FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK: The Progress of the PROGRESS

By VERNON ROBISON

Anyone who has thumbed this far through our current print edition has, by now, sensed that there is something new and different about the PROGRESS this week. Our small-town newspaper has taken a big step in its ongoing “growing-up” process. This week we have abandoned our old tabloid format and moved forward to, what we hope is, a crisp, clean broadsheet look. That’s right, we are like a “real newspaper” now.

No doubt there will be a variety of views and reactions to this change among our readers. Some of you will, no doubt, long for the “good ol’ days” when the PROGRESS ran in its simpler tabloid format. Others will immediately embrace this change without ever looking back. And some, including me, will experience a bitter-sweet mixture of both feelings. By the way, we welcome all of your comments and feedback about this historic change sent in as letters to the editor. As always, we will gladly publish as many as possible.

It has been a little over ten years now, since I was the biggest change to the PROGRESS. It was on November 3, 2004 when I oversaw the publication of my first edition of “Your Hometown Newspaper” as its editor. At that time, I had very little concept of what it would take to run a small-town newspaper. And that was probably just as well. If I had known then what I know now, I might have picked up and run the other way. But I didn’t, and I have since been on the thrill ride of a lifetime.

Looking over our archives, my lack of experience was painfully apparent in that first edition. My first go-round ended up being full of embarrassing errors, inexcusable omissions and plenty of rough edges. In short, it was a mess! It still sets my teeth on edge to look through that old edition.

To be fair, though, this first format change was a tremendously daunting project. Believe it or not, before that time the newspaper was using an antiquated system of cutting and pasting physical pieces of paper onto a large paste board which was then delivered in person to the printer. It was a method which my uncle, John Z. Robison, had pridefully perfected since founding the PROGRESS in 1987. In a single week, we were converting from that old system into an all-electronic workspace transmitted to the printer digitally, using computer equipment and software that was entirely new to all of us.

Everything about the layout had to be rebuilt and changed over….everything! It was a monumental task! And I can honestly say that I have not experienced a tougher work week in the 10 years since (though there have been some doozies, last week being right up there).

Since that time, the PROGRESS has experienced other important landmarks of change. We published our first color edition just a few weeks after that first edition; just in time for Christmas. We spent the next few months developing our brand and settling into our general layout style. We have worked on improving and updating our content: increasing sports and school news, bringing more depth to our coverage of local governance issues and beefing up our Opinion section. Our website, mvprogress.com, went live in early 2008 and has since been in a near continuous state of updates, upgrades and improvements.

Each of these changes, and many more, have brought a degree of pain in the making. With each one of them, I have experienced a portion of that ‘pit-of-the-stomach’ discomfort that I felt during my first week on the job back in late 2004.

But in each case, the newspaper, the business, and I have come out better and stronger for the change. Maybe there is a life lesson in that.

No format change is simple, though. They all have their unforeseen complexities that haven’t been planned for. No doubt, our readers will find some things that are a bit rough around the edges in today’s edition. That is bound to happen and I’ll just apologize in advance for them. Hopefully they will be relatively minor.

One of the things I learned early on in my tenure as PROGRESS editor is to “Never cry after the ink is dry.” Every week, we have to put a new hard copy out there onto the streets for all to see. There are always a few errors in the copy, misspellings in the text and some weird, awkward problems with the layout. Those things are regrettable and they can even be embarrassing. Unfortunately, they can’t be changed once the paper is printed.

So I’ve learned to just take note of the problems and the mistakes in the current edition for future reference, but not to beat myself up over them. There is no time to cry about them, or be ashamed, because there is another weekly edition to get working on right around the corner; another deadline on the horizon.

There is always another edition where we can do better. And we at the PROGRESS will always strive to do that.
Maybe there is a life lesson in that as well.