McNiven Meanderings – Best Breaking News Story Award goes to our staff

Well Folks, last week was the Montana Newspaper Association’s annual convention (In Billings this year).  This was the first time I’ve attended the annual convention since purchasing the Yellowstone County News, your hyper-local, weekly newspaper in the Yellowstone County area.

I learned so much in mingling with other newspaper owners, publishers and editors throughout the state that I have caught the YCN fever in taking YCN to the next level.  If you don’t believe me, wait until you see what we have in store for you, the reader, taxpayer and resident of Yellowstone County.

But before I do, I want to focus on a couple of things.

First, I’ve instructed my staff and reporters that we, as a newspaper team, need to make sure that we are informing all our readers why each story is important to you and why you, the reader should care. In fact, I’ve given the charge to make sure each story explains why the reader should care about the Yellowstone County News and make sure we are relevant to you the reader, so starting this week, I hope you see us honing in on that focus.  I think we already do this but we need to do it even better because I know we can.

Second, the Yellowstone County News won two awards last weekend at the MNA (Montana Newspaper Association) convention.  We won first place for Best Breaking News Story and 3^rdplace for Best Sponsor Page.  The newsworthy part is that we’ve never won any award of this sort since Tana and I purchased the Yellowstone County News 3 ½ years ago.  However, it’s not just one person that deserves all the credit in this award but our whole YCN team that should feel like they won it, hence I got a picture of all of us as possible to put in the paper.

As you know, it’s not easy to get a newspaper out each week.  It takes staff and lots of staff to get a good product out to the masses. In fact, I wanted to feature our staff this week along with our 1^stplace and 3^rdplace awards as it’s this whole group that deserves all the credit in winning these awards and achievements.

We had our staff at the MNA convention banquet and this was the first time we took a group picture as the majority of our staff was in the same place coincidently, so I’ll give a shout out to my staff and all that they do to help make this newspaper a success. From our reporters, proofers, bookkeepers, editors, sales reps, delivery person, correspondents, production specialist, to all those who provide outside services, please know that I am grateful to each person and what they do individually that helps contribute to the whole success of Yellowstone County News.  I hope to be able to win even more awards in the future.

My analogy is that our train is on the right track, it’s now picking up momentum and it won’t be long before we are full throttle in making even more good and great contributions to the area while keeping our readers, advertisers and residents of Yellowstone County proud of their local weekly newspaper.

One last thing I will comment on from the convention, my wife Tana and I got the opportunity to visit the Yellowstone Art Museum.  There is a video in there that is worth just the money you pay to get into the museum. I’ll write about that in my next meanderings because It involves local residents, good habits, good principles and portrays the cowboy way of life and what it means to raising progeny.  Being a country boy myself I agreed with the message; I also found it very professional in the way that it was done. But I’ll opine in my next meanderings.

In the meantime, I’d like to focus my gratitude and excitement for our staff here at Yellowstone County News and know that our 1^staward is now out of the way preparing the way for our 20^thaward in the future.

Until then, See you in the paper!

JDM