Today is a special day for our newspaper. Our first issue of The North Chilton Advertiser was published today, Wednesday, Aug. 19.

It’s an exciting new venture for our company and one we hope will better serve our readers in Jemison and Thorsby.

The free weekly paper, which is distributed on Wednesday, will allow us to print more news, photos and information from those communities on the northern side of the county.

The paper will be available at schools, offices and businesses throughout both communities. The racks are orange-yellow and green, making them hard to miss.

Our newsroom and sales department have been working on this project for months, but we still need your help for it to be a success.

We want to print as much reader submitted news and photos as possible. As you may notice in the first issue, we have reached out to many people and community leaders, but there’s still work to do.

I encourage any churches, scout groups or youth leagues to share your events with us.

We also want to print as many birthdays, engagements, weddings, anniversaries and other celebrations as possible.

This first issue is by no means perfect, but we have big plans for the North Chilton Advertiser, and we want the community to be involved in the growing process.

Our goal is to get as many faces in the paper each week as possible.

And don’t worry, Clanton Advertiser subscribers, we still plan to carry stories for those communities in our daily paper. Think of the North Chilton Advertiser as a supplement to what we do every day in the Clanton Advertiser.

Please submit news to newsroom@chiltonadvertiser.com. Also, please call me with news tips or questions at 755-5747.

– Justin Averette’s column appears each Wednesday. You can reach him at justin.averette@clantonadvertiser.com.