I’m a big fan of forgiveness and grace – I have to be, I’m a newspaper publisher.

I’ll be the first one to admit that I – occasionally – make mistakes, perhaps more than occasionally, but the problem with my mistakes is that they’re rarely private things I can sweep under the rug.

No, I prefer my mistakes to be in 40 point type on the front page – like when I said the “FCCLA donates to food panty” instead of pantry, missing that “R” and getting a lot of them back from all the “Ribbing” I took over the next week or two.

I enjoy an occasional typo – I don’t strive to make them, and I can almost always see them in other people’s work, but I think it’s a scientific fact that it’s harder to see your own. Don’t even get me started on grammar and punctuation. There’s nothing worse than an its vs. it’s or Curtiss’ or Curtisses to ruin a family Christmas with my retired-Englishteacher mother and attorney father and sister.

It’s difficult to be a know-it-all in that company.

Either way, as we begin this great adventure, I want to assure all of you that a mistake – minor or otherwise – will never be intentional. There will be times I’ll goof up name spellings, or perhaps even make an outright typo, hopefully not in the “Jay Leno reads headlines” way that some of you might remember, but much less, and with less gusto.

Being in a public position can always be rough, I want as many people as possible to read the words that we so lovingly and painstakingly put together each week, but I also want as few people as possible to see the mistakes that I might make.

It’s a paradox that comes with the territory, and one I’ve grown rather fond of – it keeps me humble.

So, never fear as we plow into the coming months, my mistakes – typos, misspellings or even, what often happens, a contextual mishap where I completely misread the conversation, situation or happenstance and reported it wrongly. The only thing I love more than being held accountable by all of you, is admitting a mistake and correcting it to assure that my love for the truth in what we do is much more important than my pride.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t take pride in what I do – and I do have a tendency to make sure that I’m very clear in my arguments. I’ve often presented those that ask with a question: “Is what I wrote factually incorrect, or did you just not like the way I wrote it.”

If the evidence clearly points that I just goofed – I absolutely will do everything I can to correct it. If it’s a difference of opinion on a concept or turn of phrase, we might chalk that one up to a tentative agreement of disagreement.

The good news is, I don’t like to vaguely do anything, so that rarely comes up. In any case – always keep this in mind. We’ve invested in the community and county, and we intend to always do the best we possibly can to treat that investment right. I would never, ever desire to publish anything that would be factually incorrect, that undermines the very thing I’m trying to do.

Even if the “paper” had done something 50 years ago, 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago that we had done wrong and didn’t admit, that you had thought was wrong and never got resolved or that there was an instance that just left a bad taste in your mouth – I’m a big fan of “starting today” and always moving forward to improve.

I always tell my staff, I don’t mind if they make a mistake as long as they don’t make the same one twice (or three times, or in my case, sometimes, stubbornly more.)

It’s always a new day of great opportunity for grace and forgiveness – but it’s the willingness of everyone to work together, and a good helping of “benefit of the doubt” that makes being a part of a great community great!