If you aren't moving forward, you're moving backward. There's no staying even."

I've heard that saying for years. I'm not sure of its origins but I was reminded of it last week when I walked through out newsroom and saw a couple of new faces.

Improving our coverage for our readers is certainly a journey, not a destination. We'll never truly be satisfied with what we produce, but we're constantly trying to move forward.

That said, our newsroom is on the move. In the last couple of weeks we've made two additions that have helped our already great newsroom staff.

We've hired two reporters that will help bring more news to your doorsteps each day.

Catherine Burcham, a Chesapeake mom, has begun covering some of the myriad of things that occur in our county east of the Ironton-Ashland Bridge.

Sure, we've covered the "big stuff" that we could get to in the past, but we're moving ahead by having a person whose sole mission is to cover that area of our county.

Despite what we sometimes may think, each community in Lawrence County has more in common than in difference. Our added personnel will help provide more local news.

In addition, we've recently hired another Lawrence Countian, Sarah Musgrave, as a summer intern. Sarah is attending Marshall University and will help us with both some reporting and page design.

The pair joins the rest of our talented news staff, from long-time sports guru Jim Walker, and managing editor Mike Caldwell to reporters Teresa Moore and Justin McElroy to newsroom clerk Debbie Smathers and photographer Jessica St. James.

Changes in the newsroom are only a few of the new things we have in the works.

Many of you have seen our recent Bible Verse Search contest. The contest offers Bibles, courtesy of the businesses that sponsored the contest, to selected participants who correctly locate Bible verses listed in the contest.

It's been a popular contest so far, so it's likely to be the first, but not the last ones of these we do.

In addition, today we begin another first for the newspaper - an online auction. Details of how the auction works are inside today's print edition. But, without going into great detail, the auction will offer discounted goods and services up for bid.

Hopefully, we'll continue to keep things moving forward for your newspaper.

If you know of anything you'd like to us to change, let us hear from you.

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Ironton Tribune. He can be reached at (740) 532-1445, ext. 12 or by e-mail to kevin.cooper@irontontribune.com.