By Gaylen Duskey
It is time to put Calhoun back in the Chronicle and put the Chronicle back in Calhoun.
That’s why I am getting together a group of people together – and you are invited to join us – to buy the Calhoun Chronicle and bring ownership back where it belongs, to Calhoun County.
In the next few days we plan to get a website set up with details about what we want to do and how you can help with the purchase and operation of the newspaper.
We will announce the website’s address as soon as we get it built.
For now this is what we need and what we plan to do.
First we will have to make an offer acceptable to Mountain Media LLC.
Then we will have to raise the money to pay for the newspaper.
Finally we will have to select and editor and publisher and establish a board of directors.
It basically will be standard business practices.
Right now what you are buying when you buy The Calhoun Chronicle is the name and the circulation list. The newspaper has no other assets. No employees. No office. No equipment. No anything.
Other than the purchase price of the newspaper the biggest cost will be printing. The paper is currently printed in Salem, Va., and trucked into Calhoun County. There are several commercial printers in the area, and we would have to negotiate the best deal for printing.
Following that we would need to make several changes in the newspaper.
I would suggest:
1. Returning free standard obituaries to the newspaper.
2. Bringing back the highly popular Creston News.
3. Cutting the single issue price from $1.50 to $.50.
4. Opening a Grantsville office and staffing it with people to serve the public while also going out to businesses to solicit advertising. We want every business in the county advertising in the newspaper.
5. Bringing back the policy of having 100 percent Calhoun news.
6. Going back to publishing analysis of proposed rate increases and the like and explaining how to respond to them.
7. Publishing lots and lots of pictures of area events, especially youth activities.
8. Publishing all the news, even the bad news, and publishing it where it belongs even on the front page. We are going to have a lot of hard-hitting news events in the future, and we need to be ready to cover it and publish it and put it wherever it belongs.
9. Covering the meetings of the county, town, county schools and the water districts OAM if it ever gets back together, which it should.
10.Returning Our History to the paper.
11.Giving updates to all the construction projects going on in the county be it in Grantsville, Brooksville Arnoldsburg or Minnora.
12.Listing all the school news especially the honor rolls.
13.Covering all our wonderful sporting events from our high school and middle school sports to events such as the Appalachian Classic to our horse shows.
14.And finally comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. In other words be ready to step in and do what we can to help those needing help even if it means taking on the establishment.
There are going to be other things we will need to do, and we will get to them as we learn what they may be because we don’t have all the answers and are willing to admit that. I’m not even sure we have all the questions either.
One thing I am sure about is the return of free obituaries.
Why?
Because for a lot of people the only time they may get their name in the newspaper is when they die. That should be guaranteed and it should not have to be paid for.
I am talking about a basic obituary and would be open to paying something like $10 for a picture to go with it. Not sure on that yet but willing to consider it. The longer and flowery obituaries would still be paid obituaries.
There is much to be done and my friend and fellow journalist Bob Weaver of the Hur Herald, while being extremely complimentary toward me personally and saying it would be a good thing to keep The Calhoun Chronicle going opined that it probably could not be accomplished.
He may be right, but I plan to do everything in my power to prove him wrong.
We can do this. Let’s put Calhoun back in the Chronicle and lets put the Chronicle back in Calhoun.
