If you’ll pardon me for just one column, I’d like to offer a couple of personal thank yous. These thank yous are to you, our readers, our advertisers and story subjects, and to the colleagues and friends with whom I work here at the newspaper.

What warrants the thank yous and this column? For the fourth year in a row, your newspaper, the Shelby County Reporter, has been awarded the Alabama Press Association’s General Excellence Award — the top prize in the association’s annual Better Newspaper Contest. Such an accomplishment is always a direct reflection of the community a newspaper serves, as well as the quality of the people producing it. In the case of this newspaper, both groups are deserving of sincere thanks.

Growing up in a newspaper family, one of my lifelong goals has always been to someday work for a newspaper that earned the press association’s top prize. Now, thanks to you and to those who work here at the newspaper, I’ve had the opportunity to see four consecutive awards earned, and it is such an humbling experience.

We still have much work ahead of us, both online, in newsprint and in our expanding magazine work, to continue to serve Shelby County in the manner in which you expect and deserve from your hometown newspaper and website, and we are committed to do just that.

The greatest award a person in our business can receive is for a member of our community to log onto our website, subscribe to our newspaper or drop a quarter in one of our newspaper racks, as this is the truest indication of whether we are meeting the demands of those we serve. Thankfully, more of you have been doing that each week than ever before.

I’m immensely proud to publish the newspaper in such a caring, giving, innovative, growing county as Shelby County, and to do so alongside a remarkably talented and committed team. Thank you both for allowing me to do so. The best days are ahead for Shelby County as well as for its newspaper.