The Three Rivers Commercial-News was a fixture in this community for 127 years. It preserved the town’s history, and provided vital information for its readers across parts of three centuries. It was the old guard, a publication that withstood so much, and meant even more to the people it served.

With its last issue hitting newsstands and mailboxes across the county Saturday, I like so many others am mourning its loss. I waited most of the day to write this column because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. In fact, I wrote this column twice. Five hundred words into the first draft I decided what I had wasn’t good enough, and started over.

Dirk Milliman and Elena Meadows gave me my first full-time journalism gig when they hired me as a staff writer in May 2016. And when Elena left to pursue other passions 11 months later, Dirk promoted me to managing editor, a position I went onto hold for three years.

I’ll be forever grateful for the time I spent as a member of the Three Rivers Commercial-News. I had so many formative experiences there, and had the privilege of working with colleagues who cared about this community, and used their talents to make it better.

Sure, my relationship with the paper is a complicated one. When the Commercial moved from publishing six days a week to two in 2020, I was downsized with it. After four years I was no longer needed, and coming to terms with that was incredibly painful. When I walked out the door at 124 N. Main St. for the last time, I had a box in my arms, and tears in my eyes.

Deborah and I had gotten married just five months earlier, and bought a house five months before that. What was I going to do next? How were we going to pay the mortgage, the car payment? I thought maybe I could work for the Sturgis Journal or get out of the business entirely. A month later the world shut down, and a month after that we launched Watershed Voice.

Journalists do this work because it’s who we are, it’s what we love, and I know Dirk, Robert Tomlinson, and Scott Hassinger love the news. I know they too left that office with feelings similar to what I felt when I did the same almost three years ago. And for that brothers, I am sorry.

Thank you for your contributions to this community, thank you for loving the news. I don’t know what’s next for you but I wish you the best because I hear you get what you give, and you all gave a lot.

Alek Haak-Frost is executive editor and publisher of Watershed Voice.