A few weeks back we got a call from the press manager at the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, which prints our paper every week (very few American newspapers still own their own press, but we’ll save that topic for another day). He told us one of the press towers had gone down and that the problem would likely take weeks to fix. With one tower gone, the press had far more limitations on color position. What that meant for us was that, if we wanted to print a paper with more than 12 pages (most weeks we have a minimum of 14), we would have to break it up into two sections. Otherwise, a certain number of pages would have to be printed in black and white.

We opted to go the two-section route in order to preserve our ability to print color ads and photos on every page. To my surprise, I discovered I liked the new two-section format — especially the fact that it gave us an open page (no ads) on the front of the B section for sports. The extra room has allowed us to run more and bigger photos with sports stories, and putting the Sports page on a section front gives all of our sports content better display.

Last week the press manager informed us that the tower was repaired and we could go back to printing up to 18 pages in a single section with no loss of color positioning, but we’ve decided to stick with the two-section configuration with Sports anchoring the B book. We like it that way, and we hope you do, too.

In case you missed it, last week’s paper featured stories on retiring Grant County Clerk Brenda Percy, a Monument artist who rediscovered her faith after adopting a rescue horse, the severance package for Grant School District’s former superintendent, a group of Navy Academy alumni bicycling across the country to their 50th class reunion and the 13 awards the Eagle won in the annual state press association contest (I know, I said 14 in this space last week; apparently, I can’t do simple arithmetic).

This week’s paper will feature stories on a remarkable new arts center in the Wheeler County community of Spray, the four finalists for the John Day city manager position, a visit by a traveling circus and a grant for new equipment received by the airport (those last two are already live on our website).                                          

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If you haven’t done so already, please take a moment to register your subscription for digital access to the Blue Mountain Eagle. Call 800-781-3214 to talk to one of our customer service staff, who will be happy to walk you through the process. It’s easy, takes just a few moments to get set up and allows you to take advantage of our e-edition, app and website delivery along with your print subscription.

We’ll have more details on the Eagle’s showing at this year’s state press awards, as well as a full slate of stories on happenings from all over Grant County, in this week’s edition. Thanks for reading.

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As always, if you have comments or questions about the Eagle, or want to pass along a story idea, send me an email at this address: editor@bmeagle.com.

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Finally, if you’d like to help support our independent local journalism, please consider subscribing to the newspaper. And if you’re already a subscriber, please accept our heartfelt thanks — we can’t do this work without you!

— Bennett Hall, Editor