A New Chapter

Welcome to the new, improved Times!

Since the handover of the newspaper in late 2009, your favor- ite local publication has made a lot of changes. As readers recall, the Times went from an 8-page paper with occasional color to a 12-page weekly with permanent color on four pages.

This helped us print much more lively community and sports photographs right off the bat. And, we were able to accom- modate more advertisers who wanted their display messages in color, particularly after we lowered our color charges.

But because of our expanded coverage throughout the Touchet Valley and the addition of Managing Editor Jillian Beaudry and Dayton Reporter Morgan Smith this past year, we quickly found that even 12 pages wasn't really enough space to do our community news justice.

We also learned from readers that even though they regard us as the most comprehensive local news source in the valley, they still want more information about government meetings, club activities, sports and so on.

We at the Times want to reflect the deep sense of local pride in the separate identity and history of each city along with the growing sense of community and connection between them.

As a result of much community feedback and planning, we're proud to introduce you to our revised and expanded community- oriented news layout.

We are now committed to bringing you 16 pages of news, sports and community information every week. Your news "interface" starts with the "rail" on the cover's left-hand side, which highlights the top news items not included elsewhere on the front page.

The at-a-glance news "rail" reflects the weekly updates spe- cific to each town, which we have now organized on our "city" pages for Waitsburg and Dayton. When there's enough news from the other cities, Prescott and Starbuck, they too will get a dedicated page or pages. Otherwise, news stories and photos from these cities will run under Touchet Valley News.

It's worth pointing out that some readers of our newspaper misunderstand our name or mission. We're still referred to by many as the "Waitsburg Times" even though the name of the newspaper was legally changed to "The Times" in the 1950s and has always been broad in its coverage of our valley. This expand- ed coverage is now an even more important part of our mission.

At the same time, we want to continue to celebrate and cover what makes each of our towns unique, hence the new layout specific to news from each community.

These "city" pages will include agendas for upcoming city council, county commissioners, school district, port authority, hospital district and other public meetings. We'll cover those meetings by publishing the summarized minutes with our elected officials' action items.

Because summer isn't a busy time for government decisions, particularly in an election year, you'll find that our detailed coverage of these entities will grow over the coming months as school and government business pick up again.

After harvest and summer are over, we also hope to include such details about club and other community organizations' ac- tivities, but we'll need our readers' help for that.

Please send us your agendas, action items and competition results to community@waitsburgtimes.com so we can include them on our community pages.

As for the rest of the newspaper, we have added more pages for sports and have the good fortune of welcoming former Walla Walla-Union Bulletin sports contributor Dan Groom as our new freelance sports writer focused on the Waitsburg-Prescott Car- dinals and Tigers. Smith will cover the Dayton Bulldogs, while Beaudry and Publisher Imbert Matthee will supplement their sports coverage. We're also grateful to WP head football and track coach Jeff Bartlow for his contributions to the "Coach's Corner."

Starting this month, we're offering more news and columns for a regular monthly business, food/entertainment and calendar page.

We hope you enjoy the new format and welcome your thoughts or letters on additional improvements.