BY
THE WAY
Jeffrey Hunter, of Lockney, has been helping us redesign
our website page. (I don't know why I say "helping us". We
haven't done a lick of the work. He has done it all).
I am very happy with the new look and with Jeffrey's calm
and professional attitude at teaching this dummy.
For the year 2002, Jeffrey is trying to lead me into a
new dimension--one where I might actually make some money
off of our web page instead of just giving our work away for
free.
We have had almost 27,700 hits on our web page since it
went on line. It is a great place to put an ad if you have
an online address.
Jeffrey is also a great person to help you get online
with a beautiful web page. He is advertising in our
classified section (because our classifieds work) if you
want to give him a call.
*********
If you've read the Lamplighter column you may have
noticed he was talking as if we might be going up in our
subscription rates again.
He wrote that column when we were trying to decide "when
to go up" and "how much to go up".
Now I have to be the bearer of bad news. We are going up
and we are going up in January. The notices that go out in
January will have the new prices, so you still have a couple
of weeks to get your subscription renewed at the old
price.
In county subscriptions will be going up to $23.00 and
out-of-county subscriptions will be $25.00.
I know that is a big jump--but we should have gone up
more (if that makes you feel any better).
There have been 3 postal rate increases in 18 months and
one newspaper rate increase.
We can't continue to "eat" the cost, and we don't want to
go the way of other small town newspapers that have had to
simply close their doors and walk away.
The subscription rate is still lower than paying for the
newspaper at the newsstand. I know that unless you have ever
worked at a newspaper it is hard to imagine the work that
goes into putting it out every week. But even if you can't
imagine what the work is like, you have to appreciate the
fact that we are charging you less than 50¢ a week for
the work.
If postal rates continue to go up--so will our rates.
It's that simple.
We hope we can always be there for this community. We
exist to serve this county and it's citizens. We want to
record history and we want to be part of the glue that keeps
everyone tied together.
I know we fall short in some areas-perhaps in many areas.
We don't have the benefit of a large staff and budget.
It is for this reason that I am so very grateful to those
in the community that help me with getting out the news and
"keeping track" of what is going on.
Thank-you for gentle reminders. Thank-you for story
suggestions. Thank-you for taking the time to write sports
stories, school stories, club stories, etc. Thank-you for
your eyes and ears--AND CAMERAS!
This newspaper is not only part of my life--it is part of
yours. I'm grateful for your support.
Happy New Year!
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