Commercial Dispatch managing editor and MPA Emmerich Award winner Rachel Eide tells readers goodbye in her final column: “It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly six years since I came home to Columbus and plunged back into my journalism roots at The Commercial Dispatch. It was a full-circle kind of thing, since it was here I’d gotten my start in the newspaper business. With a still-fresh bachelor’s degree from Mississippi State College for Women (it became MUW right after I got my diploma), I was hired on at The Dispatch in 1974.”
New Neshoba Democrat associate publisher Carver Rayburn opines on joining the staff of the Philly weekly: “One thing I learned along the way to the Neshoba Democrat is that the local weekly newspaper may never die. In other counties, much like Neshoba, the weekly paper is treated like gold for readers. If it’s not at the store at 6 a.m., the phone calls start coming.”
Editor and blogger Patton Hughes makes his case for local ownership of newspapers and reminisces about former Oxford publisher Moon Mullins in the process: “I suggest the ‘new’ business model we should be actively encouraging is actually a rather old one. That model is that of the locally owned and operated newspaper.”
Calhoun County Journal editor Joel McNeece’s column is now online. And this one is a good’un.
