Mark Guerringue
North Country Newsmaker
Conventional wisdom says you might as well shred your money as start a daily paper, but one local newspaper chain is defying convention. The Conway Daily Sun was started in 1989, a Berlin edition followed in 1994, then a Laconia paper was added in 2000, making Laconia the only New England city other than Boston with multiple daily papers. Common to all is Berlin native and publisher Mark Guerringue, who heard about a successful model of free daily newspapers and decided to import the concept to the Mt. Washington Valley where it has bloomed. Has the concept cooled since then? “Exactly the opposite,” says Guerringue, “The Internet came along and forced the paradigm of free news.” With national newspaper circulation disappearing like arctic permafrost, lots of publishers are now looking to the Berlin area to see how it’s done.
New Hampshire Magazine knows where “It” is at. Each November, we identify the state’s most happening people and publish their names and profiles in our annual “It List.”
So what defines an “It” Person?
How about buzz, panache, je ne sais quoi, currency, a person whose time has come, a person of tomorrow, a timeless person, noteworthy, below the radar, in the news, in the know, hot, cool, high impact, slippery, a mover and shaker, a humble saint, a behind-the-scenes operator, a scenery chewer, an unsung hero, a hero who knows how to sing.
It’s a quality that’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it.
Above is one member of the 2006 It List.
