Please indulge me a few moments to tell you about the magazine you’re reading right now.
Mt. Lebanon Magazine has been around since 1981, longer than many of our new municipal hires have been alive. As the official publication of Mt. Lebanon Municipality, our issues started out in black and white, then migrated to some color, morphed into full color and now include an interactive online version in addition to a print edition mailed to every home and business in Mt. Lebanon.
We print 23,000 copies. Of that figure, 20,000 are mailed to homes on mail carrier routes that include Mt. Lebanon homes (so yes, you might be reading this magazine in Scott, Upper St. Clair or Dormont, too). The balance of issues are distributed around town to businesses, libraries, St. Clair Health, your nail salon, your doctor’s office and other gathering places.
Our amazing advertisers, many of whom have supported us from the beginning, cover about 84 percent of the cost of this magazine, including paying the bill for talented writers and photographers, paper (which costs a fortune these days), postage and software to keep us running.
During the pandemic, we published all issues on time, in a time when other publications either closed or consolidated issues. We made sure you had important municipal news (and interesting stories about your neighbors) to keep you informed and occupied. Ten times a year, you can count on a new issue showing up in your mailbox, and we bet you will read something you didn’t know in each issue. Even we learn things we didn’t know every month (and we’ve been around the block).
In our municipal Comprehensive Plan study survey, we asked respondents to tell us where they get their Mt. Lebanon news. Mt. Lebanon Magazine came out significantly on top of all methods. (LeboALERT, our text and email notification system, rated second. Sign up for those here [1].) In today’s digital climate, print remains relevant. It’s colorful, it travels well, it spends time with you and it sticks around.
As we close out our editorial year, we want to send our gratitude to our advertisers, and thank them for seeing the value we see in our readers. We want to thank our residents, who selflessly shared their stories with us. We know letting us into your life sometimes takes courage, and we will always respect the trust you place in us. I personally want to thank our magazine staff and contractors for their excellent work (and I hope you’ll join me in that sentiment).
Finally, we would like to thank our fellow employees at Mt. Lebanon Municipality. Giving us access to accurate and timely municipal news helps us do what no one else does—show our taxpayers how their money is being spent and how decisions are being made.
We look forward to a happy, rewarding and fulfilling 2023. Happy New Year to each of you, and may all your holiday wishes come true.
LauraPace Lilley, Editor in Chief
lpace@mtlebanon.org [2] / 412-343-3552