Download the current issue, January 2012.

Past issues are here.

Be a Hometown Hero (and Claim a Prize)
by Bill London, Co-op volunteer newsletter editor

Can you help us distribute the Co-op newsletter? We would like to get copies of each month’s issue from the Co-op to all the small towns around Moscow/Pullman. We’re hoping to find folks who can distribute newsletters to towns from Harvard to Helmer, Kendrick to Colton, and St. John to St. Maries.

If you live in – or regularly visit – one or more of these towns and would be willing to commit to delivering a small stack of newsletters in the first week or two of the month, every month for one year, please contact Bill London at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

In the email, please include your name, phone number, preferred email address, and the name of the business and town that you will distribute the newsletters to and the number of newsletters you will distribute there. Please make sure you have discussed this with the owners of the store or business in question so they will expect the newsletters and not just trash them.

 Note that we already have volunteer distributors who pass out hundreds of newsletters monthly in Pullman, Moscow, and the Lewiston-Clarkston valley. Our goal here is to try to cover the small towns of the Palouse.

 Those who participate in this new distribution program will receive the gratitude of the Co-op for helping in our outreach effort –PLUS – every month one of these distributors will receive a totally groovy prize from the Co-op.

Our New and Improved Newsletter
by Bill London, Co-op newsletter editor

We've made changes to the Co-op newsletter. Our goal is a smaller newsletter with tighter writing and a stronger focus on the Co-op.

To explain where we are going, let's begin with where we've been.

About 15 years ago, the Co-op Newsletter was renamed “the Moscow Food Co-op Community News.” We changed the name to reflect an expansion of its direction, from focusing on Co-op activities to covering topics of interest to Co-op members and progressive Moscow residents in general. We added columns about alternative energy, bikes, natural history, native plants, etc. We did this because Moscow media was not adequately covering progressive community issues, this information needed exposure, and because we thought the Co-op and community would both benefit from the connection.

Over the last 15 years, much has changed. Local newspapers and radio stations are much better at covering these vital issues, lots of newsletters from city departments and local non-profits focusing on these topics are available here, and the Internet provides easy access to information.

Also, the Co-op has grown and the professional staff is much more able and willing to write about their areas of expertise.

In addition, reader survey input indicated that some readers thought the newsletter was too big. Besides saving trees and Co-op funds, we think our publication would be more readable and interesting if it were leaner and more focused.

One last point: for many years, more than one third of all Co-op volunteer positions were for the newsletter. We decided that it would be more fair, and more beneficial for the Co-op, to reduce the number of newsletter volunteers and move those volunteer positions to strengthen the website and other outreach efforts.

To summarize, the Co-op has grown and matured; our community has matured. Interest in healthy, local, and sustainable food, as well as alternative transportation, recycling, alternative health, sustainable building practices, and so on, are the concerns of the entire community and not just Co-op members. Other media are interested in covering the subjects the Community News has been covering—and it is their duty to do so. We can't be the sole source of energy and info on every single progressive topic anymore. Also, we need to even out the effort our volunteers are putting towards the newsletter and other outreach efforts.

Beginning with this January issue, you can expect both tighter writing and refocused content.

Tighter writing means that our editors will make sure that articles are shorter and more direct. Refocused content means that we will use volunteer writers only to write about topics that are more integral to the Co-op, and will rely more on staff writers to cover activities, changes, and products at the Co-op. Some columns written by volunteers will be discontinued. The three profiles (producer, staff, and volunteer) will continue. The food articles will be cut to two (Omnivoria and Veganesque) and those will run on an alternating basis. The environment articles will be cut to two (transportation and sustainable housing) and those will run on an alternating basis.

We hope that our new newsletter will be appropriate for the Co-op today. We want to create a quality newsletter that connects and inspires. We hope the changes envisioned will improve the newsletter and better serve the Co-op.

If you have a comment, concern or question about these changes, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .

Community News is 25 Years Old!
by Bill London, Co-op Newsletter Editor

Well, printing is overstating it. The early newsletters were copied at our then-downtown Kinko's, about 100 issues every two months. Those first newsletters were primitive. Three sheets of paper folded in half to make a thin booklet of six pages, each five and one-half inches wide by eight and one-half inches tall.

When we moved to Moscow in 1984, David Cook (then the Co-op general manager) urged me to start up a regular newsletter for the Co-op, to help link the members to the Co-op and the Co-op to the community. Melissa Rockwood designed that first issue and provided the cover art. Chan Davis, Stephen Lyons, and I wrote the four articles that formed the content. I was the editor, and in an obvious example of the Peter Principle in action, have remained the editor ever since.

Today's Community News is my dream come true. Twenty-five years ago, I had fantasized the creation of a large tabloid with a wide variety of bylined articles about both the Co-op and the community, enough ads to validate the publication and help underwrite its costs, and a regular following of readers.

Over the last 25 years, hundreds of volunteer writers, illustrators, editors, ad managers, and distributors have worked together to create today's 2,500-copy, 32-page monthly. Together we have produced a community newsletter that we all can be proud of, and I thank them all for making it possible.

Use the links below to download any issue from the past year and a half. All the newsletters from the last 25 years are available at the University of Idaho Library Special Collections Department.

Download past issues [pdf].