A wise person once said that in business and in life there are only two directions, forward and backward, and that standing still, or sticking with the status quo, in a rapidly changing business environment is the equivalent of going backward.

I couldn’t agree more.

The people who produce your newspaper everyday are focused on moving forward, focused on finding creative ways to deliver interesting and informative news and information to your doorstep every day of the week.

Along those lines, we’ve made several changes in the past few weeks that we think will benefit you.

Last Saturday we kicked off our expanded &uot;Faith and Family&uot; coverage. Religion and family are the cornerstone of our community – any community, for that matter. And the addition of a weekly local minister’s column, religion and church news in two pages plus a front-page story give us an opportunity to expand our coverage of this very important facet of life. We’ve had a number of readers request Dr. James Dobson’s &uot;Focus on the Family&uot; column, and we have added it to our &uot;Faith and Family&uot; coverage as well. Dr. Dobson is a well-known author and Christian oriented counselor and I’m excited his weekly column is now part of your newspaper.

Ever get ready to go to an out-of-town high school football game and realize at the last minute that you forgot to call for directions? We can help you with that too. Just pick up a copy of our Thursday or Friday newspaper and check out our game preview stories in the sports section. We’ve added a new &uot;Road Trip&uot; graphic to all high school away game preview stories with full directions.

We’ve also reorganized our daily &uot;Tracings&uot; section. It includes a special graphic each day focusing on a different segment of community events. On Sunday, you’ll find a list of public meetings for the upcoming week. It’s another item you’ve asked for and we’re happy to be able to provide it.

We need to hear more about the good things our youth are doing. That’s a statement I’ve heard more that once. And I couldn’t agree more. Our community is blessed with exceptional youth who excel in both academics and athletics and deserve recognition. We’re working on a number of projects in an attempt to make that happen.

Each Thursday we publish a feature story under the heading &uot;Bright Futures.&uot; The focus of the Bright Futures project is to identify and recognize future leaders in our community. But we need your help. If you know of a young person who is an exceptional student, person and leader, please let us know. We would like to consider them for a Bright Futures story.

We’d also like to recognize youth who participate on academic or sports teams. If your child participates on a debate, math, football, soccer, tennis, golf … any type of team, and you haven’t seen the team’s picture in The Democrat, please help us get a copy of the team picture. All we ask is that the picture be reasonably in focus and that team members be identified by row from left to right. Along those lines, we need pictures of those who excel individually in academics and sports and would appreciate you passing those photos along.

Do yourself a favor and check out our Web site at www.natchezdemocrat.com. It’s loaded with information about news, weather and events in our area and links to special state, national and international news and sports coverage. One of my favorite features is our online forum. It’s a great place to debate community issues constructively as well as seek advice from members of the community on just about anything you can think of. There’s opportunity to discuss health, parenting, religion or even something as simple as picking a good movie to see with your family. If you don’t find the topic you are looking for, you can simply start a forum topic of your own.

You’ll be hearing much more from us about the web site, so I won’t go into all the details. But I do urge you to check it out for yourself.

Todd Carpenter is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 446-5172, ext. 218 or by email at todd.carpenter@natchezdemocrat.com.