To Our Readers, Advertisers and Friends,
May 29, 2025 The Beacon • 3
May 29, 2025
To Our Readers, Advertisers and Friends,
I t is with humble gratitude to the people of Coshocton County that I am writing this final letter to let all of you know that Nancy and I are retiring effective with this issue of The Coshocton County Beacon.
As I write this, I have a copy of the very first issue of The Beacon open to page 2 on my desk. That issue was dated May 1, 2008, and was the inaugural issue – Volume 1, Number 1. The photo of Nancy and I on that page certainly looks to me like we were a bit younger than the photo that accompanies this letter. I guess a lot has happened over 17 years. Much more than I can squeeze on to this page. But let’ s try.
There are so many people to thank for helping make a dream come to fruition. When opportunities failed to materialize in my newspaper career, I decided – along with my wonderful wife of almost 45 years – that going out on our own was the path to follow. It was not an easy path and turned into a wild and wonderful road of adventure. It took almost two years to eke out a small profit. As small business owners know, long hours and sacrifice go with entrepreneurship like peanut butter and jelly.
What made The Beacon even possible? While I had a certain degree of faith when we started, my faith in our Lord has deepened and strengthened over the years. When we needed someone to show up for our staff, they did. When we needed to land a large advertiser, we did. When we needed something to go our way, it did, but not always immediately. I felt from early on that the Lord was guiding and blessing our business.
Nancy and I want to take this opportunity to thank this community, our many valued advertisers, thousands of loyal readers, family members, and friends and fans of The Beacon who helped make this paper become the most widely read publication in Coshocton County. To all of our Beacon Team members, THANK YOU! Without your support, The Beacon would have remained just that – a dream.
When we made the decision to sell our company to the AloNovus Corp., a family-owned business based in Millersburg in January 2020, it was a bittersweet time – but a couple of months later we knew we had made the correct decision. The new owners had the resources and technology to make it through the COVID-19 crisis and come out thriving on the other side.
And that’ s where we are today – five and a half years later The Beacon is part of a solid and successful network of family-owned weekly publications that work hard to serve their respective communities, advertisers and readers week in and week out with a footprint in multiple counties. These papers prove week in and week out that print is still a very viable marketing tool.
We started The Beacon with a simple goal –“ to provide the many wonderful people, organizations and businesses in our area with another source to spread their message to the community”. Mission accomplished and continuing. Our purpose and vision is to“ Shine a Positive Light on Coshocton County”. Achieved and rolling forward.
My Dad, Robert M.“ Pinky” Fortune, had a saying that he used often and has become the slogan for the Fortune family –“ Dig, Fight and Scratch Every Day”. We did.
I want to thank my beautiful wife, our children and their spouses, parents, brothers and sister, relatives, all our team members over the years, community leaders, advertisers that believed, and continue to believe in our value, readers and many, many others that made this possible. To all of you we offer a heartfelt and sincere“ Thank You and God Bless”. It has been a privilege and a great honor.
Mark & Nancy Fortune
BF-306702