MANKATO
From The Editor
magazine
July 2014 • VOLUME 9, ISSUE 7 PUBLISHER James P. Santori EDITOR Joe Spear ASSOCIATE Tanner Kent EDITOR CONTRIBUTORS Nell Musolf Pete Steiner Jean Lundquist Sarah Johnson Drew Lyon Heidi Sampson Gillian Needham Jill Roesler Lindsy O’Brien Leticia Gonzales PHOTOGRAPHERS John Cross Pat Christman PAGE DESIGNER Christina Sankey ADVERTISING Ginny Bergerson MANAGER ADVERTISING Jen Wanderscheid Sales Theresa Haefner ADVERTISING Barb Wass ASSISTANT ADVERTISING Sue Hammar DESIGNERS Christina Sankey
CIRCULATION Denise Zernechel DIRECTOR
Mankato Magazine is published by The Free Press Media monthly at 418 South Second St., Mankato MN 56001. To subscribe, call 1-800-657-4662 or 507-625-4451. $35.40 for 12 issues. For editorial inquiries, call Tanner Kent at 344-6354, or e-mail tkent@mankatofreepress.com. For advertising, call 344-6336, or e-mail mankatomag@mankatofreepress.com.
6 • July 2014 • MANKATO MAGAZINE
By Joe Spear
Celebrate the Best of Mankato Mankato Magazine reaches milestone
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ou are holding in your hands the largest edition of Mankato Magazine that we have ever produced. This month’s 80-page “catalogue” comes to you with the help of our annual “Best of Mankato” features. As we have done for the past several years, we put out a call for area residents to vote for their favorite restaurant, business or service provider. It’s a way to not only give readers a voice in selecting special people and places in Mankato, but also a way to celebrate the success of local businesses and other organizations. The world is changing. From Mankato to Minneapolis, from New York to L.A., from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv, the news is not always good. New wars start. Old wars come back. Strife. Danger. The world can be a scary place. We’re somewhat insulated from those realities every day in the relatively safe communities of southern Minnesota, but we are reminded of the dangerous world we’ve agreed to take part in when we see our soldiers come home from Afghanistan or elsewhere. So, in that context, it’s not a bad idea to get some positive vibes going about the place we live. The “Best of” issue can help with that. There are many inspirational stories of the people behind businesses we might take for granted. Many have faced struggles and the trials of running a business or adapting to an economy we know is volatile. The stories of those recognized as “Best of” often contain emotional elements. People running their own business often have deep and personal motivations. They have commitments driven by something that happened to them in their lives, something they experienced or something they were inspired by. We think you will find the stories interesting and surprising, in some cases. We’re also turning the page a bit at
Mankato Magazine. Associate Editor Tanner Kent, who has been the dayto-day content editor for the magazine for a couple years now, will be leaving the employ of The Free Press Media. He is taking on a job as a proofreader for a marketing business in the Twin Cities. We wish him and his family well. He has really been the driving force for the quality of the magazine. He has been diligent and creative. His work was recently recognized in a survey we took of our magazine readers. By almost all accounts, the magazine got rave reviews from readers. Nearly 60 percent of readers say they read the entire magazine every month. That is a pretty incredible number for a media form that is usually designed to be browsed. We couldn’t find many readers who could tell us what to improve about the magazine. Most said “Just keep putting out the same great magazine.” Other comments included: “look forward to receiving it,” “love it!” and “I wouldn’t change anything, really!” It’s always a challenge to keep the magazine new and fresh and interesting to read. We received some feedback on our survey about different topics readers would like to read more about. Food and wine are on the list. That shouldn’t be hard given the growing avenues in the Mankato area for both. In two years, Mankato Magazine will be 10 years old. It’s hard to fathom. Time flies to be sure, but we hope you slow down and read all the narratives of people who make where we live interesting, unique and fun.
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Joe Spear is editor of Mankato Magazine. Contact him at jspear@mankatofreepress.com or 344-6382 or on Twitter @jfspear.