CHALK CREEK — The Ledger is a weekly newspaper. It comes out on Thursday, it costs fifty cents at the counter, and it has come out every Thursday since the spring of 1887, when this was still Montana Territory. That makes the paper two years older than the state and older than anybody in town, though Helen Edington, who turns ninety on Sunday and is on this week's front page, is gaining on it.

I have owned, edited and published the Ledger since 1979. Before that I spent fourteen years on the copy desk of a daily in Spokane, writing headlines about places I had never been. I came here to write about a place I live. In twenty years the Ledger has covered two new schools, one flood, one fire at the elevator, a good many state tournaments (two won), a few thousand weddings, births and funerals, and every school board meeting held in that time. I attended all of them. I stayed awake for most.

The paper covers Chalk Creek, a town of about 3,000, and the wheat farms and ranches around it. It runs twelve pages most weeks, sixteen at fair time and Christmas. About 1,900 families take it, by mail or from the racks at the grocery, the cafe and both gas stations. We don't cover the world. Other people do that. We cover who got married, who got elected, who won the steer show and what the council did with your water bill, and we try to spell the names right.

We put this page on the World Wide Web in June so that people who have moved away can see what is going on at home. Since then we've had e-mail from former Chalk Creekers in Arizona, Oregon, Alaska and Germany, and one from a man in Ohio who has never been here and just likes small papers. We like him too.

The Ledger is written by the people who read it, more than most of them know. Half of what's in the paper every week came in the door from somebody who thought we ought to know. Here's how.

The deadline for news is Monday at 5 p.m. for that Thursday's paper. Later than that, we'll try, but the pages go to the printer Wednesday morning and the printer doesn't wait for anybody.

Weddings and engagements run free, with a photograph, if we get them within three months of the date. Forms are at the office, or e-mail us the facts: who, when, where, the parents, and where the couple will live. Write your name on the back of the photograph in pencil, not ballpoint, which comes through on the front. We return every photograph.

Births run free. So do anniversaries of 25 years and up.

Obituaries run free, and as long as I own this paper they always will. The funeral homes usually bring them in, but families are welcome to write their own. We print what you write, corrected for spelling and our style, and if we need to change anything that matters we'll ask you first.

4-H, clubs and churches: club reporters, send your meeting reports within two weeks of the meeting, while they're still news. County fair results run in the fair issue. Church news and the community calendar are free; give us a week's notice.

Sports: coaches and parents, call or e-mail scores by Sunday night. If your child scored the winning basket and it isn't in the paper, it's because nobody told us.

Cards of thanks run in the classifieds for $5. See the advertising rates.

About once a week somebody asks why we don't put the whole paper on here. It's a fair question, and here is the answer.

First, the paper costs money to make: newsprint, the printer, postage, gas to drive the pages to the press, and the light bill. The fifty cents at the counter and the twenty-two dollars a year in the mailbox pay for it, along with the ads. If it's all free on the computer, before long there's no Ledger to put on the computer.

Second, most of our readers aren't on the Internet, and most of the ones who are already take the paper. This page is for the ones who moved away, and for anyone thinking about moving here.

Third, some things belong on paper. You can't clip an obituary off a screen and keep it in the family Bible, or put the honor roll on the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a cow.

Fourth, it would take me another day a week to type it all in, and there aren't any more days in the week. I checked.

A fellow at the state press meeting told me last spring that in ten years every paper will be on the computer and nobody will buy the paper kind. I heard the same thing about radio when I was a boy and about television when I was a young man. He may be right. Until then the front page goes up here every Wednesday night, and the rest of the paper is at the counter Thursday morning, where it has been since 1887.

— Mark Carmean, Editor and Publisher

Mail a check to The Chalk Creek Ledger, Chalk Creek, Montana. The post office knows where we are. Or stop in and pay at the counter.

College students pay the out-of-county rate. We'll stop the paper in May if you ask and start it again in September if you remind us.

Moving? Send us the old address and the new one two weeks ahead, or the paper goes to the old house and the new people read it.

Display ads by the column inch, from $4.10 on a year's contract. Classifieds are $4 for twenty words. We set your ad for you at no charge.

Deadline for all ads: Monday noon.

Full advertising rates

On Main Street, across from the post office, in the brick building with our name painted on the window.

Monday through Friday, 8 to 5. Mondays until 6, because it's deadline. Wednesday mornings we're at the printer, and the door may be locked until about one.

Phone: (555) 555-0104
E-mail: [email protected]

E-mailed news is welcome. Put your name and town at the bottom, the same as a letter, or it doesn't run.