by Joey Young
From the Publisher
My crutch phrase these past few months has been “false start.”
I am a big Kansas City Chiefs fan—I have been since I was little—and false starts were a big part of this past season, with Jawaan Taylor constantly lining up behind where he was supposed to be and jumping before the ball moved. It put the offense in bad situations over and over again.
It was frustrating as a fan, and it occasionally made me question the wisdom of Andy Reid and Brett Veach, despite their incredible past successes.
The rational part of my brain would eventually take over and help me realize that Reid and Veach have earned the benefit of the doubt, and if Taylor was the best we could throw out there, than I guess that is where we were.
I know that I haven’t necessarily earned that benefit of the doubt with all of you. Our successes have largely been in a county to the east of here, and that doesn’t necessarily translate to Reno County and Hutchinson.
We have had the equivalent of a false start at The Hutchinson Tribune this past year. Despite all my efforts and preparation, years of experience, and starting a successful newspaper in Newton 10 years ago, our experience in Hutchinson has been marred by turnover, poor hiring, and issues we didn’t foresee.
I am committed to doing better.
For those of you who might not know, I am a Buhler High School and Hutchinson Community College graduate, grew up in little ol’ Buhler, worked at The Hutchinson News for several years, and care deeply about Reno County and Hutchinson.
Lindsey and my families are both still located in Reno County, and we spend a lot of time in Hutchinson, even before we decided to take over The Hutchinson Tribune from Michael and Gina almost a year ago.
This matters to me, and the future of the paper matters to me. I am personally invested in the future of this paper, as while we had very little cold, hard cash to put into the start-up, we did have 15 years of owning The Clarion invested, and we used that newspaper as the vehicle to expand, change the name, and have a printed product in Hutchinson from day one.
I am aware that there is gossip about The Tribune, its management, and rumors circulated by former employees. I own the fact that those exist. Ultimately, every hire sits on the shoulders of the person in charge, and in this instance, those false starts lead directly to Lindsey and I and our leadership.
I am not happy with how this past year has gone with The Hutchinson Tribune, despite many things I am proud of with the paper and several staff members who have knocked it out of the park. The overall experience, though, has been frustrating and nothing like what we planned originally.
With that said, I am committed to this newspaper’s future and will work to retool the newsroom and provide the product we promised.
If you are unaware of any issues and are happy with the newspaper, please take away that we want this publication to grow and be even better than it is currently. Several markers we set forth for year one haven’t happened yet, and we still want to make those happen. In other words, the current version of the newspaper is supposed to be the baseline. We’re building up and improving from here.
Thank you for your support and understanding. There aren’t a lot of start-up newspapers in this day and age, and while we have done this once before, this has had its own unique challenges we simply didn’t see coming.
As we get closer to year two of our ownership, I think we have a pretty good handle on what needs to happen, and I foresee fewer false starts in our future. Thank you for being early adopters and supporters of this venture.
Hutchinson—and this region—deserves a good newspaper. We intend to bring it one.