Ramblings

Wow, it’s my turn again, already. What do I say? What do I write about?

After Ted Dunagan finished his last book which was serialized in this space, he quit. He moved away, too. I miss him.

But, since I’ve been told for many years that I should write a weekly column, I determined Susan Jacobs, associate editor, and myself could take turns so that neither of us had to churn out something every week. (Ideas don’t always present themselves.)

The first few came easily, but this week I’ve had a hard time. What to write about? So, Jenny (Murphy, my sister and advertising manager here), suggested I write again about the newspaper. I decided that was a good idea.

Do you like our new feature, know your neighbor? We hope to continue it for a long time. Please let us know if you are aware of someone interesting that we should interview. And, everyone is interesting. Each has his or her own niche.

Stacy Levandusky, who I wrote about last week, shared the story on Facebook and got numerous comments. I like it. I advised her out of town friends that they could go to the website and read the whole story. Sometimes people forget.

As a matter of fact, we generally post most of the paper on the web to appear on Friday after the printed paper is delivered on Thursday. But, we add obituaries as they come in. And, other timely items of interest are added as needed. Like the detour last week because they were working on the railroad tracks at the Jasper/Monroe County line. The railroad or Department of Transportation (I don’t remember now who sent it), didn’t give enough notice to put it in the print edition, so I put it online as soon as I saw it.

So, check the website frequently. And, occasionally stories are too along to get the whole thing in the print edition, but the full story will appear on line.

But, we are supposed to be changing websites at the beginning of next month. It may take a while to get the kinks out, but we hope to have an even easier user-friendly site.

But, I digress. We want to know if you like the new feature, and what other new features you’d like to see. It’s no secret newspaper readership is down. We notice the young people don’t generally read the paper. But they’re not the only ones. What would make you read the paper?

I tell all about my life in this space. Like last time I talked about walking. I figure if you want to know me, and know about me, you better read the newspaper. I get aggravated sometimes when I’m talking to someone and they have no idea what I’m talking about because they have not read their paper. But I’m wrong for that.

I want to know though what you really like. We report on governing bodies which can be sort of boring to read, but those are the people who determine what our taxes are. It’s important to see how they think.

We have an election coming up. It’s a special election for District 4 commissioner. How many people will turn out? Probably not many. It’s only one district, and it’s a special election. One candidate hasn’t even submitted a biography to the newspaper, and the one who did had a very short one.

But, it’s important for our readers to know there is an upcoming election. And it can affect your taxes in the long run.

Of course, speaking of taxes, I’ll never forget one year the commissioners set the budget, and it was clear that taxes would have to go up. So, I ran an article, and the headline was Taxes Are Going Up. It was in the spring or early summer. When tax bills arrived in taxpayers hands, they were mortified, and said, what happened? Why didn’t we know? I had to look back and make sure I had written the story. But, I’ve learned, we only notice when it affects us personally. Taxes going up wasn’t a big deal until it was my tax bill.

I am rambling here; I was going to educate you on newspaper jargon and what we do for free and what has to be paid, and how we manage to stay afloat. Maybe next time.