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Inaugural Edition Barrow 4 Journal www.BarrowJournal.com Or Read all over... Wednesday, October 29,2008 Vol. 1 No. 1 22 PAGES 2 SECTIONS A publication of MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. WINDER, BARROW COUNTY GEORGIA 30680 25c COPY New Barrow paper launched START THE PRESSES! A new news paper is being launched to serve the Barrow County community. The Barrow Journal begins weekly publication this week as a traditional broadsheet newspaper with a focus on Barrow County news. The newspaper is published by the family-owned Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. of Jefferson. “For many years, we’ve been asked by readers and advertisers in Barrow County to publish a local weekly newspaper in the community,” said co-owners and co- publishers Scott and Mike Buffington. “We are responding to that demand with the launching of the Barrow Journal this week." The newspaper is an outgrowth of the BarrowJournal.com website and The Braselton News which have been cover ing Barrow County since January. “Our BarrowJournal.com website has received a tremendous response and building on that with a weekly print edition is the logical next step,” said the Buffingtons. “We are confident about the future of community journalism and very excited about the start-up of the Barrow Journal.” The Barrow Journal will be a paid circulation newspaper. It will be avail able for delivery by mail on Thursdays, or can be purchased in stores and from newsracks on Wednesday evening. The Barrow Journal's office is located at 77 East May Street, Winder. The firm purchased the building during the sum mer. The location has been known as Special 5-5-5 deal offered The Barrow Journal is offer ing several special deals for readers and advertisers as the new publication is launched. For a limited time, read ers in Barrow County can become a charter subscriber to the Barrow Journal for only $5 per year. The newspaper will be distributed free for a limited time to ah households in Barrow County, but only paid subscribers will receive mailed copies starting in 2009. (Rates are higher for out-of- county subscriptions.) Also for a limited time, the Barrow Journal will have a special introductory advertis ing rate of only $5 per column inch. That means the cost of a 'A page ad is only $165 at that low rate. Classified ads are also a deal. Several categories of classified ads are free (see details inside). All other clas sified ads are only $5 for 20 words or less. PUMPKIN ADMIRATION Cohen Milner takes in his surroundings at the Winder First United Methodist Church pumpkin patch. Milner was there with his family looking for the perfect Halloween pumpkin. For other Halloween articles, see story about Barrow ghost hunters on Page 2A and Barrow’s most haunted places on Page 10A. Photo by Jessica Brown T~ Iff n U* BARROW JOURNAL STAFF Staff members of the Barrow Journal are (front L to R) Susan Mobley, Chris Bridges, Susan Norman; (back L to R) Susan Treadwell, Mike Buffington, Jeremy Ginn, Jessica Brown and Scott Buffington. the G&G Travel office and that business will continue to maintain its office at the location as well. The staff of the Journal will be Chris Bridges as editor, Susan Treadwell as advertising manager, Susan Mobley as office manager and Susan Norman, reporter and webeditor. The staff also includes Jessica Brown photographer and Jeremy Ginn as marketing man ager. The Buffingtons, second generation owners of Mainstreet Newspapers, will also have a hands-on role in the Barrow Journal. In addition, other Mainstreet staff members will provide support ser vices for the Barrow Journal. “We take a lot of pride in providing quality local news coverage and high value for advertisers in the communi ties where we publish newspapers,” the Buffingtons said. Mainstreet Newspapers is a nation ally recognized newspaper firm that publishes five community newspapers in Northeast Georgia. The locally-owned firm also operates a family of commu nity news websites. Inside: Judge Adamson ‘roasted’ at retirement fete Page 11A Minister takes on IRS Page 10B Crime & courts coverage Page 8A-9A Sports Pages 1B-5B Opinion Page Page 4A MEMO FROM THE PUBLISHERS Newspaper to serve the needs of Barrow readers By Mike & Scott Buffington Co-Publishers B ACK in the mid-1960s, just after our parents pur chased The Jackson Herald in Jefferson, we found ourselves often sitting in the back seat of an old ’57 Chevy riding around Winder. In addition to her myriad duties as the new owner/editor of The Herald, our mother was also the newspaper’s adver tising representative for Barrow County and as kids, we sometimes tagged along on many of her weekly rounds mike scott in Winder. Buffington buffington We didn’t know it at that time, but those weekly sojourns were just another link in a long relationship between The Herald and the Barrow area. From its start in 1875, The Herald had covered the area around what was then called “Jug Tavern,” or as it was renamed in 1894, Winder. In fact, Jackson County’s western border was a spot in downtown Winder, a town that was at the time split between three counties. Even after Barrow County was created in 1914, ties between Jackson and its new neighbor remained intertwined. Over the decades, a number of multi-county agencies were created that involve both counties, such as the Piedmont Judicial Circuit, the Upper Oconee Basin Authority that built Bear Creek Reservoir, the soil and conservation service, and at times, overlapping state and national legislative districts. Over the last century, The Herald maintained its relationship with the area through news coverage and advertising, a tradi tion our parents continued and which we have also done as the current publishers. Now we are taking that long relationship to the next level with this first issue of the Barrow Journal. The birth of a new newspaper is special, in part because it is rare these days. Some believe newspapers are just tree-killing dinosaurs; major metro newspapers are straggling financially; and the Internet has changed the way some people want to get their news and information. And yet, for all the doom-and-gloom talk, we believe in the future of strong community newspapers. We emphasize the word “community” because that’s the focus of the newspapers we publish. If done right, we believe people will read a good local community newspaper that covers the news fairly and com pletely. While some may also get a part of their news from other sources, they will also pick up a quality local newspaper to read about local governments, local schools and other local community events. And that’s why we’re publishing the Barrow Journal. Over the last decade or so, many people in Barrow County — com munity leaders, advertisers and regular citizens — have asked us to publish a newspaper in Barrow County. We believe that’s due to the long track record of quality reporting at The Herald and at the other newspapers we publish. Over the last couple of years, this call for us to invest in Barrow County has grown louder. With the advent of The Herald’s sister paper, The Braselton News, in 2006, we began to cover some beats in Barrow County. In addition, we created the website www.BarrowJournal.com earlier this year to aggre gate local news for online readers and over the summer, we published a special local election edition for Barrow County. The feedback from those small efforts has been overwhelm ing. And yet, we felt it really wasn’t enough — that we were just barely scratching the surface of the kind of deep, quality reporting needed in Barrow County. Several people have asked us why start a newspaper now, given the current economic downturn in the nation? Our answer is that newspapers have to be able to survive and do their jobs in any environment, especially in time of economic turmoil where people need clear news and analysis of what’s happening in the community around them. We’re starting the Barrow Journal for the long-term, good times or bad. So how will we do this? Our business model is simple: We want to offer a better value, summed up with the initials M.B.C. — More. Better. Cheaper. More news, more readers, more advertising. Better coverage, better quality reporting, better advertising. And a Cheaper cost to both subscribers and advertisers. In addition, our community newspaper business is vastly dif ferent from those large, struggling media firms that you read about in the Wall Street Journal. Many of those newspapers are drowning with a lot of debt from leveraged buyouts and from the loss of classified advertising. And while the economic downturn hits all of us, we believe we’re much better positioned to weather the storm. continued on page 5A