By By Adam Prestridge
Mixed emotions are felt each year during the months of January and February.
Right on the heels of the holidays, the Advance publishes an in-depth, multi-section edition in late February highlighting people and businesses throughout Atmore with feature stories and photos.
This year’s Horizons edition has been a huge task for the Advance’s staff. Late nights, lots of caffeine and pure adrenaline have kept us pumping out stories, snapping photos and sending pages to the press. It’s a miracle one of us hasn’t fallen asleep at our desk.
As with most huge projects, it takes a lot of dedication and hard work to produce a product to be proud of. And this year, the staff rose to the challenge again despite some adversity.
Saturday afternoon, while the staff completed the final two sections of Horizons, which is in today’s paper, the server crashed. The server is the main artery of the newspaper, so what turned out to be a relatively easy completion turned out to be a huge challenge. But each one of us put our heads together and made an alternative plan to ensure the pages made it to press on time and the edition published on the advertised date for both our advertisers and readers to enjoy. After all, our readers are our most important assets.
It takes a lot of hard work from many people to make Horizons possible. Not only does our staff have its hands in the production, many more do as well.
The Advance is printed in Andalusia at the Andalusia Star News, which prints several affiliate papers. You may remember Michele Gerlach, who is now publisher of the Star News. Her staff has worked diligently for the past two months printing this 68-page supplement for the residents of Atmore to enjoy, along with thousands of pages each week for all the other papers who rely on them for printing.
Andalusia has not only been printing the Advances “progress edition,” but also several other papers affiliated with the Advance that also publish in February, including the Brewton Standard.
This year’s Horizons consists of seven sections, Atmore After Hours, Management Makeover, Sports: Behind the Scenes, Technology, Religion, Atmore Growth and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians; a business card directory supplement, numerous advertising inserts and advertisements from Atmores local businesses and organizations.
Thanks again to our advertiser for supporting this special edition.
Adam Prestridge is publisher of the Atmore Advance. He can be reached at 368-2123.