Promotional Spotlight Special Edition: Mountaintop Eagle
Promotional Spotlight Special Edition: Mountaintop Eagle
The Mountaintop Eagle supports local businesses
with ad directory and featured editorial content
Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association (PNA) member Mountaintop Eagle, a weekly published in Luzerne County, PA and circulated in Mountaintop, Wapwallopen, and White Haven communities, continues to follow their mission “Dedicated to Quality Community Journalism” as it forges ahead through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Publisher Stephanie Grubert assigned one of the paper’s reporters a story about how restaurants in its circulation area were managing after Governor Tom Wolf ordered non-life sustaining businesses including restaurants and bars closed March 16, 2020.
“Reporter Rebecca Sodergren called every restaurant in our circulation area and complied a spreadsheet listing 35 restaurants with their status as open, closed, and whether they were offering take-out and delivery hours and website ordering information, if they had it,” said Grubert. “I was amazed that we had so much information to share from current advertisers and other restaurants in our circulation area. In addition to the business feature story our reporter wrote, I decided to design a free full-page Restaurant Guide, which has run in weekly in the Mountaintop Eagle since March 25. The guide is updated each week.
“Our directory includes 35 restaurants listed, with 23 currently open and 12 closed. Takeout and/or delivery are the only way restaurants can continue operating under the governor’s order. Many of my advertisers are other small businesses like the Mountaintop Eagle. With the Restaurant Guide we are reminding our readers about dining options in our community during the COVID-19 crisis. We have received positive feedback about the guide through social media and from the businesses we contact for the stories we have written.
Grubert and her team have consistently covered the toll the COVID-19 crisis has had on local businesses via editorial pieces since the week of March 16 when some businesses were ordered closed. Later national and state officials ordered social distancing and beginning in April with stay-at-home orders. The Mountaintop Eagle’s business stories include those that are still open, including grocery stores, funeral homes, daycare centers, healthcare providers, pharmacies, and businesses that were ordered to shut down, like real estate, hair and nail salons, exercise classes and gyms, characterized as personal care facilities. Golf course closures and public park recreation availability was addressed.
The newspaper has covered local schools, both public and private about how they are managing with distance learning to give students opportunities to continue their educations until schools can reopen later in the year.
Public meeting coverage of the Crestwood School District and all municipalities in the Mountaintop Eagle’s coverage area continues. Many are holding meetings available to the public Zoom, FaceBook, conference calls and with a small group and social distancing, Some have held small “meetings” in outdoor parking lots at their buildings with social distancing.
Cancellations are listed in the Mountain Calendar and there are also announcements of future events throughout the next 6 months after lockdown orders are lifted. Church news continues every week, and the paper had a unique front-page story about St Paul’s Lutheran Church holding Palm Sunday and Easter services outdoors in their parking lot with parishioners in cars and the minister broadcasting over a radio frequency. Innovation and hope runs though the Mountaintop Eagle’s editorial coverage.
“There really isn’t a business, school or public entity that is unaffected by this. Our advertisers have reduced revenues and it comes back to us,” said Grubert. “Our broadsheet newspaper has been 8 pages for the past 2 weeks, which are the smallest in decades. The free Restaurant Guide advertising and editorial coverage for the local businesses continues. Our mission as a community newspaper is to continue our “Dedication to Quality Community Journalism”, which has been listed under our front-page banner for 35 years since I purchased the Mountaintop Eagle in 1985,” concludes Grubert.
For additional information, contact Stephanie Grubert at 570-606-8071 or steffie@ptd.net.