National Newspaper Week is Sunday, Oct. 1, to Saturday, Oct. 7, and I find that a time to re-emphasize the importance of newspapers in your world.

The Marshall Democrat-News is your best source for local news, sports and news of the Saline County communities.

Why?

The answer is really pretty simple. We cover Saline County, Missouri, and any story of international, national, state or local importance that has a Saline County connection. There's no other paper in the county that does what we do.

We also provide that coverage on a daily basis, not weekly or semi-weekly or when the mood suits us. Our job here at the paper is to find out about Saline County -- Marshall, Sweet Springs, Slater, Arrow Rock -- and all the points in between.

That job, at times, makes us either very unpopular or very popular -- depending on the story, the timing of that story or the perception of that story. As I've said in this space before, we are the mirror -- we reflect what goes on in the community.

This mission means that other news outside Saline County must be evaluated in terms of the amount of space we have in the newspaper each day and if the story can be told better by the reporting staff of the paper or if our wire service, The Associated Press, or another source, is satisfactory to be used to tell that story.

I am particularly proud of the sports section of this paper. There is no other publication which covers local high school and local college sports better, in my opinion. I also am proud of the work turned in by the reporters and others in the community who provide us with information, pictures, essays, or insight through their letters to the editor.

The newspaper will continue to provide timely, interesting, thoughtful, informative stories for you, the reader, to look through each day. We will not go outside of our mission and try to do things that you, the reader, are not interested in. We also will continue to provide balanced accounts of your community meetings, seminars and other activities we put in these pages.

I was told once by an old newspaper man that if I was in a community of about 13,000 people in a county of just under 16,000 people, there were the same number of news and feature stories available to write.

Ray Bell's advice to me was to find each story, do a good and thorough job on it, and when done, move on to the next one. He said I would never run out of material to write if I just kept my eyes open for story possibilities.

That's what we do here at the newspaper.

That's our niche.

Telling stories about Saline County people for Saline County people.

Next week during National Newspaper Week, think about what your life would be like without your Saline County daily newspaper.

Then in the next thought, appreciate that with the backing of our advertisers and you, the reader, we're here each day, Monday through Friday to brighten your world.

Mason is the editor of The Marshall Democrat-News. Spectrum appears on Friday.