Karla's Kolumn: Embracing the challenges

Saturday marked the fourth anniversary of my hire as the Northern Wyoming News editor.

Every job I have had in my journalism career has challenged me and helped me grow in my chosen profession and this one is no exception. I had worked on a daily newspaper previously for nearly three years at the Laramie Boomerang, unless you also count my work experience with the Branding Iron as a student at the University of Wyoming.

I was familiar with the pace of a daily newspaper and the deadline stress so coming to the, at the time, Daily News, I had some experience from which to draw from, but there were still challenges.

Challenges in your chosen profession are a good thing. You need to be challenged to grow or you remain stagnant.

First challenge as an editor was managing a larger staff than I have had in the past, managing and scheduling for a newspaper on a daily basis instead of a weekly basis.

This year more challenges ensued as we transitioned from a daily to a weekly newspaper. The biggest challenges just came in preparing for the transition.

But having worked at a weekly newspaper for 22 years (plus summers while in school) of my 29-year career I knew that we could continue putting out a quality product, just as we had as a daily newspaper.

The Northern Wyoming News is one of 36 weeklies in Wyoming, including the Rawlins Times, which also went from a daily to a weekly.

There areseven daily newspapers now in Wyoming, which are located in Casper, Cheyenne, Laramie, Riverton, Rock Springs and Sheridan. A look at the cities that have daily newspapers show populations ranging from the lowest, Riverton at 11,058, per the U.S. Census estimate for 2017, to the highest, Cheyenne with an estimate of 63,624.

All seven also have colleges located within the community.

I note these statistics for this reason. There are 99 incorporated municipalities. Of those 99, there are 36 served specifically by a weekly newspaper, some of those weekly newspapers serve more than just the community where they are based.

There are only seven communities served by a daily newspaper.

What surprised me most when we switched were the naysayers that felt that switching to a weekly newspaper would doom the newspaper or as one writer put it "another nail in the coffin."

The majority of the communities served by a weekly newspaper have been served by that weekly paper for decades. Those communities, many of them in the Big Horn Basin, are not dying nor are their newspapers.

The Northern Wyoming News has been serving Worland and the surrounding area for more than 100 years, and my hope and my belief is that we will continue to serve you for many decades to come.

I know our readers miss their daily comics and the TV guide and unfortunately, we could not continue those services as a weekly.

For those wanting Wyoming news, we still subscribe to the Wyoming News Exchange and those stories are posted Monday through Friday on the wyodaily.com website.

The challenges newspapers face and that I as an editor face are providing a quality print subscription while still competing with the fast-paced world of the digital age. Fortunately, as a newspaper our goal is not to get it fast but rather to get it factual.

It's taken a few weeks for us to get into the rhythm of getting the Wyoming News Exchange stories posted on a continual basis. We try to update our readers with breaking news on our website and on our Facebook page @NWyoNews.

We can usually post something on Facebook faster than our website and when we have to do this we will always post it on our website when we are able.

We will continue to strive to meet the challenges that newspapers face and I will continue to look forward to the challenges that life and this job may bring. For embracing challenges, means to embrace learning and trying new things and I never want to stop learning.

Thank you Worland, Washakie County and the Big Horn Basin for welcoming me four years ago as your editor. Let's enjoy the ride for many more years to come.