The Smoky Mountain News won 16 advertising awards and 20 editorial awards from the N.C. Press Association in a ceremony last week, including the prestigious Public Service Award for its coverage of the flooding from Tropical Storm Fred.

The mantra since starting this newspaper has been straightforward: put out a high-quality newspaper and work like hell to make sure the business survives. If we can do both, I’ll be one of the lucky ones: doing what I love, making a living doing it and living in a place I’m fortunate to call home.

I can’t tell you how many goodbye columns I’ve read over the years from reporters leaving their posts, lamenting over the ills of the industry and trying to piece together words that can accurately explain the bittersweet feeling of walking away from their career in journalism. 

The Smoky Mountain News team won 26 editorial awards in the 2020 North Carolina Press Association News and Editorial Contest. 

Bar trivia is a cherished tradition for many in Western North Carolina, but such quiz nights are one of the many causalities of the COVID-19 closures that have swept our nation and the world at large.

Way back, way back, like three or four weeks ago, our little company was on track for its best year ever.

Our print newspaper was going strong and we had just added a new, energetic and driven sales professional. Our digital footprint was growing faster than we had expected, and our staff was brimming with new ideas to help local businesses get their message out via several online platforms. Our niche publishing sector had grown significantly in the last 12 months, adding two annual magazines and the four-time-per-year Blue Ridge Motorcycling Magazine to our portfolio.

No book review today. 

But please read this column.

It was another good year for community journalism in Western North Carolina, and writers from The Smoky Mountain News were a big part of it, taking home more editorial awards — 21 — than any other newspaper in its class. 

As we ring in the New Year, The Smoky Mountain News likes to look back and reflect on the last year of news. 

The headlines that have graced our pages in 2019 have had an important impact on the people of Western North Carolina, and our staff has taken its job of reporting and analyzing those issues seriously.

By Cory Vaillancourt • Fake News Editor | It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That’s right, it’s time for our annual installment of the Fake News Freakout, in which we take stories that sprout from a small grain of truth, harvest them, and then process them into a multi-layered cake of mockery and silliness frosted with fraud.