EDITORIAL: Turning 130

Source: The Frederick News-Post, Md.迷你倉Oct. 15--A media organization is only as strong as the community that supports it. We've been around for 130 years, and today, The Frederick News-Post celebrates its birthday. We've been humbled to have enjoyed the tremendous support of the Frederick County community and our readers during that time.It's been an eventful, successful 12 months. We relaunched our Monday edition (that was a biggie), revamped our magazine, Real Frederick, and our entertainment guide, 72 Hours, launched a new website, changed up our masthead (the title on the front page of the print paper), launched a new digital committee and won some prizes along the way. We even brewed a beer with Monocacy Brewing Co. -- Red All Over -- to commemorate 13 decades in publication.We had a rough summer where we were plagued by printing problems and delayed deliveries. But one thing we were immensely appreciative of was that you stuck with us. We can't thank you enough for that.But we've had so much more good than bad over the past year.We're proud of our showing in the annual Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association awards for 2012. This year, we once again took home the Newspaper of the Year award -- the fifth time since 2006. We took home 43 first- or second-place awards among newspapers in the 30,000 to 75,000 circulation, including three best of show awards. Best of shows are particularly noteworthy, because it means we beat out the Washington Post and (Baltimore) Sun -- which is no mean feat.We also won the MDDC's advertising competition, which recognizes creativity and originality in advertising design for print and the Web, and features categories such as retail, real estate, recruitment, house ads, niche publications, special sections, house promotions and others.What our general readership may not know is that our enormous TKS press, housed to the rear of our building at 351 Ballenger Center Drive, is run by FNP Printing & Publishing, a sister company of The Frederick News-Post under the banner of Randall Family LLC.The commercial printing firm took home first place in the 2013 America East Pri儲存倉t Quality Contest in the 25,000 to 50,000 circulation category, which is something we are enormously proud of because it's a premier contest and FNP Printing & Publishing was competing against newspapers from across the country.In April, we launched a whole new website in look, design and capability. In the first few months, we solicited your feedback (and many thanks to all who took the time to comment), which led to lots of tweaks and fixes. It's still a work in progress, but so far we've worked to improve our calendar (FrederickNewsPost.com/calendar), create a new home for our bloggers (blog.FrederickNewsPost.com), and refined the site's navigation to make content easier to find. We're still tinkering.As part of our commitment to our online future, we formed a new Digital and Community Engagement team. As the name suggests, the team's job is to be more responsive, improve the relationship between the newspaper and our readers, and bolster our online coverage by helping individuals and organization use our website.And that doesn't just mean covering the news -- it takes to heart that word "engagement." The team and other members of our newsroom organized our first community yard sale this past Saturday. It was an enormous success, with more than 40 vendors and hundreds of attendees at the event -- and that's despite the rain, which drove the yard sale indoors. (You can contact the team at community@newspost.com.)Also, in the digital realm, this having been the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, we wanted to do something special to mark the event, over and above the day-to-day coverage. What better than to gather all that reporting together into a 73-page e-book? "Gettysburg: Uniting Over a Divided Past," is available on Amazon.com for only $2.99. This is something new, and we hope to offer more e-books in the future.These are just a few of this year's successes; we have many more to come. Keep reading.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Frederick News-Post (Frederick, Md.) Visit The Frederick News-Post (Frederick, Md.) at .fredericknewspost.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉最平