It's contest time for the newspapers in West Virginia. Each spring, the West Virginia Press Association organizes its Better Newspaper Contest, calling on our print organizations to gather what we feel are our best articles, photos, columns and more, and square off against each other. These entries are judged by others in the industry (this year, I believe it is journalists in Nebraska), and winners are announced in August during a convention where many of us gather to participate in workshops, have a few meals and network.
The tough part of this is having to go back and find those potentially winning pieces. As one can imagine, reviewing a full year's worth of newspapers, even with today's technology, is time consuming. The process also happens at a time where we're going through a couple of our bigger projects of the year.
It's crunch time, with our deadline for entries coming up this Monday, and, to be honest, as I'm writing this, I still have five months to go through. I imagine I'm going to be spending much of this weekend finishing things up.
It's always interesting looking through all of those back issues.
To be honest, when you have a constantly moving, always changing type of a work schedule, things often tend to blur together. This is the type of business where no two days are alike. It isn't a "normal" nine to five office job. You're always on alert, because you never know when news might break and you be called on to rush out and cover it.
So, while it is additional work, it's also nice to be able to do a little bit of a year-in-review, so to speak.
We have a small, but hard-working news and sports staff here, with each member going out just about every day into our communities to provide coverage of our local events. Can we get to everything? No, but no one ever can. We do our best, though, because we understand the importance of informing our readership of the goings-on in our area.
We are at the meetings of our local city and town councils and county commissions to show how they act on your behalf. We're also at Easter egg hunts, 5k races, community concerts, high school athletic events, and much more.
Last year, we covered the progress of the construction of the new Ohio River bridge, promoted and attended events organized by our local chambers of commerce, informed you of numerous new businesses opening their doors, showcased holiday festivities as well as the 75th anniversary celebration of the City of Weirton, and the return of more than one long-missing military veteran who called the Ohio Valley home.
Our company's reporter in Charleston provided in-depth coverage of the Legislature and other political comings and goings, and we kept you informed of the various candidates seeking office from the state and national levels to our county commissions and boards of education.
We were there when a memorial plaque was dedicated to those killed in the Brown's Island explosion 50 years ago, and brought you stories from some of those who lost loved ones on that fateful day. We brought you stories of efforts to preserve our local history at our museums. We were there when the Northern Panhandle's first medical marijuana business came to Weirton. Good and bad news, and everything in between.
There's a lot of news that takes place in a year. It's nice to be able to go back and get a reminder of some of the things we've seen and done in this constantly moving world of news.
(Howell, a resident of Colliers, is managing editor of The Weirton Daily Times, and can be contacted at chowell@weirtondailytimes.com or followed on Twitter @CHowellWDT)