I started the JCAA Newspaper when I became Vice President of JCAA in 1988. I realized JCAA needed to do more than send out a postcard to the club representatives letting them know about an upcoming meeting. Remember, this was before cell phones, the internet and fax machines were available to everyone. I felt that we needed a communication vehicle to get word out in a timely fashion to our member clubs, the press, state and federal legislators, the governor’s office and departments that deal with our issues, the president and the federal agencies and the general public.
The newspaper grew over the years from 4 pages to 20. What has also grown is the cost of paper, postage and printing. Even with donations we couldn’t cover the cost. The $25 dollars a year from associate members didn’t pay for their copies. Our other fundraisers had to fund the cost of the newspaper. We made that commitment because we thought the information was vitally important. We have always verified all the information we printed, making our newspaper trusted by our readers. When there were outdoor writers, they would often just copy our articles since they knew they could rely on our research. Our members were gathering much of this information by attending the Councils and the ASMFC state meetings, which created an additional cost. We didn’t pay people to go but we tried to pay their expenses. The last ten years have been difficult financially. The Fluke Tournament is no longer a huge fundraiser. In fact, we barely broke even the last few years. We have been running in the red for the last four years and have been using our reserve. Since the newspaper is one of the most expensive parts of our operation, we need to go digital to preserve the newspaper and still save money.
There are advantages to going digital. We can increase the number of pages without worrying about printing and mailing. This will allow us to include more information. The sponsors to our Fluke Tournament will have access to the newspaper to talk about their products. We can list our donors and all of our associate members. Since we are an organization of clubs, we can help our clubs spread the word about their issues and events by giving them space in the newspaper.
If we have your email address in our database, you should now receive the newspaper via email. If you are not receiving the newspaper via email, you can go to the JCAA website (jcaa.org) and hit the gold button that says “Subscribe” and fill in the information. You will start getting an improved copy of the online newspaper and start receiving alerts. We do not share our database with anyone, including our sponsors. If at any time you want to stop receiving the newspaper by email and other JCAA emails, just hit unsubscribe on the email and you will be removed from the list automatically. While visiting the site to sign up, please support JCAA by hitting the other gold button – “Donate to JCAA”.