By, Pam Teel
This Month, Gunther Publications is celebrating The Millstone Times’ 9th year in business. Yes, it’s our anniversary and we want to celebrate with you. We have grown over the last de- cade to include not just news about our town but a total of nine towns!
The last 9 years have flown by. We’ve published almost 3 thousand articles and printed just under 5,000 pages. We’ve received over 700 emails over the years and have put in plenty of editing hours to make sure that every article feels as smashing as it should.
But we’re just getting warmed up and we are here to stay. We have big plans, and we are hungry to connect our readers with the local professionals and charities in CNJ! We want to make a difference, and we want to keep providing value to each and every one of you. Our commitment to delivering quality editorial to this fabulous CNJ community is what brings us back to the office every single day and it is what keeps us excited about the future of The Millstone Times.
We carefully plan out in advance that there’s something for everyone to enjoy in each of our issues, from our monthly pet contest, which gives away $100.00 dollars a month to the win- ning pet for a visit at a local spa, to our adoption page with animals that are ready for their new loving homes. We also include special sections like our camp and back to school guide.
We are also very proud that we give away a lot of FREE stuff to our readers. To name a few, we have given over $3,600.00 in pet spa gift cards, over $10k in Broadway show tickets, over 400 gift cards to I Play America, 8 Free Kids Birthday parties and much more!
This Anniversary issue marks when it all started! When we launched our first issue back in 2009, it was only 12 pages. Today, we average 100 pages each issue! All of our articles have to have a certain… signature, a certain something that justifies their reason for existing on our pages. Whether that “something” is for a local charity, what’s going on in the schools or about an advertiser, it has to pass the standards we have created for content publishing, which never compromises its strongly held values. However, finding that signature isn’t easy. In fact, the route that an article has to take until that “Publish” button gets clicked is usually quite long.
We immediately established our publishing protocol when we first began, which is our personal set of editorial principles that we adhere to for every single article published. We always protect your interests and ensure that the content published always merits your attention. We publish what we would like to read! That’s the reason why articles usually take time; and the process in general is slow and time-consuming. Most articles go through a few rounds of revisions, thanks to our Editor Liz Newman. We are not perfectionists, but we do try to make sure that everything is as it should be.
We group our content ideas and advertisements together in a publishing CRM or Customer Management Program, which we all use to coordinate the work- load. All team members share these spreadsheets to coordinate the status of upcoming and published articles. Experts receive articles for review via email. We have developed custom tools to make it easier for us to write, coordinate, edit, proofread and produce email newsletters, but we follow a thorough editorial procedure here as well.
When working remotely, we usually communicate through our online o ce system or just regular email. However, we tend to avoid phone calls and Skype con- ferences. Rather, we love email ercely. Being a passive medium, email gives us time to think, to research and to provide meaningful, thorough feedback. In fact, we don’t have xed working hours or times when everyone must be in the o ce. We care that things get done, and we care that things get done properly. Sometimes they are done on the go, in the middle of the night or in a co ee shop.
All our graphics and layouts are done by the most fabulous Graphic Artist ever! Her name is Stephanie and she now lives in Arizona. When she first started with GPE, she was a New Jersey resident raising three young children. Her family had the opportunity to live in warm weather and move out West. She is cre- ative, always happy and gets our publications to press on time every month! Our Star Marketing Representative is named Leanne Swallwood. She has decades of experience working with businesses on their advertising campaigns!
We cover interesting tidbits of knowledge and local stories about everyday people! One of our most recent stories, about a local resident named Timmy, reached as far as Asia through social media!Our paper includes car ads, homes for sale, restaurants, local businesses, local youth organizations, articles from our resi- dents and nearby neighbors, our own student of the month pick, recipes, photos of the month, expert tax advice, and much more. We are a paper that encourages others to join in! We o er a lot to our advertisers as well! We are not a zoned publication; we reach more homes for less money per home for the advertisers. Everything we do in direct mail print is also online, on social media and we have updated and archived digital versions at www.GuntherPublications.com.
You can follow us on all social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We look forward to hearing from you. If you have an idea for an article or something worth mentioning, perhaps a story you want to share with other readers, please contact us. Kids articles are welcome too!