As we approach the final days of 2023, I don’t think I have ever been as busy as I have the last few weeks.

Our first year as owners of a small weekly newspaper has been nothing short of fantastic. We’ve been blessed to have great community support for not only our coverage in the pages of this publication every week, but also strong support on our special projects we do outside of our average 16 pages per week of news.

By my rough count, we published at least 33 special projects this year — more than 200 pages of inserted tab and broadsheet sections. From New Year’s Greetings to Farm & Ranch, the Graduation tab to Veterans day, Progress to Best of Cassville (which can be found in this week’s edition), our projects run the gamut of intended audiences.

In just the last three weeks, we have been finalizing three projects: Best of Cassville, our annual Santa Letters section, and a brand new product, Through the Years: The Magazine.

This time last year, my wife and co-owner, Jordan, and I struggled to find time to sleep. We were getting all our business needs in order and preparing to take over the Democrat, but we spent an equal amount of late nights brainstorming ideas to structure our coverage and revenue expectations, all while balancing what we can do in a feasible work week with two daughters, one of whom was just learning to walk.

We brought back many projects we have done in the past, like Unsung Heroes, Senior Living and Working Women. We also added relevant editorial to said projects. We’d never done original stories for any of those three tabs, but this year, we featured local people and organizations doing great work in those industries.

Most of our special sections before had stories, but it was all canned content with no specific ties to Cassville or Barry County. The way we looked at it, the more our content is made about you, the more enjoyable it will be.

With that in mind, I started workshopping some new special sections to highlight even more of our friends and neighbors. Most of them were big hits!

Some additions were easy, like adding a Winter Sports Tab. We had fall and spring, so why not winter?

Of the others we added, two were my favorites — Staycation and 15 Under 15. I expected the interest in Staycation, a one-stop guide to all resorts, campgrounds and lodges in Barry County, to be fairly high given all that information has never been collected and presented in one place. It turned out to be our biggest tab of the year at 20 pages, and the participation advertising-wise far exceeded my expectation.

As for 15 Under 15, that section was inspired by my own personal experience being selected as one of THV’s 11 Amazing Kids when I was a freshman at Little Rock Central High School. I felt like quite the rockstar with a camera crew interviewing me during my intro to art class, then filming one of my soccer games later that week.

Truth be told, I didn’t care whether we sold a single ad in that section — I just wanted to pass that feeling of appreciation along to deserving youth in our area. I was proud and humbled to see how many parents, family and friends nominated a child they know, and I am extremely excited to repeat the process in 2024.

By far the largest and riskiest project we have launched this year comes out next week, conceptualized and brought to you by Jordan.

The first Through the Years: The Magazine is being printed this week and we hope to have it distributed throughout the community and available in our office before Christmas.

I could not be more proud of Jordan for the amount of work she put into this first edition. And, it never ceases to amaze me how she went from walking in our doors only 5 years ago with zero experience to now publishing her own magazine and co-owning a newspaper so well-supported by the community and well-respected in the industry.

Her ability to set her mind on a goal and achieve it is an inspiration to me as we continue on our professional and personal journey together.

With the Best of Cassville out today and the magazine to the printer, Jordan is currently typing up Santa Letters for our final special project of the year, also one of our favorites. I’ll be building that section and next week’s issue from a rental house in Florida, as we leave tonight for my sister’s baby shower and hope to make a stop by the beach for a day on our way back home.

After our 21-guest Thanksgiving and all these projects, I’m looking forward to taking a deep breath of ocean air to reset my head as we embark on year two of ownership.

I hope we make it an even better one!

Kyle Troutman has served as the editor of the Cassville Democrat since 2014 and became Publisher in 2023. He was named William E. James/Missouri Outstanding Young Journalist for daily newspapers in 2017, and he won a Golden Dozen Award from ISWINE in 2022. He may be reached at 417-847-2610 or ktroutman@cassville-democrat. com.