If you look at the front page of this newspaper, at the very, very top, you will see Volume 35, #1.

That means the Times of Wayne County is entering its 35th year of publication and this is the first issue of the annual transition. 

I was a lot younger back in 1989 when I convinced Wife Patti that this county needed a weekly newspaper and we should sacrifice and dedicate our very lives to such an undertaking.

Yes, she thought I was crazy. After all, the prospect of a weekly newspapers would interrupt our family life, cause a fury due to my "Tell it like it is"  philosophy and the undertaking that it would cost money, lots of money.

Also, there were the future mumblings that newspapers were perhaps a dying art. No lending institution would back such an enterprise and the initial start-up would have us jumping through numerous hoops and legal entanglements.

Then there were the already established newspapers that had the jump on circulation, contacts and experience.

After reviewing what existed and all the hurdles,  I took my educational background in journalism, and the GO button was hit.

Luckily, the early editions hit all the right angles and the list of subscribers and advertisers grew over the proceeding months and years. Yes, there were the very lean times and thoughts of having heads examined, but something was working.

Over the years and decades we saw the competition disappear. The rumblings of newspaper futures became cloudy at best, but somehow the Times grew.

Then came the online/digital/computer technologies that both hindered and opened new avenues for producing and distributing news.

Did we fumble? Sometimes...you bet. Did we continue to grow? You bet.  Over the decades of old time resistance and way of doing things, the Times became the last real beacon for county news. Instead of cutting back when we were told that was the logical move, we doubled down and reinvested.

Most people do not know this, but we were among the first newspapers to go all digital with photos, the first to create a web presence, and the first to push stories others passed on.

Today, we have a steady subscriber   base and growing ‘online’ only readership.

We appreciate your support and hope our readers will spread the news, get friends, family and neighbors onboard with the Times of Wayne County. We cannot grow and continue without you.

Ironically neither I, nor Wife Patti - now in our 70s - want to retire. Partner and Son, Devin and his wife Christy are heavily engulfed in the future of the Times and in the wings.

We have come a long way from the typesetting "paste and run" days. The old vision and workings of a newsroom have long passed. We work and develop each issue of the Times from a spare bedroom in our home - isn’t technology wonderful. I am the homefront of editorship. Instead of driving to printers with the ready-to-go edition of the Times, everything is handled digitally. We have never physically met our actual printers, out of Albany, or their drivers that drop off skids of newspapers every week.

Like I mentioned before, we have invested in numerous news services and news partners and that will soon expand once again.

The Times of Wayne County is your news source for local, regional, state, country and worldwide news and feature stories, without boundaries.

Science, medical, obituary, comics, planet news, may not be for everyone, but there is always something of  interest in the Times. Again, keep a good thing going and spread the word, subscribe for yourself, friends and family to the Times of Wayne County.