This week on October 24, I marked 36 years at your Ada News. I know at least a few of my readers will remember what Ada looked like in 1988, and who I was then, just 25 years old.

The passing years have brought changes, but the essence of the work we do at the paper hasn’t changed: bringing you the news.
One thing that’s been on my mind for a while is the idea that my photographs – photographs of you, your friends, your family, and our community – deserve to see the light of day again. It kills me to think that a really nice image I made lots of years ago is sitting in a Kodak box tucked away under my desk, might not ever be seen again.

Thinking about this is a broader context, I wonder how many newspapers and their photographs were lost or destroyed or are sitting in a storage building somewhere, only having been published once and forgotten.
I don’t yet know what I am going to do about it, but I know that if I don’t make an effort to archive and preserve and reshare the tens of thousands of images I made during the film era (before digital), it won’t get done.
I am also mindful of my own ideas about big, seemingly overwhelming projects: chisel away at them one tiny bit at a time. What if I dug out and scanned just 10 photos a week? It would get done slowly, but it would get done.
Finally, thank you for reading our newspaper. We love bringing you the news.
