Good evening and welcome to my first editor’s newsletter!
The title is still pending, but I’m leaning pretty hard towards “from the editor’s desk.” Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any alternative suggestions.
Now, some of you might remember that once upon a time, we did monthly updates. Those slowly fell off as we got busier, and I think it is past time we revitalized the idea a little.
So, from now on, I’ll be releasing at least one personal newsletter a month. It’ll be a time for me to speak to all of you: To tell you what is going on with the paper, what our goals are as well as a simple time to connect.
I started The Sunrise News because I wanted to create a space in Alabama where we could come together and build a community. A place where we did our best to not only to give you the news, but to build connections, highlight the best parts of our community and, when there are moments of strife or struggle, to remind you that light often shines brightest in the darkest moments.
Alabama is my home. I love and treasure it, and I am so grateful that I am able to do work that I hope will help uplift, inspire and strengthen it.
Behind the curtain:
So, one of my favorite things to do is to just take a little time to pull back the curtain and let y’all see some of the behind the scenes work and make sure you know what we are up to in the background.
A few of you might have noticed that we recently stopped publishing our Alabama Roundup podcast episodes. Our engagement on those had dropped severely over the last few months, so we decided to take a step back and evaluate what our listeners wanted.
One change that we are making for May is combining all of our podcasts in one place. Currently, we have three different podcasts published on Spotify and various other platforms. The original logic behind this was that it would allow people to subscribe just to the podcast they liked. However, the downside is we have three different groups of subscribers, and no real clear indication on whether there is crossover there or not. To make it easier for subscribers to see all of our shows, we’ll be centralizing things.
So, from here on out, all episodes will be published on our Alabama Spotlight podcast, which we’ll be changing to just The Sunrise News, and we’ll indicate in the episode title if it is a Spotlight, Roundup, or something else.
Another quality of life improvement is that we’ll be posting podcasts onto our YouTube channel as well. Eventually, I’d like to upload all of our old episodes onto YouTube, but that may take some time for me to get done.
The hum and drum
So, I’ve been working recently to spend more time exploring my hobbies. For me, that means writing, some small crafts and cooking. My sister bought me a copy of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cookbook, and as I type this newsletter, I’m waiting for the dough to finish rising for some homemade pizza dough, then I’ll try out their New York style pizza.
The warmest place in the apartment is right next to my computer, so the dough is actually sitting in a covered bowl next to me right now.
As for hobbies, I’ve been working on getting into book binding recently. I’ve made a few small notebooks, and I’ve gotten the chance to flex some of the basic layout skills I picked at my college newspaper.
I’m trying to focus more on recording positive things that happen to me, so I created a gratitude log for myself. It was a fun passion project, and an easy way to get started.
For my next project, I’m working on creating a small pocket journal to use for taking notes when I’m coaching soccer.
I’ll try to provide another update soon, and I’ll make sure to share some pictures of the pizzas I make this month. Thank you for reading, and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about The Sunrise News. I’m always happy to hear from readers!
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