It’s not all complaints from people who don’t like the facts you print or that you print both sides of their controversy. There really are many feel-good times in the running a small-town newspaper.
For example, every day we get to see the good things that people are doing for our community — sometimes as individuals, but often together. There are well-over 100 not-for-profit groups on our Hill, including government agencies, religious institutions, service societies, charities, clubs and organizations dedicated to education, sports and the arts.
We can’t possibly cover all the good things these groups do, but we try our best to give notice of their meetings and activities in the Community Calendar. We depend on spokespersons from each group to keep us informed of these calendar matters.
It would be great if we could publicize all the special events of these worthy groups for free, but the economics of running a weekly newspaper do not allow that. However, space permitting, we do cover the most newsworthy group functions in feature stories, and we always have reduced advertising rates for non-profit organizations.
The backbones of these fine groups are generally volunteers who give generously of their time. Quite often we notice the same few dozen names appearing over and over again as volunteering their services to several good causes.
We encourage every Hill resident, particularly retirees, to take a look at their available time to see if they can squeeze in a few hours of community service to help support their favorite community organization. It’s all about people giving their time to these marvelous groups, which then give back to the people of our community. So climb aboard the community-service train, make some new friends, and get that good feeling yourself.