What will be next? Can’t wait to see

To everything there is a season, from beginnings to endings and everything in between. Our readers who have kept track of The Lakeville Journal and Millerton News since 1998 will know that I have been associated with these publications that entire time, first as associate publisher then over the years as publisher and editor-in-chief, then CEO of the new nonprofit entity, the Lakeville Journal Foundation, which owns these publications.

Now, with a new board, a new nonprofit model and new editors, it really is finally time for me to move on, as soon as the search committee of the Lakeville Journal Foundation Board of Directors finds someone to step into this new expanded role.

There may be some reading this who think such a move is long overdue. After all, during those many years as I have tried to keep this local media company on an even keel, there have been many struggles and financial challenges. Surely there is someone out there who can do this better than I. And likely you have been out there all along, waiting for the opportunity to have some fun in local journalism. That is what I hope anyway. Now is your chance.

The next person will be smarter, better educated and better in many ways than I, I know. But I will guarantee they won’t care more about maintaining local journalism in our small communities, in both the Northwest Corner of Connecticut and eastern Dutchess County New York. It’s been my mission to keep these publications here for our readers, whatever it took. I hope the next generation cares just as much as I and those who supported and maintained these publications in the past 20-plus years did.

Onward to the exciting new time for local journalism, whatever that looks like moving forward. I, and all of us who kept it going here over the past two decades, will be pulling for you and appreciating all you do to inform those who live here about what is happening in our communities.

However you do it, just be sure you have fun. This is a great place to live and I wish you all only the best as you figure out where to take this area’s local journalism next.

­— Janet Manko