Just a quick holidays shout-out to the Clinton Police Department.
Recently, at the rear loading dock of our building on North Broad Street, we had a trespassing/trash dumping problem. After a quick, “this is not an emergency” e-mail to Chief Sonny Ledda, the situation was handled swiftly and professionally. There should be no other expectation from the department guided by the current President of the South Carolina Police Chiefs Association and a graduate of the FBI Academy. Not a “big problem,” but concerning to us, handled in a way that protects our property rights.
We have spent considerable time and expense cleaning out 50 years of “items” from the rear area of our building, potentially to lease it to someone who needs a place for storage (it cannot be used for another office-type function). We paid to have a Dumpster located in the rear and we filled it so it could be hauled away - 4 TIMES! We are pack-rats, no doubt about it - I’ve often thought I should have “filed clips” of all my stories and pictures over the years; I now know that would take up about 100 file cabinets that I would have had to haul around among my stops in the news business (highly impractical) - thankfully, some of my work is in the cloud, or at least on micro-film. Somewhere.
Our back loading dock now is free from trash and debris, and at some point soon, another Dumpster will be there, awaiting the rest of the “stuff” we will be getting rid of. Frankly, we don’t need a building of this size. Many community newspapers are now in store fronts, downtown close to the action or elsewhere in their communities. With remote printing and PDFs we don’t need a press anymore (except I wish we had one, and some great pressmen) so really we just need phones and computers.
NOT a half century of stuff. We need, and we have, a clean, professional office. And people willing to help us protect it.
Thank You.
Vic MacDonald is Editor of The Clinton Chronicle. In June, 2025, he will observe his 50th year in community journalism. Reach him at 864-833-1900.
