Bear with us

Marketing experts say you never should let your customers know when your business faces unusual challenges. But in the spirit of honesty, we want to tell you about some challenges the newspaper is facing.

They began, of course, with the raid on our newsroom 2½ years ago. You might think 2½ years is enough time for any turmoil to subside, but it hasn’t been. Not only was our accounting system severely disrupted, our staffing took a hit when three employees took settlements or court judgments and abruptly left town, two of them around the same time as a fourth completed his one-year fellowship with us.

One replacement hire clearly didn’t work out and left. Another came down with a life-threatening illness shortly after starting. We had two applicants — a dynamic and very high-quality young couple who would have been absolutely perfect — but after we held positions for them they decided at the last minute that they wanted to stay in another region to be nearer to family members.

We’ve tried to patch over as best we can, but we now have two employees who can spend only a few minutes a week in the office because they are caregivers for ailing relatives. And a couple of the rest of us have either family or our own health concerns to worry about.

As a result, our office hours can be sporadic, and things we normally would try to tend to instantly might be a bit delayed.

There is hope, however. Arlene Ehrlich, who has a wealth of business experience, starts this week as our office manager. She’s still getting up to speed after just four days on the job, but she eventually will resolve many business problems if everyone is a bit patient.

We’re also looking very hard for at least one additional reporter — hopefully another one we can lure, at least temporarily, from the bright lights of the big city to experience journalism and community up close and personal.

Meanwhile, we’ll try our best to make sure our temporary staff shortages have as little impact as possible on the newspaper. We just ask for a bit of patience and understanding.

— ERIC MEYER