Happy new year and may everything good come your way in 2022. It marks the beginning of the 114th year of publication for this newspaper. Last year at this time we entered 2021 with optimism knowing we had a vaccine that could control Covid and things would get back to normal....

Starting this year, gone will be the days when you show up to vote on Election Day only to be told that you are in the wrong location and you have to travel 10 miles down the road to the correct precinct in order to vote. Thanks in part to a change in state law, Whitley County...

(Editor’s Note: This column was written before Christmas.) What happens when 20+ year holiday traditions are skipped for one year? Do they get reinstituted the following year? Are they forgotten? My family has had a few holiday traditions over the years that are set in stone. For...

What do Christmas and natural disasters have in common besides the aftermath sometimes leaving your home in varying degrees of disarray? The answer is that both of them tend to bring out the best in people, and make us forget our differences for a little while. Let’s take the...

Joy to the World the Lord has come! It is a great song and it is a wonderful time of the year. If you have ever attended church you have heard many songs with the word Joy in them. The word Joy stands in our front yard this year as part of our Christmas decoration. I saw the sign...

Christmas is supposed to be filled with joy and the holiday spirit. But for the past two Christmas seasons we have had to deal with Covid-19, and now added to that this year the tornadoes in western Kentucky have put a damper on everything. I hope you don’t feel as down as I do....

Even by Whitley County standards, last week was a bit odd. Last Wednesday, the Whitley County School District terminated second year Whitley County High School Head Basketball Coach Mark White. (In case anyone is wondering, there is no relation, but I do think he has a co...

Thursday will mark four weeks since my wife of 17 years, Sharon Woods Manning, died suddenly. While Sharon had a large number of friends and associates from her 26 years working for the state, I always thought of my own network as fairly small. From the moment I put the word out...

Several years ago I stopped by my office on Main Street in Corbin around 7 p.m. and noticed a handful of people standing on the sidewalk. I asked them what was going on. To my surprise they said they were waiting on the Christmas Parade. We had not been notified at this newspaper...

When December rolls around, we all know that it “tis the season.” I am not talking about Christmas and the holidays although I will get to some of those festive topics before I conclude this column. For those of us with jobs at non-government businesses, November and December...

Now that we are in the month of December the enthusiasm for the Christmas season is alive here at the News Journal. Jennifer Perkins, one of our reporters, has gone to great lengths to provide the boys and girls in this area with a rather unique headquarters for Santa’s elf,...

To borrow a line from the old song, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” or at least it soon will be here in Whitley County. Following the pandemic filled 2020, which saw Williamsburg canceling its Christmas parade and Corbin holding a reverse parade where the floats...

There’s a good bet that when Kentuckians think of NASCAR, the first place that pops up is the Kentucky Speedway in Sparta or Owensboro, mainly because of the Waltriip brothers, Darrell and Michael. Lost to time is the role Prestonsburg, Kentucky has played in the sports history,...

Friday night brought a promising year in local high school football to a screeching halt as Corbin and Williamsburg both lost. From the time the season kicked off, Coach Tom Greer’s Redhounds appeared to be a team on a mission to make it to Lexington, despite Class 4A being...

When you have worked in journalism as long as I have, you get used to dealing with a lot of bad, terrible stuff. It makes you jaded, really jaded. You reach the point where it takes a lot to just floor you. Then you have one of those periods when you get news that shocks you not...

Former Mountain Lifeline Ambulance Service owner Larry Robbins recently passed away far too early at the age of 68. I hated hearing about his passing. I first met Larry around 1994. He was involved in emergency services, and was the fire chief at the now defunct Western Central...

To paraphrase a line from one of my favorite retired NFL coaches, how about them Redhounds! The Corbin Redhounds Eighth Grade Football Team won their second consecutive division two state championship during a game late Saturday afternoon against the Paducah Middle School. This...

Let’s talk garbage! The City of Corbin has been distributing new 95 gallon garbage carts to residents and businesses. This is a big job that will take a few weeks. Many of you have already received the carts and are wondering what to do with your old cans and asking questions...

When you are out in public, you get the feeling that the pandemic is about over. You see fewer masks and schools are starting to relax their mask regulations. I wish it was true, but unfortunately it is not over. Experts say that despite the decreases in cases, hospitalizations,...

While I was covering the Corbin Lady Redhounds’ state volleyball tournament game against Montgomery County, I noticed that there were fans and then there were spectators. Almost everyone in Gilliam Gymnasium that night was cheering for Corbin or Montgomery County, except for the...