Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 6 · column 1 of 5 · from the scan, no model involved
By LOU HATTER
Rappahannock N«w» Staff Writer
For our readers, the arrival of the Rappahannock News in their mailbox on Thursday morning is the beginning of a journey through the previous week’s events.
But for the newspaper’s staff, and for the news contained in the paper, delivery is the end of the week’s odessey, which begins at the newspaper office on Main St. in Washington.
No matter how the news is generated — whether from the Board of Supervisors, the county schools, the arrival of a new baby — if no one at the newspaper knows about it there will be no mention of it in the newspaper. That’s the function of the editorial staff: Editor Lou Hatter, county government reporter Daphne Hutchinson, and photographer Cindy Mahan.
The editorial staff pursues story ideas received through a variety of means; whether it’s a suggestion from someone met in the post office, a “Letter to the editor,” a telephone call from someone who saw or heard something interesting. News comes in many forms, and if it’s interesting to the residents of the county, the Rappahannock News tries to find out about it.
Sometimes, the story can be told in words — in other cases, only a picture will do it justice. Often, both are needed. The old maxim that “A picture is worth a thousand words” is nowhere more true than in a newspaper.
What many readers don’t realize, however, is that without advertising there would be no Rappahannock News each week. Account Executives Ann Brown and Cathy Pullen spend many hours each week contacting and working with potential advertising clients, both for the display advertisements which appear on the news pages and the word ads which make up the “Classified” pages.
Subscriptions pay only a small amount of the costs of running the newspaper, and advertising provides most of the revenues. That’s what determines how many pages the newspaper contains each week. The question is not “How many pages will it take to print the news this week?” but rather “How much advertising do we have this week, and how much news will fit on those pages?”
That question is answered each Tuesday by General Manager Barbara Burke, who “dummies” each ad into its place on a page. Working with Editor Hatter, they decide which pages will be devoted to what; be it “News of Record,” “School,” “Sports and Outdoor Life,” or “Rappahannock
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