anybody would notice the letter, much less care.

And now I’m starting to get emotional, because y’all… the response was overwhelming. We’d set up a place for donations on our website, and they started trickling in immediately. Then they flowed. And then, the cards and letters started arriving in our mailbox. Christmas cards, thank you notes, personal letters… each containing a check. From $10 – $500, each gift brought tears to my eyes. And even more touching than the much-needed donations were the words of encouragement.

When you’re a newspaper run by a very small staff, you make plenty of mistakes. There are lots of moving parts and balls get dropped. And that’s typically when you hear from your readers. (Remember those calls to Jeff I mentioned?)

But this was the opposite of that.

You know that scene at the end of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ when all of Bedford Falls shows up to help George Bailey in his time of need? We feel like George Bailey.

Unfortunately, we are not out of the woods yet. But we’re enthusiastically exploring new ways to make The Island News sustainable into the future. We know that print will vanish one day, but our readers have made it clear that they love holding a paper in their hands, so for now, we’re going to keep printing. My dreamer husband is deeply committed to keeping the paper free, as well. “Everybody deserves access to the news,” he says, and I agree.

But as it turns out, free news isn’t cheap. And while we have wonderful advertisers, we don’t have enough of them.

But we do have some ideas brewing, and thanks to the generosity and encouragement of our readership – which includes many of you – we’ve got a whole new sense of purpose and we’re feeling inspired!

We’re also continuing to take donations. Visit www.yourislandnews.com if you’d like to support our efforts.

If you already have, but haven’t received a thank you note, it means we’re still searching for your mailing address. (A few envelopes were lost in the shuffle.) If you donated online, you received an automatic thank you via email. Please know that we can see your names, we know who you are, and we’re so very grateful.