Maybe you’ve seen them around.

Hopefully you have, they are now dotted all across LaGrange, Hogansville and West Point, with more popping up each day. Joyce Sato’s cool, intense, focused eyes have likely stared up at you, the hint of a grin on her face, from the cover of the new LaGrange Living publication.

This first magazine is just a taste, a preview, of what our first real issue will offer in June. This new magazine will be in full color, on magazine quality paper and will be published six times per year. It will focus on celebrating the many interesting and unique people and places within Troup County and the surrounding area.

After a story ran in last week’s weekend newspaper announcing our magazine venture, I received a few phone calls from people in the community, asking why we felt there was a need for a magazine. The comments that have been most commonly relayed to me in the last week have all swirled around the idea that the stories we will put in the magazine could simply go in the newspaper. Why, exactly, do we feel there is a need for a magazine?

Great question.

First, I love receiving calls from people in the community regarding articles and advertisements we run, whether they are positive or negative. It tells me people are reading, so please, keep calling.

The answer to this question is relatively simple, I hope. The magazine will be a different type of story-telling medium than the newspaper. While newspaper feature stories are great to have, and are a necessary element to a good community paper, we simply don’t have the space to write long-form, human interest stories on a consistent basis. The magazine will give us the space to tell these stories.

In my short time in LaGrange, it has become obvious there is much to celebrate. There are more stories to tell than can fit inside the pages of our daily paper, stories that deserve telling. This is why we are producing the magazine, to have the space to tell more of the stories that make LaGrange and Troup County special. We are excited to take on this challenge, and hope you will look for a copy of LaGrange Living in late July.