Punctuating Record’s First Century With Exclamation Mark

This issue of The Fayette County Record marks the finish line of our 100th year of continuous publication.

Next week’s Tuesday edition begins Year No. 101. It’s a good time to pause and reflect on the past (See Elaine Thomas’ great feature on the Record’s first half century on Page 1), and also celebrate the present era. You may have seen the ads we’ve been running for our 101st anniversary party coming up next Friday Nov. 4 here at the Record office from 1-5 p.m.

Whether you are a longtime subscriber or just happened to pick up this paper on one of the 60 or so newsstands we have around Fayette County (and now even beyond in places like Weimar, Giddings and Smithville) consider this your personal invitation to join us for the party.

Record reporter Andy Behlen will be outside the building barbecuing wagyu brisket, from cattle raised by our ad director Becky Weise. That will be free and we’ll also have free samples of numerous local businesses – Maeker’s Sausage, Sweet Baby Bundt Cakes, Busted Oak wine and beer from La Grange Brewing. Local writers Elaine Thomas and Judge Ed Janecka will be on hand signing copies of their new books. Come and thank them for what they do to chronicle local history. In addition to the party being a celebration of our milestone (getting to our 101st year means there’s been more than 10,000 different editions of The Record published since November 1922), we are also celebrating our future. Last year The Record became the largest twice-weekly newspaper in the state of Texas in terms of paid readership, and the 31st largest newspaper in the state overall – even counting the big city dailies. At present, an average of 5,098 people buy a copy of the Record every edition. Next spring as circulation figures are publicized by The Texas Press Association, we will find out where The Record ranks in readership among all newspapers in Texas, but we are certainly going to climb. Just in the last 12 moths The Record has leap-frogged metro newspapers like Amarillo (4,935 paid circulation), Abilene (4,499) and Wichita Falls (4,779). Just for some perspective, Amarillo has a population of 201,000. Fayette County’s population

is 24,687. People here still care about knowing what’s going on in their communities in a way few other places do.And once a month (on the second Friday) we still send out a free newspaper to every home and post office box in Fayette County, in the hopes of continuing to build on that sense of community. The striking number of people reading this newspaper is a great source of pride for us who labor day after day to get you the news 103 issues a year, but also a reminder of the immense public responsibility we have to try to do it well – like we have for our first century and now onward into our second.

Jeff Wick is the editor of The Record. Email him at: jeff@fayettecountyrecord.com