To say the photo used for my column in the Saratoga Sun is outdated would be a bit of an understatement. In October 2021, I made the decision to finally commit to my balding and began shaving my head.
Now I’m beginning to think it was some serious forethought on my part, presumably to prevent me from pulling out what was left of it. The past few months at the Sun office have been a little strained, to say the least. Change, they say, is the only constant in life.
For those who pay attention to the list of employees on the side of page 4, they may have noticed an empty space under “graphic designer” which was filled just last week. As most people in the Valley may know by now, Dana Davis joined the Saratoga Museum as their executive director. As far as I can tell, she’s doing a wonderful job as she puts her creative vision to a new task.
Since the first of the year, then, I have searched for a graphic designer to bring their own creative vision to the Saratoga Sun. As most any other business can tell you, now is a difficult time to be hiring and the search dragged on for quite a bit longer than I had originally expected.
The silver lining to all of that, however, was I was able to take the little bits of information I learned from Keith McLendon and Dana and expand on them as I wore yet another hat. Along with reporter, editor/publisher and ad sales, I also took on layout and graphic design. All things considered, things seemed to be going fairly well.
Then, at the end of January, I was informed by one of my reporters, Micky Jones, she would be out for an extended period of time. Well, one of the things they don’t always tell you about being “The Boss” is the asterisk next to the title which reads “other duties as assigned”. So, while Micky has been focused on healing up, I’ve taken on her sports beats.
Fortunately, I still had Mike Armstrong who was more than willing to cover beats such as Encampment and Riverside town councils and work on picking up stories in the Valley. For the both of us, the month of February was filled with a lot of late nights and early mornings as we wrote our articles, I placed them and we read before our Tuesday morning print deadline.
I’m also fortunate in that the Sun has people who are willing to lend a hand when needed. Mary Martin was gracious enough to take photos of basketball games—including the 1A West Regionals—for the newspaper. Jaden Campbell was able to attend a special meeting of the Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2) Board of Trustees for one of their superintendent interviews and put together an article. I was also fortunate enough to get the help of Mary Angell of Cheyenne. Mary and her husband, Jim, are very busy people and so to be able to get her aid during this time was greatly appreciated.
With so much on my plate over the past several weeks, the unfortunate result has been there have been things which have slipped through my fingers. To add insult to injury, it’s typically been after we’ve gone to press or even after we got our newspapers back. Despite the constant reminders from my family that it wouldn’t do any good to dwell on those mistakes or to beat myself up over them, I did so quite often.
It is a fault of my character that I tell everyone else around me to give themselves some grace while giving none to myself.
It seems fitting that changes are coming to the newspaper as spring is just around the corner. Valerie Martin, who recently moved to Saratoga, has joined the staff and will be taking on both the graphic design/layout role and the advertising role. She comes on at just the right time as the Sun is, once again, switching printers.
After a year through Riverton, the Saratoga Sun will be printing through a different organization beginning next week.
This brings with it a number of changes, as well. The most important of which is that the Sun will now publish on Thursday instead of Wednesday. While the Sun has been published on Wednesday for nearly a century, it used to be published on Thursday.
This, of course, means that all the advertising and submission deadlines we’ve been getting people used to over the past year will change. Our Thursday at 5 p.m. deadline will return to Monday at noon.
We will also be returning to a broadhseet size newspaper. Don’t worry, it won’t be nearly as big as it was when we first made the switch to Riverton. This one you still should be able to read in the comfort of your chair rather than spreading it out over the dinner table.
While I understand this will take some time for both our readers and advertisers to get used to, my hope is it will be beneficial in the long run.
Finally, I want to thank everyone in the communities we cover for their patience and understanding over these past few months. It is greatly appreciated.
And, as always, thank you for reading the Saratoga Sun.
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