Serving These Communities
Covering the Heart of Hamilton County Since 1983
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Any description of the Valley Courier has to start with who started it and, most importantly, why. Les Wilson was one of the most highly respected newspaper editors in Ohio, working for the Mill Creek Valley News. It became the largest weekly newspaper in the state, based on subscriptions. He helped it achieved that status because of one basic belief - cover the news and report good things about people. The Mill Creek Valley News was eventually bought, ironically, by the group that now owns every other community paper in the entire Tri-State. He did not like the philosophy of the owners at the time. They did not place a high value on news, but on advertising. News stories were valuable only to fill in space on pages not taken by ads. In March of 1983, Les launched the Valley Courier. He was warned he would be out of business within six weeks. His doomsayers did not realize that people like to read about themselves, their friends or relatives, their communities. Not only did the Valley Courier survive, the Mill Creek Valley News did not. In 1996, Les sold his paper to Mike and Linda Koewler. They continue his tradition of placing emphasis on covering people, places and things that happen in the Valley.
The newspaper industry has changed significantly from the heyday of the Mill Creek Valley News. Few, precious few independent community papers exist. One of them is the Valley Courier. Every other community paper in the Tri-State area is owned by the media giant Gannet. Being independently owned has its advantages. We are directly responsible to our readers and advertisers, not corporate number crunchers who have never set a foot in the Valley. To them, an announcement of a monthly breakfast held by a fraternal organization is filler that may have to be used. To the people at the Eagles, Kiwanis or Legion, that announcement is the difference between them drawing a crowd and raising money to benefit local charities or having lots of food left over.
The attention to readers and what interests them shows in the content of the paper. It is not a cookie-cutter approach, as one sees in papers owned by a large corporation. The Courier is designed to appeal to the people of the Valley and what they want to see in a newspaper. Our subscribers are readers, not scanners.
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