Laying out the PCN is a weekly game of Tetris

Aloha and long time, no see. The past several weeks here at the Phillips County News have been a little hectic and I am sorry to all the fans of this column (both of you...hello again, Mother) for my lack of ink lately.

Each week when we design the Phillips County News we are met with the challenge of getting all the advertisements, submitted stories and photos and then the copy we come up with into weekly pages and as of late, it is has been wild.

It all started with the Black Friday insert a few weeks ago. Since that time, the regular design of the paper has been a little helter skelter. One week there is no Grapevine or Senior Spotlight. The next week no PC Sheriff's Report of Tractor Column. I am quickly finding out that November through December is a busy time for this newspaper and making everything fit on a given week in that time frame is like playing a game of Tetris. This rectangle here, this square there and at some point you just have to throw your hands up say "it is what it is."

This week's monumental task was figuring out how to fit all the news, features, ads and photos into the main section of the paper while Pierre did battle with the Winter Sports Preview (and I think he did a very good job, I think you will too.) At some point, the pages of the PCN will revert to a more cohesive pattern and look similar to what you have become accustomed to over the past 10 months...but maybe not for a couple more weeks.

Also, I have recently heard some grumblings about certain stories in the PCN not being newsworthy or that a certain story shouldn't have run on the front page or at all. To those critics – who never vocalize these thoughts to me personally – I say, "balderdash."

If someone calls me with a story idea, 99.5 times out of 100, if someone wants their story told, it immediately becomes "newsworthy." If you were the editor of this newspaper, maybe you would indeed have the stomach to tell someone that what they want to talk about isn't worth reporting.

Not me. Almost never. This is a community newspaper and no one member of this community is more important than the next. If you see a story you find to be un-newsworthy, feel free not to read it. Pretty simple, really. One person's non-print worthy story could be another person's shining moment.

Thanks for reading and Mahalo.