The News Editorial: Simple gesture means a lot

There is the saying that membership has it’s privileges and I am taking advantage of that today. While we do not allow letters of thank you I am taking the time to say thank you to the person who dropped goodies off at our office on Tuesday.

The note was simple, “Just want to say thank you for all your hard work and dedication during these difficult times. Please enjoy these goodies and know your community appreciates you.”

While I do not know for certain but I imagine we are not the only business receiving such a warm, thoughtful care package.

Baked goods are always appreciated – in any newsroom – but the sentiment was especially appreciated. Our staff works hard each week to provide news and information about our community, for our community and that can impact our community.

We were fortunate to never have to shut down during the initial months of the pandemic although we did have staff who felt more comfortable working from home.

We are all happy to be moving forward and putting the pandemic behind us as much as we can.

However, an end to the pandemic has not been officially declared. People are still getting sick, I know because I have had two acquaintances who have been sick with COVID.

But because the numbers are getting better we moved our weekly COVID tracker off of the front page. We post case numbers once a week, sometimes twice a week, to our website and social medial platforms. One week we will have someone ask why we don’t post everyday and then last week we had someone ask why we bother to continue to post them.

Those questions are exactly why we post numbers, that’s why we still publish the tracker, because some of our readers still want that information, still find that information important.

Until Washakie County goes several weeks without a single case or the pandemic is officially declared over, we will still provide some type of tracking information.

Yes, all of the health orders in Wyoming have now expired and in Wyoming we are pretty much getting back to normal. But there are still some businesses who are tied to corporate decisions including the hospital and mask mandates are still in place. The pandemic is still impacting life here in Washakie County and Wyoming, health orders or not.

The great thing about a newspaper, website and social media is you can choose what to read and what not to. Yes, we hope you read all 20 pages of our newspaper because we feel all of it is relevant for you, our readers — the obituaries, classifieds, comics, columns, sports, outdoor news, community news, government news, features, advertising, public notices, horoscope, trivia and so much more.

However, it is not realistic that 100% of our readers will read everything in our newspaper so we try to provide a variety of news that will appeal to the majority of our readers.

This week we have more than 20 different stories on a variety of local subjects. We have photos from at least a dozen different events or moments in the lives of people in our community.

This is what we strive to accomplish each week, giving our readers a glimpse into different areas of our community.

So thank you for the goodies on Tuesday and thank you readers for coming with us on our weekly journey through our community.

--Karla Pomeroy