By Sharna Fulton

From the editor:

Dear readers,

I’m stepping away for a bit to attend to some important personal business: the birth of my first child.

Things will be different around here for the next seven days or so. Dena Mellick, one of our contributors, will oversee the day-to-day operations of the site while I’m gone.

It will be business as usual while I’m gone.

– We will still be covering the news. If you have something going on, please let Dena know. She can be reached at [email protected]. We will also be publishing some freelance stories as well. If you have a story that you think we should write, preferably one that has a photo and a few sources that are easy to get a hold of, this is an excellent time to send it our way.

– We will still be updating social media. Our Facebook and Twitter feeds will still be active. We also have an Instagram account for no apparent reason.

– We will still be selling ads. Have I mentioned what a great time it is to buy online advertising? We had 93,000 unique views in February and 234,000 page views. That’s just phenomenal for a local news website with one full time employee (that’d be me). To learn more about advertising, click here. To buy an ad, contact Advertising Director Jeff Cochran at 404-441-7389 or email him at [email protected]. It’s also a good time to sign up to become a paid subscriber. Subscribers, for a mere $6 each month, are helping me provide news about your community while I’m away.

[adsanity id=16727 align=aligncenter /]

During my absence, there will be a couple of minor changes:

– Comments won’t be moderated quickly. I’ve gone ahead and pre-approved comments from many of our regular commenters so their submissions won’t get stuck in the moderation que. If you have registered your email using Disqus (our commenting system), you can skip the mod que unless your comment contains a link to another website. If you haven’t registered and you’re trying to comment for the first time, you’ll just have to wait. I repeat: registering is the best way to get your comments posted. For more information on how to register, click here.

If you like sharing your opinion online, have you considered writing us a signed letter to the editor? Letters to the editor are great for:

• Thanking someone. Did a Decatur Police officer or Firefighter provide a crucial assist? Did a city employee make the  permitting process a breeze? Did the clerk at the store chase you out to your car to let you know you left your wallet/purse/child in the shopping cart? Did a restaurant serve you a meal that you can simultaneously add to and cross off your bucket list? Letters to the Editor are great for this. For an example, click here.
• Airing a political opinion. We will run any signed letter to the editor, regardless of topic. We reserve the right to edit for swears, but will award bonus points for constructive cursing. For an example, click here.
• Letting someone know about an upcoming event. Please limit these to free events that are open to the public. For an example of this, click here.

– Event submissions will be answered when I can get to them. If you send an email to [email protected] for an event listing, I will see them but there’s no guarantee on whether I’ll get them posted in a timely fashion.

– I will not be taking phone calls related to Decaturish. The best way to reach us will be [email protected].

A few tidbits for those of you who care about the details of my personal life.

– We do not know if we are having a boy or a girl. I don’t have a preference, but I am hoping for safe delivery and a healthy child. I’ll share the news about that on our Facebook page.

– We do have names picked out, but I’m withholding them until the baby is here. Also, I may have to call an audible on the boy’s name. There’s some haggling going on there.

– I plan on doing Decaturish for the foreseeable future. Plans change, of course, but my current plans account for the birth of my child. I’m not just siring offspring. I’m starting up an 18-year-long internship program.

Thank you in advance for your kindness and understanding this week. I’m very excited to be a dad and thankful that I’ll be able to step away from this for a bit to get to know the new addition to our family.

Take care.

And have I mentioned it’s a good time to buy an ad? Because it totally is.