Today I picked up the premier edition of the Flathead Beacon, a free publication focusing on the Flathead Valley. It’s first page contains a ‘Welcome to the Beacon’ letter from founder Maury Povich, and promises coverage of local news with sports and arts and culture playing a prominent role. From the Beacon Staff:

We’re about the journalism, first and foremost. We aim to be accurate, fair and thought-provoking. But we’re also about a new approach to media in the digital age, and we power this weekly newspaper with our web site. [flatheadbeacon.com] It’s also a place to interact, contribute your thoughts, view slide shows and event calendars, and tell us what we do wrong and -sometimes - what we do right.

Already I can tell I’m going to like this paper, it has a little of everything, op-eds, events, spotlights on area business and recreation. It also has a neat feature that compares home prices in Kalispell, Whitefish, Columbia Falls and Bigfork, called Floor Space. It’s kind of like a print version of HGTV’s What You Get for the Money, but with a Flathead Valley bent.

For those of you here in the Flathead Valley, Flathead Beacon is distributed every Wednesday at locations around the valley. For everyone else? Um… there’s the website!