Hello there!
I believe it’s valuable to our readers to know our process behind the scenes, so this is where I let you know I’m the wizard behind the newsletter curtain, as it were.
What many of our readers may not realize about The Melody is that our small reporting staff is responsible for nearly every aspect of the newspaper we work to get in your hands every Friday. (Except the advertising, which is managed by Dave Hedge. You met him in last week’s newsletter.) Even our printing presses are in Middle Georgia, and our press workers are employed by the Georgia Trust for Local News.
At many — if not most — newspapers, the responsibility of designing the newspaper is designated to folks whose sole job it is to lay out pages. For local and regional newspapers, those pages are commonly designed by offices based in different states that have little-to-no contact with the editorial staff. Here at The Melody, we want to have our hands on every step of the publication process.
What this does is ensure that our work — where it’s positioned, which fonts we use, what photos are displayed — is presented in a way that we believe benefits our audience. If you see a story on the front page, it’s because we think it’s important that you read it.
Our reporters and editors were trained in Adobe InDesign, a program that has been used to design newspapers across the world for a couple of decades, and news design principles in order to piece together each page. Most of our staff had never touched the program before coming to The Melody.
After we lay pages out, we sit around a table to edit them the old fashioned way: with pen and paper. Our staff often gets into (sometimes passionate) discussions about which words we should use, why an editorial decision was made or where punctuation belongs. It’s not uncommon for us to walk away that day having learned something new.
All that to say, if you ever notice something such as a design quirk within the pages of The Melody, you can know that your community newspaper was made from scratch with love. Cheesy? Maybe, but it’s true.
If you ever want to learn more about our process or have a question, feel free to reach out to any of us. You can reach out to me at maryhelene@maconmelody.com or by responding to this email.
Best, Mary Helene Hall
Middle Georgia Reporter The Macon Melody
P.S. Here is what our pages usually look like after line editing from our staff. This is from last week's issue.
Take care,
| 
