Tucker’s Turf

By Larry Tucker
Posted 9/23/15

It has been one year now that I left behind my career in education and entered the world of retirement. My retirement lasted one day and my journey as editor for this newspaper began the next day.

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Tucker’s Turf

Posted

It has been one year now that I left behind my career in education and entered the world of retirement. My retirement lasted one day and my journey as editor for this newspaper began the next day. I had a lot of expectations for my first year back home at the Democrat.

I do hope we have started accomplishing my major goal since returning last September. That goal was to make this newspaper the community news source I felt like it should be. There are three of us who come to work each day at this office. Office manager Brandi Box does it all. She manages the office, does classifieds and sales, and she takes pictures when she helps me get things covered. Her husband, Larry Box, is the guy that goes out each and every day to sell the Democrat's advertising, not an easy job some days, but Larry grinds it out every day. Together, we are the Wood County Democrat and I am proud of what we are doing here each week.

I am thankful to Bill Woodall, who owns this newspaper, for giving me the opportunity to be the editor here. His support and guidance are critical to our success. Joyce Hathcock is the publisher and a long time friend who has given me opportunity and support in this job. I simply would not be here if it weren't for these two folks.

We take our share of criticism and we are humbly thankful for the encouragement and the mostly positive feedback we receive.

In the past year, I feel we have stepped up on local coverage. I have a lot of you to thank for that too. I get a lot of help from the readers. You have given me story ideas, taken pictures when I couldn't and have given me great support and for that I am deeply thankful. The best thing is you are coming to the Democrat office again and bringing us great information to use in the paper.

The kind words and encouraging remarks you have given to me since my return have been heartwarming and inspiring. I have had many "suggestions" about things people would like to see in the paper, some of them quite valid and others, not so realistic.

You always have someone who complains no matter how hard you try. Facebook can be a wonderful tool of communication or it can be an annoying tool of negativity. One of my pet peeves about Facebook is when people don't have enough decency to confront someone face to face about an issue, but they can really be a tough guy or girl on the screen. I still believe in actual dialogue face to face, not a blab to the world in cyber space. Any coward can do that.

I still get the same question, "When are you going to change the name to the Wood County Republican?" My answer is always the same. We have been the Wood County Democrat since 1893 and I don't see any change in the future. It's the name of the newspaper in 2015 and not a political statement.

Thank you to each one of you who are subscribers or pick up a Democrat at one of our newsstands. Without you, we would not be able to do what we do. It's been a good year for me. I am looking forward to the next year with great expectations!