From the editor: Know local people with interesting stories? Let us know

Want to know what runs through the dank, dingy corners of a newspaper editor’s mind?
For me, it came Feb. 16 while crossing the U.S. 90 bridge from Berwick into Morgan City. Here, clearly, was a big-time bridge, with girders and rivets and a superstructure: a great symbol for a town all but surrounded by water.
I’d spent the last 24 years reporting in Lafayette, where local squabbling delayed the construction of a badly needed bridge for 50 years. And when that bridge, the one that takes Camellia Boulevard over the Vermilion River, was finally complete in 2003, the finished product was underwhelming. It hardly looks like a bridge at all.
Morgan City, I thought, looks like a place where people get things done.
Now I guess it’s my job to tell you whether things are getting done or not.
A week after that trip across the bridge, Daily Review Managing Editor Harlan Kirgan moved on to be the editor at the Eunice News. I succeeded him at The Daily Review.
Introductions are in order.
I grew up in east central Missouri, coincidentally about 50 miles from where Harlan is from. After a couple of years of junior college, I went to work for weeklies in St. Louis and Maries counties before becoming sports editor at the daily paper in Sikeston, Missouri. Thompson Newspapers, which owned the Sikeston paper then, transferred me to Enterprise, Ala., for a couple of years and then, in 1990, to the Lafayette Daily Advertiser.
I did a lot of different jobs at Lafayette, including general assignment reporting, working as city editor and becoming the paper’s first full-time online editor in 2003.
Also after arriving in Lafayette, I acquired a wife, Claire, and four children, all of whom are grown. They’ll tell you that I’m from Missouri, mules come from Missouri and this is no coincidence. Somehow, they’ve come to believe I’m hard-headed.
One of the ideas that has taken root in that hard head is that a newspaper should entertain and inform. Any editor would say that. More than that, a good newspaper has a personality. It’s the person in town that everyone likes, most of the time, and invites into their home.
Like a good friend, a newspaper should be there through good times and bad. It should be a source of comfort and support in the bad times. It should let the powers that be know when they’re falling short of their highest aspirations, and it should brag on you when you’re doing great things.
One more thing: a good friend often introduces you to a wider circle of friends. So this space, which I hope will become a weekly column, will be devoted to local people with interesting stories to tell. A similar column in the Daily Advertiser was the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. But I’ll need some help.
If you know of someone in the Tri-City area who has an interesting story to tell, please let me know at 985-384-8370 or bdecker@daily-review.com.
The same contact information is good if you have complaints, questions or ideas. I hope to see you around town sometime.

This column was written by Daily Review Managing Editor Bill Decker.