History continues to be recorded in these news pages
For staff at The Imperial Republican, the past two weeks have been filled with looking back. Most of the look-back has been for our Progress Issue published last week that reviewed the 2021 news headlines, business and residential improvements and observations from community leaders concerning the year ahead.
This week, the news staff voted on its Top 10 stories for the past year. Compiling the list for which staff members voted again took a good look back to the 2021 news in Chase County and those events that will be remembered for a long time.
In both cases, as staff put those two newspaper issues together, it crossed my mind how much happened in 2021 and how much of it will be important to the history of Imperial and Chase County.
COVID-19 will certainly make the history books as it now enters a third year of its scourge on this community and country. Rightly so, the past two years—with the arrival of COVID in 2020 and last year’s continued effects that went several different directions—will certainly have prominent placement in history. COVID was the top story selected by this staff for 2020 and 2021.
There were a lot of other vital stories that impacted Imperial and Chase County the past year, and our staff strived to cover those events. Newspapers and their coverage of community happenings will be looked back on generations from now as a mirror of what was happening.
Even the sale of a business, whether it’s being passed on to family members or a non-family owner, is important to record for that history. Maybe you don’t think reporting a baby’s birth to the newspaper is important. But will Facebook be around in 50 years? The 2022 newspapers will be around, and the reporting of a child or grandchild’s birth may help a family member years from now track their genealogy. It was a little disappointing to see such a short list of births listed in our 2021 Progress Issue—your neighbors who may not be on Facebook like hearing that news, too.
As we begin 2022, I wonder what news will fill these pages as the year unfolds. What will the 2022 elections bring? Is COVID still going to lead the news coverage? What direction will our NRD board take as the five-year water allocation ends after this year’s irrigation season? Will the city proceed with development of City Square? Will the Schroeder ball fields finally get the upgrades they need?
There is a lot of news ahead. The people of Imperial and Chase County have never been known for sitting still. Our staff plans to continue to be out covering the news and sports of this area.