This weekend, I attended the Kansas Press Association convention for the second time as publisher of the I-R.

Friday night was filled with trivia, which I am impressively terrible at, and Saturday was filled with breakout sessions.

I won’t bore you with the sessions I attended: editorial writing, advertising roundtable and some legal gibberish. What I will tell you about is the awards banquet Saturday night.

Yes, as we reported a month or so ago, the I-R snagged 10 awards for the 2022 year. The one I am most proud of continues to be Bill Beckmeyer’s third place finish in the editorial cartoon category.

When we find out about our awards, all we are told is what place our newspaper won. We do not know who else won until the banquet.

At the banquet, I was sitting next to a friend who wrote for many years at the Wichita Eagle as our very own Bill was announced third in the cartoon category. Do you know who won first and second place? The Wichita Eagle.

They are a talented group of individuals, and without doubt deserve the recognition.

Yet, I remain so proud of Bill and the work he does weekly for our paper. Just look at the top of the page!

Every week, I open A4 to work on the editorial page, and usually the first thing I do is have a good laugh about whatever Bill has come up with. If I’m being truthful, sometimes he has to explain it to me, but usually, it’s just a good old-fashioned laugh.

That’s the point. Throughout the news pages, we strive to tell news stories and keep our opinion to ourselves, but on the editorial page, I can write in first person (yay!), we can share opinions and we can be a bit irreverent and poke fun at current national (or local) situations via an editorial cartoon.

I suppose I will break my word and share one tidbit from the editorial breakout session I attended ... a colleague told me that very few editorial pages in Kansas have active or local content. I looked at him, stunned. Seriously? I thought that’s just what we were supposed to do as newspapers.

This publisher also told me, some papers fill the editorial page with non-local content and call it a day.

Now, to be fair, some weeks I slide in the “Insight” column from the Kansas Farm Bureau. Others, I’ll use an editorial from the Kansas Reflector. But when we have an opportunity to use local content, I always take it!

So, thank you for reading. Thank you for contributing and thank you for those who engage via letters to the editor.

As a reminder, starting June 16, all letters to the editor must be less than 600 words.

Additionally, letters to the editor relating to elections will cease one week prior to the election. For the 2023 elections, the last day to run letters is July 20 for the Aug. 1 election and Oct. 26 for the Nov. 7 election.

Bonar is the editor/publisher of the I-R and can be reached via email at kbonar@indyrepnews.com.