News Journal readers wouldn’t have noticed, but I still want you to know

Thirty three years ago when I became publisher of the Whitley Republican the owner, Terry Forcht, supported the idea that we could start a Corbin edition of the newspaper called Corbin! This Week. It was the first of June, and our first time to publish the Whitley Republican on our new Mac Plus computers. I had convinced Terry this was the new way of publishing a newspaper. Corbin! This Week was planned for an introduction three months later.

Don Estep is Publisher of The News Journal.

It was a Tuesday night, about 4:30 a.m. when I walked to the front office of our building on south Second Street in Williamsburg and looked at the night sky and said to myself, “What have I done?” I had a wife and three daughters to support, and Terry had spent a large amount of money on the new equipment. That first night wasn’t going smoothly. We couldn’t even get the computers to print. We had new staff members, and we were not organized. I didn’t think it could get any worse.

A telephone call at that hour of the morning to the person who sold us the equipment solved the print problem. But still, I had an uneasyness and uncertainty similar to what we have now with the coronaviris shutdowns.

We went through rough times back then. There was a period of time when we would work all night on Tuesdays, and then at about 6 a.m. I would put the full sheet newspaper negatives in my car and head out to Harlan, Ky. to the printing plant. Like other employees, I had been up all night and then I had to make that long drive. I would get so tired that on the drive home I could barely hold my head up. That’s when I would pull to the side of the road for a brief nap.

As time went on everything started to improve. Back then we were allowed to employ telemarketers. At startup, in a two-week period, we signed up 1,600 new subscribers in the Corbin area. Our staff was growing with our bigger newspaper.

As we grew we had a staff that was too big for our office in Williamsburg, so we opened a Corbin office in half of the building we use now. The other half was rented, but soon the occupant left and we knocked a hole in the wall and doubled our space. We also built additional office space in the rear of the building, plus adding big layout tables (because of technology, layout tables are no longer used.) Also, the building was completely wired to connect every computer to our server in Corbin. There wouldn’t have been room to do that in the building in Williamsburg. We had space for nine offices, a lobby and a storage room in our Corbin location.

For 33 years the News Journal has been the only weekly newspaper in the state with offices in two towns. That would have continued, but the virus epidemic hit and we, like all other businesses affected, had a decision to make in order to cut overhead. We had to trim down to one office. Because of the size of our staff and the computer technology we had no other option than to unify our operation in Corbin. This is not as bad as it may sound, though, and you would not know the difference in our paper if I had not written about this.

It is not where you produce your news, but rather it is the kind of news coverage that you produce. The News Journal is committed to providing equal coverage of the news to Williamsburg and Corbin, all of Whitley County and news of interest to those living close in the areas of Knox and Laurel counties. As far as where you do your work, I have given our reporters the option of doing their work from home, or at the office.

Moving is not new to us in that we have had to print our newspaper in different locations for one reason or another. During my 33 years we have printed our newspaper in Harlan, Middlesboro, Winchester, Manchester, Cynthiana, Georgetown, Danville, Lexington and three printing plants in London. Now we are with the best of them all in J. Frank Publishing of London.

Not long ago, for a two-year period, I did my job here at the News Journal from 250 miles away in Henderson, Ky. We were living there assisting our daughter with her three children. I had a computer, a fax machine and a telephone. I could do the same work there as I did here.

So, you see that moving out of a building will not change this newspaper. It will still be considered a Williamsburg newspaper with equal coverage of the Corbin area, entered in the Williamsburg Post Office and having the Williamsburg dateline on the front page. We hardly do any walk-in business anyway, but those who do need to contact us can do so by telephone, by mail, via the Internet or at our Corbin office building on north Main Street. Once we get through this epidemic we will see what the future holds. Until then it is my hope that you will continue to support local businesses, and that includes us.

When we say, “We are all in this together,” let’s mean it. That doesn’t mean spending advertising dollars on the Internet that go to big corporations, on Lexington TV stations, or even in a Trader magazine mailer from Ohio. No, keep it local. The News Journal can deliver your message effectively, and we plan to be doing that for many years to come.

I have the rare distinction of publishing a successful weekly newspaper in the Corbin area that is a companion to the one in Williamsburg that offers more than twice the readership than our competitor. As the late Cecil Wilson, publisher of the Barbourville Advocate, said to me, “ Congratulations, you are the only weekly to ever succeed against a daily in Corbin, and there have been several who have tried.” That rare distinction is because I have always had an excellent staff, and we were supported by local businesses and our subscribers. Our subscribers have made us the number one weekly in paid subscriptions in the state, and we also have earned many awards for excellence from the Kentucky Press Association.

Recently Trent Knuckles decided to leave the publisher post to further his education after taking over for me in 2015. Now I am back at age 80, after previously publishing the News Journal for 28 years. Everything was looking great until the virus hit. But we will get through this thing. Until then I thank you for your support, and I appreciate your understanding. We sympathize with the many businesses that have shut down, and those who have had to cut back. We feel your hurt too!