Newspapers in Education Golf Tournament coming October 1, Sun Tribune introduced
The Royal Register News
SOUTH COUNTY — Students across 11 school districts in the Columbia Basin will finally receive daily newspapers in the classroom thanks to the 7th Annual Newspapers in Education golf tournament and fundraiser at Moses Lake Golf Club Thursday, Oct. 1.
The tournament, with a nearly full field of 72 golfers and 18 teams, has raised over $10,400, which will help fund the NIE program for the 2015/16 school year.
The NIE program is a national program aimed at keeping students engaged in their local, state and national news while promoting the importance of print newspapers.
The funds raised will provide over 1,000 daily newspapers into the Moses Lake, Ephrata, Quincy, Othello, Warden, Royal City and Mattawa school districts.
“Our NIE program was severely underfunded last year which resulted in us cutting the program in half and only delivering daily papers into our local schools two days a week, instead of five,” Eric LaFontaine, Publisher, Columbia Basin Publishing Co. said. “We’re thrilled to have brought the program back and very thankful for the tremendous support from all the communities. We’re excited to get students interacting and reading print news again.”
The tournament format is an 11 a.m. shotgun start with trophies for first, second and third-place teams in addition to a men’s and women’s longest drive, longest putt and closes to the pin awards.
“We needed to raise $14,000 and with our super ticket and raffle items during the event, we expect to get very close to that number,” LaFontaine said.
The $50 super ticket provides each team with five mulligans, 10 feet of string (typically used for putts that have fallen short) and eight tickets to enter a raffle for four high-end prizes, which includes a golf and stay package at the Coeur d’Alene Resort and Golf Course, a football tickets pack with Central Washington University season tickets and Washington State University game tickets, a golf tour of central Washington (two rounds of golf at six area courses) and two smokers donated by Home Depot.
“Had the tournament not been canceled last year we more than likely would have had a higher turnout considering many businesses did not put donations in their budgets,” LaFontaine said. “We’ve already scheduled next year’s tournament for June 16, 2016 at the Moses Lake Golf Club and are hoping to field multiple teams of teachers and school districts so we figured right after school gets out would be perfect timing. Anyone reading this should mark the date and put funds in their budget for next year.”
Oct. 1 will also introduce the Sun Tribune, which will replace the Royal Register newspaper in the Royal City, Mattawa and Dessert Aire communities.
“A few months ago we challenged ourselves with turning a free newspaper, which really was more of shopper, into an actual paid, legal newspaper,” LaFontaine said. “We’ve had great success with hundreds of paid readers, however, feedback from the Mattawa and Dessert Aire areas indicated they didn’t feel the Royal Register was their community newspaper because of the name. So we needed to rebrand the paper.”
The Sun Tribune will have the same look, feel and flow of news as the departing Royal Register and will continue to cover the same stories, schools, cities and community news.
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