We want to tell your stories

Here at ECB Publishing, Inc. (The Monticello News and the 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 feature stories, puzzles, opinionated columns, and “Did you know” sort of stories. Public notices, 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 corner of the world. 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 are not returned and 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/sports weren’t covered as well as other schools’ activities/sports, 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 every newspaper page after newspaper page with stories about every church, every club, every organization, every school function and every sport that is in Jefferson County!

Also, as hard as we try, we just don’t know of EVERYTHING that might be coming up in the community. I would like to encourage everyone to please call our office and let us know if an event is happening, that you would like (or think needs to be) covered. We will do our best to be there and cover it to the best of our ability.

I know that we are not able to please everyone in our community. With each story that is printed, some will like it – some will not. “We don’t make the news; we just report it” has become my favorite quote. It is our job to let the citizens of Jefferson County know what is happening in Jefferson County. The good, the bad, and the ugly are all a part of that scenario.

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 and we look forward to learning of events happening in our county that we might not know about.

I’d also like to encourage each of you to (if you haven’t already) to subscribe to our/your local newspapers. With every subscription, you will also receive over $300 worth of coupons to use in our town with our local businesses! Let’s keep our money in our own hometown and support our friends and neighbors!

Again, thank you all for your patronage and if there is anything we can do for you, please do not hesitate to call (850) 997-3568.