It is National Newspaper Week.
Naturally, the way we have chosen to celebrate at RANGE Media Company is by adding another newspaper.
This week marks our first week producing the Eureka County Star, the baby of our dear friend Trina, who started her newspaper in Eureka about the same time we started ours in Fallon.
And now she is tired and wants to retire. I cannot even imagine why.
When Trina asked if we would consider taking over the Star, though, it really was an honor. She has spent years building something important for her community, and she wanted to know it would continue. We don’t take that lightly.
So, here we are. Welcome to the family, Eureka County Star.
Which brings me to one of those sayings I absolutely hate because it is trite and annoying and, unfortunately, true: I wish there were more hours in the day.
I really do. It’s not just a saying. There is just so much fun stuff to do.
There are stories I want to chase. People I want to interview. Columns I want to write. Newspapers I want to build. Pages I want to fuss over. Ideas I want to try. There are books and magazines and videos and newsletters and a bookstore and about 147 other things running around in my head at any given moment.
And now there is Eureka.
The problem is, there remain only 24 hours in a day, no matter how strongly I object.
We are finally getting more help around here, which we desperately need. Really desperately. I’ve absolutely run everyone around me into the ground.
But a funny thing happens when you finally get the help you have been begging for—people start taking things away from you.
This is, of course, the entire point.
You hire good people so they can take responsibility for things. You build systems. You divide the work. You let people become really good at their piece of it. And theoretically, the person who has been running around like her hair is on fire gets to stop doing everything herself.
Except nobody tells you that some of the things they take away are the fun things.
I don’t want to give up the fun things. I like making newspapers.
I like taking a pile of stories and pictures and advertisements and figuring out how they all fit together. I like finding a story nobody else noticed. I like calling somebody and hearing them say, “You know, nobody has ever asked me that before.”
I like watching a newspaper come together on Tuesday when, at 10 in the morning, it appears absolutely impossible that it will be on its way to the printer by 2.
And then somehow it is.
Mostly.
There is something wonderfully satisfying about making a newspaper. At the beginning of the week, there is nothing. Then people go to meetings and ball games and schools and ranches and courthouses. They ask questions. They take pictures. They listen. They write things down.
And by Tuesday afternoon, there it all is, a record of a community’s week.
So I’m learning that growing this company is going to require me to give some of that work away. If we’re going to keep building strong local newspapers across Nevada, I can’t personally do every part of every one of them.
I know this.
I don’t necessarily have to like it.
But there is something even better than getting to make all those newspapers myself: getting to watch really good people make them.
And getting to see communities support them, the part for which I am most grateful.
Every subscription, every advertisement, every public notice, every photograph somebody sends us, every phone call with a story tip, every person who walks into the office because they think we ought to know something — all of it makes this possible.
You allow us to keep doing this, and because you do, we’re able to show up in another community this week.
So, during National Newspaper Week, while everybody else is celebrating newspapers, we’re going to do what we apparently do best.
Make another one. And while we scramble through one more Tuesday trying to get a growing pile of Nevada newspapers headed to Vegas by 2 p.m., we’ll always be right here…
…Keeping you Posted.
Rach
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