Saturday, September 28, 1991: My spouse, Louise Mugar, and I were sitting at home with our three-year-old boy in Point Roberts when the mail containing that month’s issue of the All Point Bulletin was delivered. The paper was being shut down, announced the publisher and editor Glennys Christie. Hmm, we said. Louise was pregnant, unable to work in Canada but wanting something to do. Both of us had publishing experience in magazines and books in New York City and thought, why not? We bought the paper, hired Glennys, and two months later published the APB with our names on the masthead.
June 1995: Three years have gone by, we’re getting the hows of publishing a newspaper, we’re a little bored and say to ourselves, why not start a newspaper in Blaine? So, we did. The Northern Light. We hired a graphic designer, opened an office on the harbor, and away we went. In 1996, we started Waterside, our annual summer guide to water-based communities in SW B.C. and NW Washington. In 1999, we bought the Mount Baker Experience, an outdoor adventure and lifestyle magazine from Al and Nickee Magnusson, and redesigned and revamped it. In 2004, we started Pacific Coast Weddings, a guide for brides-to-be. We also began publishing maps along the way. Started a weekly news bulletin for Point Roberts. Put all our publications on the internet. The lesson in all of this? Don’t get bored if you don’t want to work hard.
None of this would have been possible without the hard work and dedication of some truly gifted employees. Ruth Lauman was our first employee and still works part-time for us. Jeanie Luna came on very early as our office manager, left several times but has always come back. Molly Ernst has been with us in sales since 2003 – she succeeded her mother Jackie Hollett, who was our first salesperson and joined us within months of starting TNL. Doug De Visser, our extraordinarily skilled and creative designer, started in 2013. Weekly news bulletin editor and special publications editor Aly McGee began in 2018. Our dedicated and always professional editor Grace McCarthy came on in 2020, congenial and enthusiastic salesperson Gary Lee in 2021, followed by MBE editor and TNL reporter Nolan Baker, a thorough and fine writer, in 2023. That’s not to mention an army of freelance writers and photographers who have contributed to the success of our special publications.
Almost all of our editorial staff came out of the journalism school at Western Washington University – we can’t praise that school enough for the quality graduates they produce year after year.
Our business model mostly relied upon advertising to support the publications. Most of our advertisers were small businesses like us, struggling to make a go of it. Our goal was to connect our readers with those businesses, and we were able to do that by using the U.S.P.S. to deliver to every home in the 98230 and 98281 zip codes. The Blaine and Point Roberts post offices have been great partners.
In our first issue, we wrote, in part: “We believe a newspaper should be a positive force in the community. It achieves this through editorial excellence and by welcoming and encouraging local voices to provide a fresh viewpoint. It serves its readers best by presenting the news with clarity, honesty and fairness.” All in all, we believe we have achieved that.
Some of our subjects disagreed with us. I have stood in parking lots with people two inches from my face, screaming at me. Amazingly, I was never punched. There was one water commissioner in Point Roberts who would become enraged just at the sight of me. He would sit across the table, swear words and spittle spraying in every direction, while I sat there stone-faced. I will never forget the meeting where he threw a fellow board member into the wall, leaving a commissioner-shaped hole in the drywall.
The people we have met. If the census ever tracked the number of characters per capita, Blaine, Birch Bay and Point Roberts would rank near the top. The number of hardworking, enthusiastic individuals both within and out of government service working on behalf of their communities would rank even higher.
Back in 1858, a man named William Bausman started a newspaper called The Northern Light, the first newspaper in Whatcom County. It lasted for 11 issues. Its namesake, this iteration of The Northern Light, has lasted for 1,531 issues. The All Point Bulletin has made it for 483 issues, 413 of which were under our watch. Not counting our other publications, that means we have written or proofed approximately 34.3 million words of editorial. We’ve uncovered fraud, corruption, and waste; covered countless meetings, hundreds of sporting events and three decades of high school graduations; sat on multiple chambers of commerce and tourism boards; spent years on the phone and in meetings. We’ve gone through 9/11, the Great Recession and Covid. We’ve stayed up all night on multiple occasions to deliver flats to the printer, suffered computer breakdowns, covered crimes and festivals – we’ve done it all. Since 2014, we have received 355 Washington Newspaper Publishers Association awards. Now it’s someone else’s turn.
After 35 years, walking away isn’t easy – but knowing the newspapers and other publications will continue makes it easier. We are in final negotiations to turn the company over to a non-profit newspaper organization. There may be a lapse of a couple of issues, but we are hopeful that our readers and advertisers will soon be seeing a familiar friend next to their coffee cups.
It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve you, and we thank you for the support you have given us over the years. Take care.
