STOP!

Unless you want to read an utterly self-obsessed, sickeningly self-congratulatory and nakedly narcissistic article about this newspaper and some of its workers ...

STOP NOW! DON’T GO ANY FURTHER!

There, now that I’ve stolen a few lines from Grover and the authors of the kid’s books There’s a Monster at the End of This Book, those of you who are still with me can read on ...

BUT DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU!

Somewhere on or about the first week of June, The Smoky Mountain News marked its second anniversary. Small stuff, really, especially when you begin to look at the newspapers all around us in Western North Carolina. Many of them are, oh, about 100 years our senior. Most readers could care less about these milestones, and I don’t blame you (in case you do want to know the age of the papers you are reading, the volume number on the front page tells you the age in years by subtracting one. We put volume 1 there until we had been publishing for a year, then changed to volume 2).

Of all the milestones we’ve marked as a young business, one that has perhaps made me most aware of exactly what it is we are doing occurred Friday night during a conference at The Sheraton Imperial Conference Center in the Research Triangle Park. Our advertising and graphic design staff walked off with 11 awards during the North Carolina Press Association Advertising Conference. Greg Boothroyd, Sandra Lyon, Micah McClure and Travis Bumgardner worked to create a group of ads for our customers that placed them among the most elite sales and design staffs in this state. Only three newspapers among the approximately 60 non-dailies in the state won more awards.

Even most of those newspapers that have been around for a century can count on just one hand the years they’ve been able to take home an award total like that. I’ve worked at seven different newspapers in this state, and it’s always interesting to see how the staff reacts to good and bad years when it comes to press association awards. For many in this business, it is the only annual recognition for what they do each day, something beyond what customers or readers might say when they bump into them on the street.

As a publisher, I’d like to think the awards speak volumes about how we are serving our advertisers. Our sales team and our designers know we expect them to put their most creative energies into the ads. If our newspaper is to succeed, good design, quality concepts and effective advertising campaigns are a necessity. We will never succumb to a mentality of just cranking out ads without thinking about each one. I think the number of awards we won proves that.

It was merely coincidence that this advertising conference came at the time we were quietly marking our second anniversary. It was also a coincidence that the day before we left for the Research Triangle Park, one of our contributors dropped by the office. We had never met but had corresponded by email for several months. She is a teacher and a writer who also happens to be a wife and mom.

In the course of our short conversation, she said something that I've been fortunate enough to hear from a couple of others over the last two years: our newspaper, she said, has some high-quality writers.
Call me smug, but I concur — and I feel fortunate. Except for Don Hendershot and me, everyone of the people who appears in our pages is a free-lance writer. This region that we cover has a large pool of talented and thoughtful writers, and many of them have become regular contributors to our newspaper.
Believe me when I say we consider ourselves fortunate to have them. They may fly off tomorrow, as creative people are prone to do, but right now we have them. And they are good.

On my part, it doesn’t take any great editing to make stories and essays by people like Michael Beadle, Gary Carden, Jeff Minick, Hunter Pope, Lew Garnett, Karl Rohr, Marshall Frank, George Ellison or Esther Godfrey sound good week after week. In addition to these writers, many occasional columnists and news free-lancers send stuff to us, people whose opinions and stories broaden our appeal.

We started this newspaper with the editorial philosophy of providing regional coverage and thought-provoking stories. When we accomplish that, it is often a result of the writers who contribute each week. They are a part of our foundation.

But The Smoky Mountain News has changed me, and now I know that another part of the newspaper is perhaps an even more important part of our foundation. A few years ago, as a reporter and editor at other newspapers, I could have cared less about the advertising staff. They were the money-changers, the people who each day sullied themselves by worrying constantly about revenue, sales, special promotions, etc., etc. I counted myself as somehow better than them. For most writers and editors at most newspapers, loathing the advertising department is a normal part of the job.

But I see it for what it is now. Our sales staff works with businesses to help them get what they want. The truth is you aren’t going to sell advertising to people who don’t want to buy. Those who want to buy are trying to make their business succeed, and helping that happen can be satisfying. The small-business owners in WNC are a lot like us, entrepreneurs trying to succeed and do right by their customers and employees.

Our job is to succeed at two missions - providing outstanding service to our advertisers and providing thoughtful writing about this part of the country. If we do both well, we will remain around long enough to celebrate a few more birthdays.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)

 

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