Greg Awtry

As I write this editorial column on Sunday, December 30, 2012, to be published on Wednesday, January 2, 2013, I have no way of knowing if you will ever read it.

As publisher, it is my job to lead this newspaper through the often times opposing views of journalism and capitalism. To do this we have to approve an annual budget, establish subscription and advertising rates, ensure all the logistics of printing and distribution are in place, and adhere to all the government’s regulations. On top of this we are expected to produce an excellent product five days a week and do so at a profit.

We should have done all this work in the latter half of 2012, but we were too busy trying to cover the election and fighting the pipeline route, so we “kicked the can” down the road until after the election. Then we spent the next seven weeks arguing amongst ourselves about the entire process. Then, we decided since it was the Holidays we would just wait until the last day of the year to do all this, so we could spend more time at home.

So today (I mentioned this was written on Sunday, December 30, 2012) I called our management team together to see if we could actually produce newspapers in 2013 and avoid the fiscal cliff we made for ourselves by not doing our jobs as our readers expected us to do in 2012.

Around the table we have Kathy Larson, our Advertising Director, Steve Moseley and Melanie Wilkinson our Managing Editor and News Editor respectively. There is Bryan Emick our Circulation/Distribution Director, Valerie Nunnenkamp who leads our Creative Department, and Eric Eckert, our Online Director. All of these individuals are instrumental in leading their departments and represent important elements to all of our readers.

I open the meeting by telling those present at the table, we need more revenue, and just like President Obama’s budget, which calls for a 64.2 percent increase in personal income tax rates over the next five years, I ask the team to raise rates by 62 percent, but that we should consider only raising subscription and advertising rates on the richest readers and largest advertisers.

Kathy Larson in sales immediately says that is not fair and balanced. Bryan Emick in circulation says we don’t know how much money our readers make so we would have to ask everyone for their tax returns to see if they should pay more.

Eric Eckert, our digital expert and Valerie Nunnenkamp suggest we cut out expenses instead. Eckert says let’s stop printing the paper and make everyone read the paper online. Nunnenkamp says let’s drop all color ads so we don’t have to print the paper in color.

Moseley and Wilkinson in our news department want us to expand the paper so we can print more news stories and more photographs.

Larson says if we raise ad rates by sixty percent that nobody will buy the ads and we will actually bring in less revenue. Emick says if we raise subscription rates by sixty percent people will cancel their subscriptions and a hundred newspaper carriers will lose their jobs.

I just want to play golf and take the family to Hawaii, and if we can’t get this done, we’ll fall over the fiscal cliff and possibly won’t be able to produce newspapers our readers deserve!

Of course none of this really happened. But if we actually ran our newspaper like Washington is running our country, I guarantee we would have readers more outraged than they are with the way our federal government is taking care of the peoples’ business right now.

We would have hundreds of York News-Times readers writing us letters to the editor and calling to cancel subscriptions. Our advertisers would be outraged and threaten to cancel advertising contracts. Our contracted carriers who are up in the middle of the night trudging through snowdrifts would picket our office in fear of losing their jobs.

Yet most of us sit idly by watching Washington mismanage our country to the point it jeopardizes our future, while placing a near insurmountable burden on our children. Where is the outrage?

Have we all given up on the notion that our country was founded on principles that the people would rule through representatives? Are you happy with the way they are doing the job we hired them to do? Have you contacted them and told them about your feelings?

All of us here at this newspaper try desperately each and every day to put out a paper that is representative of our community. We are not perfect and don’t claim to be, and when we mess up, you let us know, and you should! When our nation is in peril and your congressman, senator or president mess up, do you let them know? You should!

My resolution in 2013 is to watch our Washington, Lincoln, and York representatives like a hawk. You deserve that from your newspaper. Your job, if you choose to accept it, is to help us. Help us build by letting us publish your opinions on how well (or not so well) our elected officials (your employees) are doing.

