Yakima Family Times

The Yakima Family Times was first published in June of 2006.  It was distributed as a free print newspaper every month to 10,000 families in Yakima, Selah, and Terrace Heights.

Yakima Family Times Newspaper

It began with huge high hopes and fantastic reception from the community.  Yakima’s parents definitely needed a collective voice and a central communication device.  It was a success.

The idea of one mom with five kids distributing 10,000 copies from the back of her van every month was preposterous, though.  Especially when said mom was also the graphic designer, laying out each issue and communicating with the printer.  Did I mention she was also the entire advertising sales team?  And she wrote most of the articles, and designed most of the ads?  What kind of nutty woman would work that hard, and then quit before the enterprise became profitable?  Lisa Russell did it.  She got burned out and her responsibilities at her other family business took over.    June, July and August 2006 issues were the only ones that ever saw publication, although the September 2006 issue was good.

Luckily for the good folks of Yakima, the Herald decided to publish Playdate Magazine about a year afterward.   Every 2 months the fine folks at Playdate turn out a fantastic family calendar of events (one of the main purposes of the Yakima Family Times was to aggregate all of the kid events in town.  Can you believe no one else was doing that?) as well as themed parenting articles with a regional flair.

Today, the Yakima Family Times website is designed to house some of the dreams of the original Yakima Family Times newspaper, which is probably not very apparent since this site was launched on June 15, 2009 and rarely gets updated.

That may change.

Thanks for stopping by.