How This Newspaper Gets to Your Mailbox/Newsstand
The process by which this newspaper ends up inside over 5,000 mailboxes every Tuesday and Friday is quite a feat.
For 99 years The Fayette County Record has been printed and delivered in different forms and fashions.
Nowadays, the newspaper is built on computer and the pages are electronically sent to the Bryan Eagle newspaper Monday mornings at 8 a.m. for the Tuesday edition.
And depending on circumstances in Bryan, either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning for our Friday edition.
It takes just a couple of hours for the printing press in Bryan to make metal plates from our electronic pages, slap them on their massive printing press, and print 6,000 copies of our newspaper every edition.
Once a month, on the second Friday edition of every month, we actually get 13,000 copies printed and send a free copy to even non-subscribers in Fayette County.
Bobby Bedient of Winchester heads to Bryan from La Grange in a delivery van to pick up the newspapers twice a week.
Last Monday he braved icy roads to get the newspaper back here from Bryan.
When he gets back to La Grange (usually around 11 a.m. Mondays and Thursdays) the back half of our newspaper office really gets busy as 10 folks work to slap a individual mail sticker on every subscriber’s newspaper and then bundle those newspapers up for delivery to 11 local post offices before the end of the day.
We also send out about 1,000 issues of our newspaper to about 50 newsstands in convenience stores, restaurants, laundromats. etc. all around Fayette County and into Colorado, Bastrop and Lee counties.
That team that gets all those papers where they need to go is led by: Publisher Regina Keilers (whose family bought the newspaper back in 1976) and Circulation Manager Theresia Karstedt (who has been here for 14 years) and also includes:
Jo Ann Mueller (who has worked here for 21 years)
Jessica Montez (who has worked here for a year and half)
Lou Ann Adcox (who has worked here for eight years)
Leigh Ann Bedient (who has worked here for four years)
Bobby Bedient (who has worked here for eight years)
George Kana (who has worked here for 14 years)
Nicol Krenek (who has worked here for a year)
Jesse Montez (who has worked here for a year)
Our folks scatter to the post offices of La Grange, Ellinger, Fayetteville, Round Top, Carmine, Warda, Schulenburg, Flatonia, Weimar, Smithville and Giddings in their vehicles loaded down with mail bags full of newspapers.
It is only in this way that we are able to ensure readers get their newspapers in the mail on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Special complimentary bundles of newspaper each edition (some paid for by generous local businesses) are taken to area nursing homes, the hospital and La Grange High School.
Unfortunately readers farther outside of Fayette County sometimes get their print newspapers a day or two later, and those out of state sometimes face a long postal delay in getting their news from home.
Speaking of out of state subscribers, we have a lot, and many choose to get their Fayette County Record newspaper digitally to avoid delays, but we still have print subscribers in 28 states outside of Texas including eight in California, one up in Washington State and some as far east as Connecticut and New York State. It’s interesting that the newspaper created in La Grange is going to all those places - twice a week.
From the moment one issue of the newspaper is sent off to the press, work begins on the process all over again – at least 103 times a year.
COUNTDOWN TO 100
On Nov. 2, 2021 the Fayette County Record will begin its 100th year of continuous publication. As we countdown the final months toward that amazing milestone, we’ll be running columns looking back at interesting aspects of our history.