This week I’d like to address a couple of changes that our readers will surely mention in the coming days, as we wish one soon-to-be former employee luck while we welcome back another familiar face.
A couple of weeks ago, reporter Timothy Wyatt wrote a column here in the News Journal explaining that he has accepted a job offer from Williamsburg Independent Schools. A few days later, WIS publicly welcomed Timothy to the staff via their Facebook page. This should be an exciting new opportunity for him, and all of us here at the paper wish him nothing but the best of luck.
Timothy has served in several different roles for us in recent years, including reporting on local news stories, assisting with maintaining our website (more on that in just a bit), and helping me with the weekly delivery of our newspaper and the monthly delivery of our Homes Guide realty magazines. He has also provided us with some unique aerial photographs thanks to his knowing how to operate a drone, and he has put together some pretty cool videos that have been posted on YouTube.
While Timothy will be mostly focused on his new endeavors at WIS, we have had several discussions lately and he has informed me that the door will remain open for possible collaborations in the future. This is good to know, and I am hopeful that our readers will still get to see his name from time-to-time as the opportunities arise.
Once we found out that Timothy would be leaving, we began formulating a gameplan for how we would move forward. There were a few names on a shortlist of potential replacement candidates, but for a minute it looked as if none of those names were going to work out. Luckily, after a few follow-up conversations, Leeann Fragosa has agreed to come on board as our newest full-time employee.
Leeann was with us a couple of summers ago as an intern, and she did a fantastic job. At that time, she was working to finish up an education degree. She eventually went on to achieve that goal, and has since gained some experience working in the education field. For this reason, we will probably have her focusing much of her energy on covering local school board activities once she gets started with us.
There are some t’s that need crossing and i’s that need dotting this week before she can officially begin, but the plan is to have Leeann in the office beginning next Monday, July 14. I am looking forward to having her back, as I know that she is a hard worker who is thorough and dependable. In this line of work, that is truly more than half the battle.
So, once again I’d like to wish Timothy good luck as he leaves the newspaper and enters into the world of education. On the flip side, welcome back to Leeann, who is stepping away from education to enter the world of newspapers. Funny how things work out…
• I mentioned earlier in this column that I had a few more words to say about our website. I just wanted to let everyone know that we are well aware of the functionality issues that have been going on with thenewsjournal.net, and we are exploring options for how to fix the problems. Trust me, we are dealing with it on our end as well. Posting stories has become an even more cumbersome task than it previously was, but hopefully a solution will be found soon. In the meantime, if you experience any problems with getting pages on our site to load, try refreshing the page. This usually works, although it may take a couple of tries in some instances. It’s annoying, I know, but we are working on it and we thank you for your patience.
