Onward to '18: New year is a perfect time to make good on great challenges

New opportunities abound with the birth of a new year.

Letting bygones rest allows for new perspectives to be cast toward problem solving, innovation, progress.

What we've seen over the last year is that speculation in advance of change often leads with negatives first, presenting challenges when paths to accomplishment are already cluttered with obstacles.

Perhaps we in the media can be at the forefront of the much-needed paradigm shift we hope to see for our nation this year.

We've learned that many consumers will look first to find the flaws in our reporting, rather than in the talking points of their preferred parties.

Republicans and their candidates and representatives dominated the conversation in 2017 because, frankly, they held the power. With the mid-term elections coming later this year, we will get to hear more from the other side of the aisle as they challenge the GOP-held majorities in cities and states across the country and in Washington. And our job will be to hold each of them to the same level of accountability.

At the community level, we have some growth and expansion underway as new businesses are moving into the area, the Maxwell Center is slated to open and the recovery money fought so hard for by our commissioners and state and federal representatives will continue to help Wayne County put the pieces back together as we get further removed from Hurricane Matthew.

Challenges remain, but we are on board to tackle them in new and more engaging ways for you, our readers, and we look forward to hearing from you, attending and covering your events and sharing your submitted photos and school news.

We hope that among our collective New Year's resolutions is the desire to get beyond the 2017 that saw so many of us inclined to give in to knee-jerk reactions of disdain and disgust, the eagerness to feel offended, the willingness on social media to blame and to shame those we don't know or don't like.

That is not a recipe for growth or for strength, and it's not one we are eager to digest any more of in 2018.

Here is to a positive first step, a day one proclamation that this is going to be a year of fair, accurate, timely and engaging reporting -- not to say that you will always like or agree with what you'll read -- but that it will be representative of the unbiased and unblemished truth, whether sour or sweet.

Published in Editorials on December 31, 2017 6:18 PM