News Is Slow this Week

You may be reading this a little later than you like, as this week’s Monticello News won’t be in mailboxes until Friday. I hate it.

I’m all for a national day of mourning for our 39th president and all around statesman, Jimmy Carter, but I’m not for it interfering with mailing my newspaper. I had hoped to get it to my readers on Wednesday, but the printer said to do that he had to have the pages by Monday. We sent our pages on Monday of Christmas week, but typically that’s too soon. It takes a little while to put the paper together, even if we have everything that goes.

This week, there’s a County Commission meeting Monday evening which would have to be missed to make the printer’s deadline. In addition, to print early we’d have to miss reporting on Tuesday’s school board meeting. I was willing to put that off a week, but not county commission. Monday is too early to put this paper to bed.

So alas, we opted to print on Wednesday as usual even though it meant our subscribers won’t get the paper until Friday. It’s very early in the week at this writing, but I hope our delay in publication will result in some news that we can report on.

You see, we have a tough task sometimes. Oftentimes there’s plenty of news to fill these pages. Other times, not so much. It’s January, and the holidays are winding down. Which means, not much is happening. Basketball is under way, and it’s cold. Hopefully we’ll have a basketball story or two on our sports page, but that leaves several other pages to say, It’s cold.

We typically have a school news page. Not this week…we’ve gotten everything in that we were told about before school let out for the holidays, and they won’t be back in school long enough this week to get new school news in. So, that’s a page looking for news to fill it.

With County Commission and School Board, along with last Wednesday’s called Monticello City Council meeting, we should have enough “news” to fill the front page…but what we really need is what we call art. It could be a news or feature photo, but a photo or two of some type is always needed on the front page. And, ya’ll get tired of wrecks.

Praise the Lord there’s been no house fires to provide “art” for the front page. And, a few weeks ago, holiday decorations sufficed as art, but that won’t fly now, leaving me on this Monday racking my brain to think of some kind of art of some sort.

There are weeks it just all comes together and then there are weeks like this.

You could help us. Remember we like to help you celebrate. Children’s birthdays up to age 6 are free to run in the newspaper, as are engagements, weddings, 50 (or more) year anniversaries and lots more.

We love to interview our senior population at age 90 or 100 or in between. Some people say they prefer the good news in the newspaper, and those features are always fun to write, and great to get to know people.

So remember in these upcoming months we can use your help making the paper personal for our readers here in Jasper County. Share your good news! Don’t forget babies of 2024, which will run at the end of this month.

Old folks, babies, and many in-between. We’re all family in this little town, so share your good news, and we can all smile.