We want your stories

Here at ECB Publishing, Inc. (The Monticello News and Jefferson County Journal) we take pride in our work. We work hard to bring the citizens of Jefferson County the local news, to the best of our ability.
The purpose of a newspaper is to inform, interpret and entertain.

We try to keep you, our readers informed by providing you with facts, statistics and feature stories. We report on stories that directly and indirectly affect all of us, here in Jefferson County, not always telling what you want to know, but what you might NEED to know.

Within our pages, we also try to entertain you with (the same) feature stories, occasional puzzles, opinionated columns and “Did you know” sort of stories. Classified ads and display ads also inform, you the readers, of what’s happening within your community and what sales are going on. It is our desire to keep everyone informed of events around, the world as well as those in our own backyard.

The reporters here at ECB Publishing work long hours, carry an unpredictable schedule, attend events and meetings, continually search out new and exciting stories, and also continually try to follow up on leads to finish a story out to the end. Our journalists’ job description calls for hard work, good ethics, quality writing and, in his/her heart, the desire to tell the truth. It is a stressful job, but a very rewarding one, as well!
We try our best to cover all aspects of Jefferson County…school, sports, community, crime, business, and municipality news. That is what we strive for here at your local newspapers; to inform you of what is happening within your community. Often times this is a hard task. There are times we have to really put on our “thinking caps” and “dig” to find stories that are “new” and informative and/or fun to read. Other times we seem overwhelmed with things to write about, and just don’t have enough pages to fit all the news on. These are the times when certain stories end up running later than what we had hoped they would.

However, there are some times that we really try to cover certain stories/events but are not able to obtain all the information we need in order to write the story. As hard as we try; the countless phone calls and emails just never seem to net us “the” story.

So, if you (as a parent or as a reader) have ever noticed that some schools’ activities weren’t covered as well as other schools’ activities, or some churches events are covered more so than other churches, etc., please know it is not from the lack of our trying or our want and desire to cover more events. Sometimes we are not able to get our phone calls answered or to get our stories followed through as well as we would desire.

Sometimes it is because certain schools, businesses, clubs, churches and organizations “feed” us more story ideas and information than the others do. Our wish would be to fill page after page, of the newspapers, with stories about every church, every club, every organization, every school function and every sport that is in Jefferson County!

To you, our patrons and our readers, we thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you and this county. We have always, and will always, welcome any additional news items, thoughts, and ideas that you may have. Please always feel free to call us at (850) 997-3568.