Jonathan McNiven-Editor/Publisher
Wow, another year has come and gone! Where does all the time go? As we go into this New Year, it’s time to make (and break) New Year’s resolutions and mine, of course, is set to be completed… well, I hope.
We will be rolling out our new YCN logo (as you see on this week’s front page). It’s taken us some time to figure out what our logo is going to be. We wanted our new logo to be something that reflects who we are, our location we serve along with our coverage area.
There are three elements of our new logo: The sun, the rolling hills, and the meandering Yellowstone River, all entangled in the words, “Yellowstone County News.” You will be seeing our logo on our new newspaper dispensers, in the paper, online, in stores, on our delivery vehicle and on all things that are associated with the paper.
We like the image of the rising sun, as it shows a new day is coming as you read the paper, hence the rising sun. Secondly, we live in the Yellowstone Valley area with rolling hills on either side of us. The rolling hills reflect our geographic features and location. Third, the meandering of the Yellowstone River is associated with our coverage area of Yellowstone County and each population of Billings, Lockwood, Shepherd, Huntley, Worden, Ballantine, Pompeys Pillar and Custer. In addition, my section is called McNiven’s Meanderings, which associates with a meandering river and articles… at times. Our new tag line is “Weekly News, Local Views;” I hope you’ve seen that recently in the paper.
Anyhow, I hope you like the new logo. Give us some feedback. We want you, the reader, to be able to easily associate with our brand, location, and what we do quickly when looking at our logo with the tag line.
So rolling out this new logo at the beginning of the year demonstrates another new beginning and changes for us. This is but one of the new changes at YCN this year, and we have many more to come. As you know, if you don’t write down a goal, then it’s just a dream. If you are serious about a New Year’s Resolution, then write it down. We have made our own plan and have written it down and given ourselves checkpoints in order to mark our progress and give us an opportunity to assess how we are doing and if we are running on-time or not. Make an action plan showing what action is going to take place in order to achieve the desired goal.
Now, did you know that only a tiny fraction of us keep our resolutions? In fact, the University of Scranton (according to Google) research suggests that just 8 percent of people achieve their New Year’s goals. I hope my averages of goals reached are higher than that. So I would encourage you to figure out what it is that you want to achieve this next year, write it down, make it logical and realistic and then make a detailed plan on how you will achieve it. We will do the same here at YCN. We hope you had a Merry Christmas and you have a happy & safe New Year!
Until then, see you in the paper!
JDM
