In many of my columns through the years, I have often tried to pull back the curtain on how a newspaper — and the media — work in covering the news and sports, how newspapers are created each day and the thought process we go through in selecting the stories we cover each and every day.

I am not sure if this makes for interesting reading, but it provides you — our readers — some explanation of how we often operate.

While there is the very important business side to this business, our number one goal is to provide information on events, coverage of our elected leaders and news that hopefully goes to improve people’s lives.

Although that is our goal, we sometimes fall short, but understanding our aspirations can help you make us better.

As you have seen, we have run ads asking for photos from our readers of special events in their lives and the lives of their friends and family. We’ve asked for photos from school, birthday photos and events at work.

And, in the past few weeks, we have been so pleased with the response from our readers. We’re working hard to get all photos in the paper as quickly as possible, but space is sometimes limited, but, don’t worry it will get in.

News tips are also very welcomed and extremely valuable.

With just a small number of us working in the newsroom, we unfortunately cannot be everywhere, nor to we hear everything. And, by no means, do we know of everything going on.

An example would be the article in Tuesday’s edition about the tragic accident involving the death of a 9-year-old girl in the Verbena area.

We had heard some information and were working hard to confirm some news, when some of our readers in the Verbena area called us to let us know that the young girl, in fact, had died.

In a business that provides news sometimes without emotion, it is important that we were too horrified by the news and offer our prayers to the family and friends of this young girl taken way before her time.

But, without our readers, we would not have been able to know of the news and inform the public of the tragic news.

The Clanton Advertiser is described as a community daily newspaper, with the emphasis on community.

As we’ve said before, this newspaper belongs to the community and we are simply the stewards of the newspaper at this time. It is you — our readers and friends — who help this make the newspaper better and better every day.

So, keep up the good work in sending us the news and letting us know what is going on in your lives. You never know, it may just make it on the front page.

– Reeves is editor and general manager of The Clanton Advertiser. His column appears each Wednesday.