This past week I’ve been preparing to go on vacation, my first in 5 years. Well, that’s not exactly true. I took a “vacation” last year, but due to staffing issues at the office, it was more of me working from home for a few days. This, I hope, will be an actual vacation, unplugging for a bit and letting the world pass me by.
Vacations have never really been my thing. I have friends and relatives that plan an annual trip to the beach, the lake, what have you, and spend a week or two apparently having a great time. I, on the other hand, develop a bad case of cabin fever by noon on Saturday. I need the routine of work, as unstructured as it is in journalism, to keep my head straight.
By the time you read this, I will be somewhere between Carthage and northern Iowa, probably somewhere in Missouri, since I have to drive through the whole state, with two 70-pound dogs, in my tiny Kia Rio. And, I’m supposed to enjoy this? Pray for me.
My pending mental breakdown on I-80 isn’t, however, what I wanted to discuss with this column. Instead, I would like to ask you, the readers, to consider what purpose The Newton County Appeal serves in your lives.
My formal education is in community journalism, and I emphasize the community aspect of that. I recently came across a column from a Minnesota paper in which the publisher described his staff as facilitators of the weekly publication. The creators, he said, were the readers. I could not agree more.
The Newton County Appeal is a community paper. It exists to inform the residents of Newton County. I think we do a pretty good job of that, but we can always get better. Yet, to accomplish that, we need residents to share their input.
While I’m out this week, I ask each of you to think about what you like about the paper, what you don’t like, what we could do better. Are we covering what we need to cover? Are we missing something? Is the paper too cluttered, too loose? Is the font to small, the crossword to hard?
Send me your questions, thoughts, concerns, complaints and please, send ideas for stories!
Thomas is the managing editor of the Newton County Appeal. He can be reached at thoward@newtoncountyappeal.com
