Everybody says they want to hear good news but that desire doesn’t necessarily pay the bills, as they’ve just seen in Andover.

The Beacon is a monthly local newspaper that personifies the opposite of “if it bleeds, it leads” journalism. Created 22 years ago by Charlie Darling, the paper “was made to be nice, not reporting on crime or bad news,” said Shelley Geoghegan, the paper’s editor, publisher and only full-time employee. “The Concord Monitor can do that.”

For more than two decades the Beacon has filled its 32 pages with positive items about local happenings and events and people in Andover and surrounding towns from Franklin to New London and sometimes a bit beyond. News and pictures were sent in by readers or volunteers, then edited and laid out into a broadsheet paper. Copies were

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