It’s often a challenge for a small newspaper staff like ours to keep ahead of deadlines, but this week was especially crazy.
With the Fourth of July falling on a Tuesday, we were forced to go to press with Wednesday’s edition a day earlier so that our staff could enjoy the holiday.
Jamie and I had to leave for the Mississippi Press Association’s annual convention on Thursday so that required moving Saturday’s deadline a day ahead as well. It’s hard enough to get to press on the normal schedule.
One thing that always worries me when we have early deadlines is that something big is going to happen right after we go to press. On the day our first child was born we left our new sports writer in command of the newsroom on a deadline day.
“Don’t worry, nothing exciting is going to happen,” I assured him as we made preparations to be gone for a couple of days.
There was a murder the very next morning. Fortunately, he did a great job of covering it. We didn’t even know what had happened until we returned.
The annual press convention in Biloxi is something that Jamie and I always look forward to attending. The main reason is that we’ve made some great friends from newspapers all over Mississippi. The press convention is like a family reunion for us.
Another thing is that we always learn some things that help us improve our newspaper. Whether it’s in seminars or just sharing ideas with fellow newspaper folks, we always come back with ideas that we can use.
One thing that we always anticipate is the annual newspaper contest. Newspapers from all over the state submit their best work in different categories, and a panel of newspaper editors from another state judges them.
We’ve been blessed with a lot of success over the years in those contests.
That’s a good thing because one trait that Jamie and I share is that we are both extremely competitive. We even have a friendly sense of competition between us. I think it helps us stay motivated.
We’re hoping to return from this year’s convention pleased to see how our newspaper stacks up against others around Mississippi, but the truth is that those awards don’t really mean anything in comparison to how the people who actually read your newspaper every week judge it.
We are blessed with many loyal readers, and we appreciate every single one.
It’s a lot harder to make a living in the business than it was when I began over 15 years ago. Big corporations often don’t understand the value of supporting the communities they profit from. Small businesses are the backbone of any community, and the same thing has been true for this newspaper when it comes to who shows the most support.
It’s certainly tougher these days, but as long as we have loyal readers, I believe we’ll be just fine.