Here, at the News-Times, Larson, Moseley, Wilkinson, Emick, Nunnenkamp and Eckert did their jobs in 2012 so we could keep our business running efficiently and profitably in 2013.

If Obama, Reid, Boehner, McConnell or Pelosi, were to apply for work at the News-Times, they would be turned down, not qualified based on poor job performance.

Sitting around the Whitehouse on the last day of the year trying to figure out how pay for a government we can no longer afford is no way to run a country, which is why we could never hire any of these national leaders. They don’t deserve to sit around a negotiating table with people of real integrity like we have here at the York News-Times.

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Thanksgiving, now past, we turn our attention toward Christmas, but for me, not so fast.

I was thinking over the weekend how thankful I was for, well, for many things, but I couldn’t get this one thing out of my mind. What is it? We’ll get to it in a moment. But first, back to this Thanksgiving-Christmas thing.

It would be nice if these two were spread out a little more, especially because we tend to make both holidays center around family. Oh, I know the real reason we celebrate both, the Pilgrims and the Indians sharing their bounty, and of course the birth of Christ, but the celebrating part is still all about food and family for Thanksgiving and all about family (especially children) and gifts for Christmas. It would be nice if they were six months apart.

Hang in there; I’m getting a little closer to telling you what I couldn’t get off my mind over the weekend. It has a lot to do with those Christmas gifts.

Down here at the News-Times we’re getting ready for our annual Adopt-A-Family program. It’s my favorite. Families who have needs greater than their means need our help, and one of the many ways we can do this is by adopting a family for Christmas, and helping fill their holiday with as much joy as we can. Each day on the front page we feature such a family. Contact the News-Times if you, too, want to help or make a donation. It is Christmas in its purest form, honest from-the-heart help, and every single dime and or gift goes to a family in need, right here in York.

All right, it’s time to tell you what was on my mind. Remember, I was thinking about what I was thankful for. I was thinking about the hundreds of businesses in and around York, from Aurora to Seward, Stromsburg to Geneva. I was thinking how thankful I was for their support of our newspaper, but more than that, for their support of our community, our home if you will.

You see, in a small town, a local business is so much more than a building front with a fancy sign like you see at the mall. Most of these businesses are family owned. We know these people. They are our neighbors. We go to the same restaurants, sit in the same churches and visit the same parks. Somehow, it is different in a small town, a nice difference, in fact, a very special kind of difference. I was thinking how thankful I was that we have business owners who understand this as well.

Oh sure, you might find a bigger selection in a big city, and if you shop long and hard enough you might even find some things cheaper. But if you do choose to take a lot of your Christmas shopping out of town, think about this for just a moment.

Where will that money you spend in the big city go? Will some of it go to support our local little leagues? Will some of it go to support our after prom parties, United Way or the Boy Scouts? I don’t think so. Once a dollar leaves our small town, the chances of it finding its way back here are pretty slim. But the dollar you spend with our local businesses stays here and gets spent seven more times before it finds it way out of town forever. That’s pretty important in my book.

Our local businesses pay their employees, who then buy something else and so on and so on. Spending a hundred dollars in our home town is actually like spending seven hundred by the time everyone gets done using it. Those dollars end up supporting the Chamber of Commerce, our city streets, our police and fire departments. Well, you get the point.

I’m thankful I live in a small town where doing business is so much more than the simple exchange of money. Call me Opie Taylor if you will, but as a young lad, I went to a barber shop just like Floyd’s and I remember walking over to Leo Harkness’s hardware store and staring for hours at the glass case filled with those beautiful pocket knives. My folks knew Leo and his wife Shirley. They played cards together. Leo and Shirley were almost like family.

Well, that’s it. That’s what I was thinking about. Not all that special really, but York is a lot like the town I grew up in, kind of like a great big family.

