Publisher's Point Of View
Robert Allan Hooftallen

It's later than I thought it was and so quiet that the seconds that tick from the clock on the wall are like falling boulders.

It is this environment that provides the spark for my imagination. I am seeking to drain myself while most of the rest of the world is recharging for a new day.

I am in the post-midnight, pre-dawn comfort zone, a fleeting window of time when my creativity punches in and everything else punches out.

It's ironic that the ticking clock is haunting me with it s sounds and not its reality. I contemplate destroying it both because of its 19th century sound and its reminder of its control over me, particularly at this time of the week. While that would amuse me immensely, it would also eliminate my weekly adversary totally and who knows how that would affect this ritual.

Now it hangs on the wall without motion, without batteries.

So focused I am on the work of bringing my creativity to the surface that the new quiet is a victory in this unusual part of my vocation. I am thinking and writing with ease now, a sign that could be the genesis of a creative burst.

Why it takes so long and why I have to work so hard to get here both puzzles and worries me. This realm I'm in does not welcome visitors and is the source for so much misunderstanding among my family, friends and colleagues.

And while I wish it wasn't that way, I'm not entertaining suggestions for change.

I own, and am owned by, the 30 sleepless hours leading to the completion of this product. There's no room for anything else. The very nature of it needing all of my attention keeps everything else in the world at bay. And that's a level of safety I gladly welcome by Thursday.

In other times, this piece of writing was my creativity's only offspring, the rest of the week's work a half-hearted exercise in what seemed like futility to me- all the things that the other newspapers already do.

The luxury of focusing on one piece of work for several hours, sometimes as many as six or eight at one shot, is one this business doesn't afford in the traditional sense of what working hours ought to be. So I take the time where I can get it to pour myself into something that only I can do and often something I didn't know I could do.

There's good stuff routinely in this newspaper and all newspapers for that matter, but very little of it charms me anymore and even less of it has anything at all to do with why I'm sitting here.

For a good portion of the last four years, my need to create a unique piece of work was satisfied by the novelty of this infant publication and the genuine sense of pride and accomplishment that came at week's end when, against tremendous odds at times, we completed yet another newspaper.

Those days are gone. And for me personally there's no novelty or glory in paying someone to press cheap ink into over-priced paper, spreading words that, in many instances, people have already read.

I realize now that this area doesn't really need another newspaper. Frankly, the publications that have been publishing the news in this area for the last several decades do a commendable job.

Before this recent romance with visual art consumed me, my "letter" was what I poured myself into because I thought it was the thing that most effectively set us apart- a sign of life in an industry stuck in a century-long coma; a piece that contrasts cold matter-of-factlyness with passion.

I never planned on giving up that aspect of this work and hopefully this week marks a turn in the other direction. I want to believe there's enough creative energy in me for both thoughtful writing and interesting visual art, but so far that hasn't been the case.

What I have refused to do is give you half of each and try to convince myself that I'm giving you my best in both.

Because, frankly, that's what I see too much of around me, not only in this industry, but everywhere- people doing half of what they are capable of in half the time, never giving their work a chance to become something greater than what has been done before them.

But that is the trend and perhaps it is the only way to survive in an age when large chunks of our time have to be "invested" in doing whatever, at whatever level of excellence, in whatever time frame under whatever circumstances - just as long as there's an exchange of C-notes at the end of whatever time period.

And so my biggest struggle is for this not to become that for me. It not only should be, it needs to be, more art and passion than news releases and clip art.

Because if it's not, then you're wasting a dollar and I'm wasting a whole lot more.

We hope you can appreciate the difference you see here. And we hope you'll give us time to prove we can do better.