Looking forward to serving you in ‘14

BY
JOE B. COATES
Publisher
We are saying goodbye to 2013 with a feeling of a job well done over the past year around here and with much appreciation to our readers, our advertisers, our writers and photographers and our distributors.
 This newspaper continues to thrive and is reaching more new readers each week.  Many of you have had very kind and appreciative words for the ‘good job we are doing with the paper.’  That is always good to hear. It takes a small army to deliver the high-quality message each week.
Much behind the scenes work goes into the production of your paper each week.  Photos are taken and processed into newsprint quality.   Data is gathered and processed into information.  Advertisers are called on, and their ads are designed or tweaked, then sent for approval for the new week.  Copy is set and sorted.  Classified and legal notice ads are taken and processed and organized.  Sometimes we work irregular hours to accomodate breaking news or elections or to satisfy an advertiser.
After we send the pages to press and pick them up after they are printed locally, we have stuffers who place inserts into the papers (no, we don’t use a machine.)  One person places address labels on the papers, again with a hand-operated machine.  Others count and sort the papers as per their destination.   Then, we send them on their way, most through our post office, many to stores in the area.  
We jokingly refer to it at times as organized chaos.
All of it is done typically by 11 a.m. each Tuesday.  Some weeks the mountain of information that we must go through to produce the paper seems insurmountable.  But, we get it done, and you get your paper on time.
So, give credit to our in-house staff members: Carolyn Diamond, Helen Douglas, Amy Scott, Bonnie Jackson, Carolyn White, Louis Price, Calamity Jones, Shannon McAlpin and Brodie Jackson.  Your newspaper is enjoyable each week because of them.  Our local post office workers deserve much credit, too.  Without them, timely delivery would be a much larger task.  Our families also play a big role in the high quality of your paper, giving us support for the work we do each week to bring the news of the community home to you each week.  
We look forward to serving you in 2014 with great anticipation of new challenges.  Drop us a line with your thoughts and ideas on how we can improve your paper even more.  (Our contact information is below.)