So, as you go about your Christmas shopping this year, I’ll ask a favor of you all. Think about our local businesses first. They need your business and we need them, and if you are able, help us out a little with our Adopt-A-Family. Imagine what a difference you can make on their Christmas morning.

And, let me be the first, Merry Christmas York!

Where are we going as a country? What does our future hold? What will be America’s strengths and weaknesses? What will we look like as a society? What will drive our economy? Where will our future jobs be? What does the next 100 years hold in store for our nation, a country struggling to keep its financial head above water while the actual wealth of the nation is hemorrhaging at unprecedented levels?

As life expectancy creeps slowly toward the centurion mark, it’s not so absurd to look at our future in terms of 100 years. If you are a young parent, your newborn has a very good chance to live to the year 2110. What will their life be like? What will the rest of our lives be like in an America founded on principles that a free person, given an opportunity to prosper would succeed beyond imagination?

Our Founding Fathers had a hunch that keeping big government (England at the time) out of the way, people could achieve extraordinary things. They also had a hunch that if people didn’t live up to their responsibility to keep government restricted, the potential for government to gain control over the people instead of the other way around, not only existed, but also posed an enormous threat to their vision of this new land.

Have you read the Declaration of Independence lately? It basically says we cut ourselves free from the heavy handed, over intrusive government of England, then it goes on to list the 20-something reasons (grievances) why we could no longer exist as a society so overruled by a so intrusive government.

Well, fast-forward about 234 years. Here we are again, at the same place in a different time, with lessons unlearned. Not only that, we have spent the last 100 years fighting wars and dying by the hundreds of thousands trying to stop other overbearing governments from taking liberties away from common folks, replacing it with centralized governmental power.

Stupid, isn’t it? Stupid, aren’t we? So back to the question of the day, where are we going as a country? Make no mistake about it, we are at a major crossroads and the next few years and what we do and how we vote will map out our course for the next few decades, if not for the next century.

That’s a big responsibility and it falls squarely on our shoulders. If we don’t take on that responsibility with zeal, with determination, with knowledge and vision, others will. Who might those (the others) be? Well, if we don’t control what our government will look like, the government will.

If you like where big government is taking us, let me save you some time. Stop reading this article and go about your daily routine as a mind-numbed robot who has partaken too much of the political Kool-Aid.

If on the other hand you have legitimate fears about where we’re headed as a nation, your time has come. Now is the time for you to get involved, the time for you to make a difference, the time for you to help shape a nation’s future. Now times like this don’t just come along for everybody, but they sure have presented themselves to all of us at this point in our nation’s history.

I know what you are thinking. “What can I do? I’m only one little person in a country with over 300 million. The government is going to do what they want to anyway.”

To you, if you are one of those who think that, I would say: Did you vote in last month’s primary election? When was the last city council meeting you attended? When was the last time you went to a county commissioner meeting? When did you last speak to your U.S. or state representative? When was the last time you wrote a letter to them, called them, or sent them an email? When was the last time you wrote a letter to the editor of your newspaper?

Hey, I know we are all busy trying to raise a family and earn a living. Many of us volunteer for civic organizations, churches and clubs and attend local events. Isn’t that enough? What do you think?

We tried it that way, we trusted our elected officials to keep our nation secure, free, financially solvent, and to keep the American Dream alive, to give opportunity to all our citizens, and most of all to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Several dozen Americans, just like you and me, had the courage to throw the English tea into the Boston Harbor. What followed is laid out for the world to see, and what common people can do when they remain dedicated to the Dream, driven by the Dream, and unquestionably protect the Dream.

On Sunday, July 4, we will celebrate our independence. We encourage you to read the Declaration of Independence. In fact, we’ll go one step further. We’ll publish it in today’s York News-Times in hopes you will take time to read it, and ponder the amount of courage it took for those who signed that document.

Here is a small teaser, written in regards to the government becoming more powerful than the people it governs: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Happy Birthday America! You are 234 years old. We wish you many more.