Peanut Fest is winding down today. The event never ceases to amaze me. Having worked on a festival committee in another community for several years, I’m well aware of the hard work that goes into successfully pulling such an event off, and the one on which I worked paled in size comparison to Peanut Fest. So I can only begin to imagine the work.

Like any big project it takes good organization, planning and proper management of all the details and the effort is well worth it. Peanut Fest is about celebrating life in Suffolk and we have much to celebrate as our community continues to enjoy tremendous prosperity while much of the state and nation are mired in if not recession then at least stagnation.

Here at the News-Herald we are beginning our biggest effort of the year, production of our Horizons edition, which publishes in February and is similar to Peanut Fest in many respects. For a newspaper our size Horizons is a huge undertaking and takes months of planning, detailed organization and aggressive management. The efforts of all departments at the newspaper – circulation, advertising, editorial, composition, press, and accounting – need to be coordinated so that deadlines are strictly observed and quality is maintained.

Between now and mid-February every person in our advertising and news departments will be expected to do something on Horizons every day – whether it’s arranging an interview, writing a story or calling on an advertising prospect. All this while at the same time maintaining the standards and meeting the expectations we have set for ourselves in producing our daily newspaper. We ask a lot of them and they never fail to deliver. Also, like Peanut Fest, Horizons is a celebration of life in Suffolk – albeit sans the beer, shrimp and Hooters girls. Horizons’ content is focused on positive aspects of our community and most importantly the people who make it that way. Once again this year we will attempt to involve our readers by asking for submissions, contests and advice.

While we take pride in Horizons each year it’s not merely a Suffolk News-Herald project, but a Suffolk project because without the cooperation and support of story subjects and the business community we could not pull it off.

So have fun today on the final day of Peanut Fest ’02. We hope you enjoy our community and we hope you look forward to Horizons ’03 with as much gusto as you do Peanut Fest. We plan to make it equally exciting. Who knows, we may even put the Hooters girls on the front cover.

Andy Prutsok is the editor and publisher of the Suffolk News-Herald.