FROM THE PUBLISHER

This issue of The Times marks, for me, the completion of two years as the paper’s editor and one year as its owner and publisher. For once, the new year brings no big change in my role here.

It has been a great pleasure to help bring news and information to our readers in Walla Walla and Columbia Counties the past two years. (And let me not forget the many readers around the country who read The Times to keep up with what we’re doing here.) It’s a privilege to be able to provide a voice for what’s happening in the Touchet Valley.

This is a team effort of course. Our Waitsburg reporter, Dena Wood, is a longtime resident of this great town and has done an outstanding job the last year and a half reporting on what the “one of a kind” people in Waitsburg are up to.

Kevin Steffanson joined us earlier this year and has done a great job working with our advertisers to help make their marketing efforts as effective as possible.

We have been blessed with the work of several great freelance contributors this year, and one of them is joining our staff in 2015. Dian Ver Valen, who once served as editor of The Times, is rejoining the paper as our Dayton/Columbia County reporter.

I want to give a special shout out to a few other important people who have made The Times better than it would have been:

Columnist (and Waitsburg High School student) Emma Philbrook is a supremely talented writer who will be greatly missed when she heads off to whichever college is fortunate enough to receive her talents.

Our pages have been graced with the outstanding work of Photographer Nick Page this year, and we will continue to present his work as much as we can.

Designer Vanessa Heim helped us create a great new layout for The Times in 2014, and she has also worked with several of our advertisers to make their products and services stand out.

Most of all, I want to thank all of our readers for the great support you give us throughout the year. We do this for you!