This one's 'bigger than the Eagle'

Written by Joel Klaassen Wednesday, 29 August 2007 11:10

It’s the end of August, which means we have the opportunity to feature area athletes from six high schools and Tabor College in our annual fall sports “Extra Point” special section in the Free Press this week. Each high school has a minimum of two sports but others have three or four with Tabor having six different competitive teams.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort on the part of our news and sports team as well as our advertising and production crew to make it all come together.

And we couldn’t do it without the cooperation of each of the coaching staffs and the advertisers who make it possible to cover the costs of bringing this information to you. As publisher I thank all who helped make it happen.

The timing of it...

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It can be too early to travel

Written by Joel Klaassen Wednesday, 22 August 2007 06:53

Normally I don’t get up at 4 a.m., at least not on purpose. But I did this past Sat­urday. It was necessary to be in Wichita by 6 a.m. to leave for Greens­­­burg with my cousins to help their brother and my cousin, Paul Unruh, erect his new machine shed.

I didn’t know it would be harder than I thought to find my cousins’ house just off of 53rd Street in the dark. And I left the piece of paper with his phone numbers at home on the kitchen counter.

Then it occurred to me I could get arrested for driving slowly through these neighborhoods in the dark of night.

Finally, I found the right street and house—but no one was up, so I waited until the lights came on.

Someone made the comment that it would be nice if it could rain...

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It's been 40 years since school days

Written by Joel Klaassen Wednesday, 15 August 2007 04:30

It will be 40 years this fall since I last attended school full time. It was my senior year at Kansas Uni­ver­sity. Little did I know then that it was my last real vacation. That doesn’t mean I goofed off. It was just that work wasn’t the main focus of my waking hours.

This week as school begins in earnest around these parts, we need to watch out for the kids—on foot and on bikes. They have other things on their minds than looking out for us.

I had been trying to figure out a way to have wireless Internet anywhere I go. I knew Alltel had it available with its phone card, but it only worked with PC laptops and not Macintosh.

One day when I was lamenting this problem with my Web guy, he mentioned someone who might be able to...

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It's been nine years already

Written by Joel Klaassen Wednesday, 08 August 2007 09:21

This week’s edition of the Free Press marks the end of our ninth year of publishing and next week begins the 10th. To celebrate, maybe we’ll start giving them away next year. Wait, we already do.

Our readers used to ask how we were able to give the paper away in the early years. No one asks anymore. The free paper in Marion County is now part of the culture.

From our audits we know that about 80 percent of the people who receive the Free Press read it on a regular basis and respond to the advertising in it. The other 20 percent either don’t read any newspaper or don’t like us for some reason or another.

Still that is a tremendous percentage of folks who are actively involved with our product. And many advertisers know this and...

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