I am thrilled to share a bit of good news: Grant County News is now offering free announcements of milestone events. Tell us about your engagements, weddings, anniversaries, and births, and we’ll help you share the glad tidings with the world.
Local news used to be so much more personal, and I see this as a nice opportunity to get some of that feeling back.
In the 1930s my grandmother used to write a weekly news column about the goings-on in the tiny hamlet of Kelat in northern Harrison County. It appeared in the Cynthiana Democrat alongside news from several other little communities in the county.
By news, I’m referring to tidbits such as who had lunch with whom after church, who was at a toddler’s first birthday party, who had visitors from out of town that week, and speculation about who was sweet on whom.
When I was growing up, the paper still included columns like that. It was local news on a granular level.
Looking back through the bound copies of the Grant County News while doing research for “Turning Back the Clock,” I the same sort of newsy columns in issues printed 50 years ago. Each community had its own reporter.
Those types of columns have disappeared, along with many of the hamlets themselves.
Fun fact: the Grant County News also used to run a regular column listing who was in the hospital, often revealing details, something unthinkable in these days of HIPPA privacy regulations.
The milestone announcements we will be printing are not going to be anywhere near that personal, of course, but by printing engagement, wedding and birth announcements and big anniversary celebrations we hope to tie the paper to the community in a way that’s been missing.
By the time I started working for the Grant County News, such announcements had disappeared. In the last 14 months, I have received one birth announcement and no engagement or wedding announcements. There may have been one anniversary shared.
Why or when such news ceased to be submitted or printed is a mystery to me, but its omission from a community newspaper is sad.
For me, nothing characterizes a local newspaper quite like the ability to share your happiest times with your community.
Friends used to read these announcements and smile. Parents and grandparents clipped them out of the paper and stuck them in baby books or between the pages of the family Bible.
Now that the opportunity to share news like that is back, I’m hoping you will engage with the paper just like your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents once did. Submit your good news!
I want to see adoring young couples announce their upcoming wedding or, if you run off to Vegas on the spur of the moment to get married, you can let folks know about that, too. When it comes time to celebrate big wedding anniversaries, tell us! If you bring a precious baby into the world, let everyone know.
Submitting your news is simple and free.
Just visit the Grant County News website at https://www.pmg-ky3.com/grantco/. At the top of the page is a tab that says “Forms.” Simply click on the appropriate event and fill in the information.
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