A reminder Daylight Savings Time ends Sunday morning — finally. DST was extended by several weeks this year, beginning in the spring a couple of weeks earlier and ending one week later this year by order of Congress.
Be sure to set your clocks back one hour Saturday evening before going to bed. Daily carriers for Sunday editions will have one extra hour to sleep or get those papers in the tubes and driveways this weekend.
Members not yet registered to attend the annual ArkLaMiss Circulation Conference in Vicksburg Nov. 8-9 still have a couple of days to sign up for the program.
Registrations will continue through the week. Materials, including a registration form and agenda, may be accessed here.
Sessions will include Postal Regulations, Circulation Ideas for Small Dailies & Weeklies, Customer Service, Home Delivery Start Diversification, Roundtable Discussion Panels, a Hot Ideas session and more.
Conference registration is $89.00 per person. Lodging is no longer available at the Ameristar hotel, but an alternative list of lodging options is available by calling MPA at 601-981-3060 or by visiting the MPA ArkLaMiss website at www.mspress.org/arklamiss.
Pictured: McKinney Award winner Patsy Speights (center) with J.J. Carney of the Lawrence County Press (left) and Amy Jacobs.
The following are comments offered by Prentiss Headlight editor Patsy Speights who was presented the McKinney Award at the annual National Newspaper Association Convention in Norfolk, Va.:
“Thank you for honoring The Prentiss Headlight.
“People like Emma McKinney knew the joys, trials, tribulations and struggles of small papers and serves as an encourager to those of us who stare at a blank computer screen each Thursday knowing what must happen before the press runs.
“Here’s a short list of things you may be able to relate to:
“Be encouraged when you lose about twenty pounds, involuntarily, after an unhappy reader has felt it necessary to chew on you because of something you wrote or did not write.
“Be encouraged when you are standing all alone explaining the open meetings/public access laws to elected officials and their counsel.
“Be encouraged when you’re standing on the side of the highway and see friends or maybe family being rescued by volunteer firemen from tangled cars.
“Be encouraged when you are accused of wrecking a family, getting someone fired or thrown out of the church when you print their name in the arrest docket.
“Be encouraged when your day is filled with messages from your computer telling you error (-39) but will not tell you what is a -39.
“Be encouraged because you are the historian of your community.
“Be encouraged as you publish a newspaper that truly cares about your community because you live, work and play with your readers.
“Be encouraged because you know years down the road, someone will walk in the door, long after you’re gone, with a clipping published under your watch.
“Be encouraged and know you are not alone.
“There are hundreds of us doing the same job.
“Thank you Bill and Amy for having faith in me and for giving me this wonderful job. Thank you NNA for recognizing me today.”
From MediaLife Magazine: Traveling about America, picking up the local papers, one might not notice it at first. In some ways, newspapers seem fatter, with more sections that seem to fall out as you open them, entertainment and shopping guides in particular. But look a little closer and you do see it. Business sections, long a staple of even the smallest dailies, are disappearing. The Winston-Salem Journal cut its business section back in August. The Akron Beacon Journal dropped its section back in March.
From USA Today: Billionaire investor Sam Zell told a group of newspaper executives that the industry’s woes result partly from complacency, responding too slowly to rapid change.
From the AP via E&P: The board of The Associated Press on Thursday approved a major overhaul of the way the AP prices and packages news for its member U.S. newspapers.
