Simply put, the era of COVID-19 is not a good time to be in the newspaper industry. (Although for that matter, it also isn’t a good time to be in radio, the restaurant industry or pretty much any business or profession that isn’t selling Clorox or Lysol products…lol.) Numerous...

With the possible exception of those, who own stock in Clorox or Lysol, I think that we can all pretty much agree on one thing. COVID-19 stinks. First there were the business shutdowns, then the layoffs. Now we have the cancelation of events, such as NIBROC, Old Fashioned Trading...

A few weeks ago, I read a post that a friend of mine from college posted on his Facebook page about having “the talk” with his 10-year-old son. No, it wasn’t “that” talk…lol. This friend is black, and the talk he had with his son was what he should do if he encounters a police...

From graduations and church services to government meetings and eating out at restaurants, COVID-19 has certainly changed the way we do things, and next Tuesday’s primary election in Kentucky is no exception. Because of the coronavirus, the election is taking place in a quite a...

Wearing masks. It has become a hot button topic recently with several people proclaiming that they have a right not to wear a mask and that they simply aren’t going to do it. Here are the reasons why I try to wear a mask when I go out in public settings, particularly large or...

To our recent high school and college graduates, sorry your senior years got cut short, and some of you missed out on prom and a traditional graduation ceremony. It stinks. It really does. As you have probably already figured out though, life isn’t fair. Bad things happen outside...

My fellow Whitley County residents, I am quite proud of the way you have handled things so far during COVID-19 on so many levels. For starters, let’s talk about our local churches. I have to applaud our local churches and religious leaders. Even though early on most didn’t like...

What does it mean when a jail sentence is conditionally discharged or that somebody received a pretrial diversion? We occasionally get questions about what certain court terms in stories mean. I had a lady call me a few weeks ago asking about court terminology. She suggested that...

In the era of COVID-19, some of our government agencies are getting creative when it comes to members maintaining social distancing while still meeting. One of the more creative approaches I have seen was the Whitley County Water District earlier this month, when the three board...

In case the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t real enough for everyone, it really hit home for residents of Whitley and Knox counties Monday, as each county had its first confirmed case of COVID-19. Sadly, we all know that these probably won’t be the last cases of the coronavirus that we...

As you might have guessed, how to cover a worldwide pandemic is not a topic they cover in journalism school, although I suspect it might be added to the curriculum this fall…LOL. Truth be told, I don’t think this is a topic that gets covered by trainers for almost any profession...

With the outbreak of the coronavirus, let’s face it things have gotten to be just a little bit, well, nuts for lack of a better description. One person at the health department Friday compared a recent trip to Walmart to a scene from the television show, “The Walking Dead” where...

Imagine for a moment that you have an ethically-challenged local judge-executive, who is stealing money from their office, not that this kind of thing would ever happen in real life in the Commonwealth of Kentucky…LOL. Now imagine that the Kentucky Auditor of Public Accounts –...

Best wishes to my pal, Trent Knuckles, on his future endeavors now that he has left the News Journal. As many of you know, Friday was Trent’s last day as publisher. He is leaving after 24 years to pursue other interests. A part of me will miss him, while another part of me is...

So what would downtown Williamsburg have looked like in recent days if the floodwall hadn’t been in place? “I think we would have been riding a boat down Third Street taking pictures,” said Whitley County Emergency Management Director Danny Moses to this reporter’s question early...

It’s important not only to avoid impropriety, but also to avoid the appearance of it. These were the words that a couple of wise-old judges, the late Jerry Winchester and the late Paul Braden, used to tell me when they were asked to recuse themselves as the judge in a case. Read...

Over the last 12 years that Kay Schwartz has served as Whitley County Clerk, if you went into her office to pay your car taxes or any number of other things, you were just as likely to get waited on by Kay as you were one of her deputy clerks most days. I know. I speak from...

Some people have criticized Gov. Matt Bevin for asking for a recanvass following his nearly 5,200-vote loss to Andy Beshear in last week’s election, but I think this is entirely appropriate given that the race was decided by less than 1 percent of the vote. Had Beshear lost by...

Something about former Commonwealth’s Attorney Allen Trimble, who died Saturday, that many people probably do not realize is that he used to be a journalist. When he was a student working on his undergraduate degree, Allen was the News Editor of the Eastern Progress, which is the...

Recently, I got up at 5 a.m. on a Wednesday so I could catch a flight to Salt Lake City, Utah. I got there about 7 p.m. our time the next day. Mark White is Editor of The News Journal. When it comes to air travel, it seems like nothing is ever easy, and this was one of “those”...