National Newspaper week is observed in the United States the first week of October. This year it is October 2 to 8. No there is no official holiday, but all Americans should be thankful for the newspapers serving their communities, especially the weekly community newspapers.

Today there are 5,147 weekly newspapers and 1,260 dailies (4 or more times a week), according to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in a June Associated Press story. 

There are an estimated 2 newspapers a week shutting their doors. “What’s really at stake in that is our own democracy, as well as our social and societal cohesion,” according to Penelope Muse Abernathy, visiting professor at Medill.

However, newspapers that work hard to continue to print relevant, community news with stories of their communities that can’t be found anywhere else still remain strong in serving their communities.

Newspapers have had to adjust to changing technology over the years. When I first started at a weekly newspaper in Denison, Iowa, newspapers were letterpress. I had to learn how to use a linotype, typewriter and a Ludlow to prepare stories for the press. Then an offset printing process was developed. Today offset is still the way to print the newspaper, but computers have changed the way newspaper stories are written and pages are designed. Then the internet changed how the pages of the newspaper are transmitted to the printing plant. 

Instead of taking the pasted-up pages to the printing plant and bringing the papers back to Kalona, we now just send the paginated pages over the internet to the printing plant in Davenport and the printed News is delivered to Kalona and the post offices Wednesday morning.

Like most daily and weekly newspapers, The News also has a webpage where you can also subscribe to the e-edition.

While the process for producing and printing The News has evolved over time, our goal of providing Kalona, Wellman, Riverside and Lone Tree a newspaper full of news important to our readers in those communities remains the same. We live here and care about our communities.

At a time when our nation seems divided along political lines, we opt to take a different path. We seek to add to the collective understanding of our communities through news reports that reflect what’s happening in our city governments, county governments,  schools, sports and other activities.   We believe this helps to build a common ground, not division.  We believe in reporting on the positives in our communities and not digging up dirt on our elected officials, as seems to be the goal of some national media.

We work hard to report factually while also providing a means to create conversations that lead to better solutions.

We want to thank our subscribers and advertisers, for you make it possible for us to publish a newspaper to serve our communities each week. Thank you for continuing to subscribe and advertise.

While many newspapers struggle with falling circulation, The News sees continued growth in our circulation numbers.  The staff of The News will continue to work hard to provide you a newspaper with stories and features on events and people as well as sports and school news.

But we need your help to continue to provide you with a good newspaper.  Before social media was created, people would report their engagements, wedding stories and photos, birth announcements and other social news.   The News still wants this type of news where it can be preserved for history.  When you post on social media it is gone in a flash.

You can help make this newspaper better and survive for years to come by also giving us tips on newsworthy stories and features.  Contact information for our staff appears at the bottom of A4 every week.

Thank you for your continued support as we celebrate National Newspaper week.