The Last Great Place
We’re All Winners Once Again
By MICHAEL CAPUZZO

You’re pretty special.  Yes, you. Other newspapers wish they had you, dear Mountain Home reader, but tough luck on them. We’re not giving you up.

If you’re reading these words you’re Mountain Home family, you make our existence possible. So let’s go sit on the porch a moment; it’s lovely outside. Spring, in all its trout-leaping, earth-digging, lake-sparkling, wine-sipping finery, is here. We have some good news to share as well as some thanks to hand out.

First, the first annual Mountain Home Winter Jazz Fest, with headliner Ed Clute of Watkins Glenn, packed the Penn Wells Hotel in Wellsboro in March and raised $3,000 for the Second Chance Animal Sanctuary (see story page 9).

Second, Mountain Home was recognized as one of the publications in the state of Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) for the second year in a row. Last month, Mountain Home won six Keystone Awards for journalism excellence from the PNA in Harrisburg, beating out large, corporate newspapers with huge staffs such as The Philadelphia Weekly and The Philadelphia Business Journal, as well as the Central Penn Business Journal.

The winners are Cindy Davis Meixel of Lycoming County, one talented journalist who in baseball lingo is a rare “triple threat.” Cindy won a writing award for one of the best business or consumer stories of the year for her profile of Tioga County maple king Richard Patterson, “Take that Vermont.” She also won as a photographer for one of the best feature photos of the year, a photo that accompanied her prize-winning story. That’s the definition of a double threat, plus Cindy brings along her born-storytelling mom, Pat Davis, our “Heart of the Mountain” columnist.

Our fishing columnist, Fred Metarko, the “Lunker,” won first place for the best “Sports/Outdoor” column in the state, while our hiking columnist, Liz Berkowitz, won “Second Place.”  In addition to being a remarkable athlete and writer, Liz owns Wild Asaph Outfitters on Main Street in Wellsboro. It’s the second year in a row Mountain Home has swept the best sports/outdoor writing awards, which is appropriate, since our region sports the best outdoors.

Yours truly won first place for best “Personality Profile” for “Home on the Rim,” a story about the remarkable back-to-nature couple George and Dottie Webber of Slate Run, and second place for best feature story for “Our Babe,” a story about Babe Ruth’s longest home run, hit in Wilkes-Barre.

If you like stories where every underdog has his day, keep reading.  Mountain Home started as a newborn magazine two years ago in an old house overlooking Kelsey Creek in downtown Wellsboro, and thanks to you, we’ve grown from zero to more than 100,000 readers across our lovely mountains-and-lakes region. We’re still in that old house, still a mom-and-pop shop with me and my wife, Teresa, the editor, and one full-time editorial employee, competing against newspapers from Elmira to Williamsport owned by giant, distant corporations. Yes, we’re the only locally-owned, family-owned media company in the region. Last year, Mountain Home won five Keystones, including best writing for all weeklies or monthlies of any size in Pennsylvania.

How do we do it? Here’s where the thanks come in. Hope you’re seat is comfortable, and you can stay a moment. We’re not blowing smoke to say it’s because of you—you making Mountain Home part of your life, and supporting our advertisers who support us, keeps us going. But it’s much more than that. It’s the many part-time talented writers, artists, photographers, and salespeople who make Mountain Home what it is. And it’s your willingness to not only read stories but tell them, share them, that makes Mountain Home and its readers the envy of modern journalism. We have a pretty special relationship going, if you listen to what journalists around the country tell me as their newspapers go down the tubes for lack of readers.

Last month, I was invited to speak in Hershey, Pennsylvania, at one of the biggest newspaper industry conventions in the country,  to explain why Mountain Home also won recognition as one of the best new ideas to attract readers in the state. The  other winners talked about market research – a magazine that targeted young mothers did market research that revealed they wanted “information” about nutrition, their children, etc. When it came my turn to talk, I bragged about you. I said the people of northern Pennsylvania and southern New York tell a great story, and enjoy reading one, too.

Afterward, publishers from small-town, family-owned, century-old newspapers inthe state came and asked me to teach this idea to their staffs. And two of the state’s largest newspaper publishers, from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, told me they wanted to somehow make the Mountain Home secret, the Mountain Home spirit, part of their $80-million companies. It’s not hard, I said, if you’re from where I’m from. We sit on a porch together the old-fashioned way and tell stories, real and free as the wind.