Much has changed over the past 30 years. Scott County has seen elected officials come and go. New schools have been built and old schools have been torn down. Scandal has rocked public office and crimes of unthinkable nature have been committed in the local community. The Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area has been established.
One thing that has not changed in that time frame is the printed source Scott Countians turn to for their first news each week: The Independent Herald.
 The Independent Herald's first issue in June 1976. |
In those days, Jeffers served as president of the company, Duncan as vice president, Lay as treasurer and Roy as secretary. Paul Roy was also the publisher and editor of the newspaper, and continued those duties until April 2004, when Roy turned editor duties over to Ben Garrett in order to free up more time to focus on the business end of the newspaper. Another mainstay: Debbie Roy, Paul's wife, has served as news editor since the paper was established in '76.
In 1980, the newspaper moved from its office on Second Street in Oneida to its present-day office at 19391 Alberta Street, at the "bottom of the Four Lane" in Oneida.
 The Independent Herald's current office on Alberta Street in 1980. |
Today, the Independent Herald's staff consists of Paul Roy, Publisher; Deborah Roy, News Editor; Ben Garrett, Editor; Cora Queener, Composition; and LeEtta Boyatt, Sports. The paper is a 5,000-circulation weekly, published each Thursday. It is distributed to local newsstands on Wednesday afternoon and delivered via mail to local subscribers on Thursday.
In 2003, the Independent Herald took advantage of another change that occurred over the past 30 years: Pageination. Like the hand-fed presses and Linotype machines that came and went before it, the days of "paste-up" composition began to be left by the wayside in the mid 1990s, with the invention of the PDF file. Introduced by Adobe in 1992, the PDF became the method of choice for prepress work and remote printing after Knoxville-native Kevin Slimp developed a method of remote printing using the PDF. By the turn of the new century, most dailies and some smaller weeklies were taking advantage of the new technology.
In May 2003, the glue, wax, scissors, waxer and paste-up sheets went out the door as the Independent Herald moved to the new digital format, electronically composing its pages and sending them to press (in Somerset, Kentucky) via the Internet. Shortly thereafter, the newspaper's Canon 35mm cameras were replaced with Canon Digital Rebels, completing the move entirely into the digital realm.
 The Independent Herald's office today. |
Today, there is no paste-up room and no dark room; what used to take two separate rooms and hours to complete can now be done without leaving the computer.
Currently, the Independent Herald is composed each week on Apple Macintosh PowerMac G5 computers running OS X, and using the latest available editions of Adobe's Creative Suite 2, which includes InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Adobe Acrobat Professional.
THE NEW PAPER
From the June 13, 1976 edition of the Independent Herald
The emergence of a new weekly newspaper in Scott County is not the result of a grudge against any faction, nor is it backed by men with either personal or political axes to grind. As a beginning newspaper, the Independent Herald's function is to inform; as a new business, we intend to operate on a sound financial basis.
 The Independent Herald today. |
Though we will, from time to time, editorialize on local issues, it will not be an attempt to mold public opinion. We reserve the right guaranteed us by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, to express our views on issues that affect the lives of our readers. By the same token, we welcome opposing viewpoints, for the Constitution did not give us freedom of the press for the sake of a few outspoken journalists, but for everyone. The framers of that nearly 200-year old document were more interested in protecting the public than the press. Like and opposing viewpoints of this newspaper will appear on the editorial page alongside our own. All responsible signed letters to the editor will be printed in the first available issue.
The Independent Herald will not endorse candidates for political office, but will make every attempt to keep our readers aware of who those candidates are and the office they are seeking. There will be a clear distinction between paid political advertisements and news reports of a candidate's decision to seek office.
Although objectivity in news reporting is a goal and not a standard, it will be our policy to strive for fairness in our reporting, regardless of our own personal views. We intend to be both a responsible newspaper and a responsive one.
The Independent Herald is published by Liberty Press, Inc., chartered as a private corporation. But insofar as the policy of this newspaper is concerned, we are a public institution — we want this to be your newspaper as well as ours. An obscure, aging politician, though speaking in a different context, said it best: All we have to sell is service.
