Beginning in August 1987, this paper had two editions

As of August 12, 1987 our staff had two newspapers to publish – the Whitley Republican and Corbin! This Week.

Don Estep is publisher of the News Journal.

The same stories were in each edition, but to give identity to both we would make up the Whitley Republican with all Williamsburg related stories on the front page and the Whitley masthead also on the front.

After we shot negatives of that edition we would then take off Williamsbrug related stories on the front page and replace them with Corbin news of interest along with the Corbin masthead.

That was a lot of work just to satisfy the ego of both areas. After four and a half years of doing this I asked Terry Forcht if we could change the masthead and combine the two editions under the name the News Journal.

With his permission the two editions became the News Journal in August of 1992. This change saved us hours of time. We didn’t do away with the Whitley Republican and Corbin! This Week, we continue to this day to include them as part of our masthead.

That change gave us greater growth and identity. When dealing with advertising agencies we no longer had to explain that the other names were those of a newspaper, the News Journal said it all.

Following the success of this newspaper Terry Forcht purchased a copycat paper that had started in Somerset called Pulaski Week and we started a newspaper in London called Laurel News Journal.

I then had three newspapers to oversee. Printing all of them became a major headache. We took them from one printing plant to another and finally we thought we had one that could handle the job at Danville. But after several weeks there the press crew threatened to walk out if we didn’t leave because our job was too big.

They gave me one week to find another printer. I got the Lexington Herald Leader to print us. Later Terry came up with a solution to our printing problems. Next week I’ll write about it.