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Editor receives SAIL’s Community Service Award

By Staff | Nov 24, 2023

On Nov. 17 at their annual meeting, The Shepherdstown Area Independent Living organization (SAIL) presented this year’s Jack and Martha Young Community Service Award to Tabitha Johnston, editor of The Shepherdstown Chronicle. Each year SAIL honors an individual and/or organization that has made significant contributions to the quality of life in the Shepherdstown community. This includes of course, not only the town, but the surrounding area that comprises the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia which is also covered by the Chronicle.

Tabitha was selected from several nominees recommended to the board because of the superb job that she has done, at times almost single-handedly over the past five years. It is no small task functioning as lead reporter, editor and overall manager of the complicated process of putting out a weekly newspaper with inevitable time-sensitive deadlines. To do it all over again week-after-week, treating each edition as a fresh new challenge in coverage and quality, is a daunting task. Her work continues to be a remarkable performance for a young person in the initial phase of her demanding career. The time period included the unprecedented problems resulting from the COVID-19 virus era, which greatly impacted nearly every aspect of our public and private lives. It was further complicated by rapidly changing technological innovations, intense economic pressure and altered American societal priorities and values.

Tabitha managed to continue the Chronicle’s excellent coverage of overall issues relevant to our community, while still retaining the individual interests and highlights that capture the qualities we all treasure here in Shepherdstown. The community’s self-awareness is built upon an infinite variety of individual interests, achievements and concerns. Getting the attention of individual readers while maintaining the balance in coverage in competition with the ever widening array of public methods of communication — having a little something for everyone when attention spans are short — is next to impossible, but that is the job of an editor. Tabitha has met and exceeded all of those expectations. Editing a newspaper is much, much more than just a job, and she has done it well.

Tabitha’s formal education in journalism and mass communications and graduate work in strategic communications certainly prepared her well for the task, but it has been her dedicated earnest efforts and sincere interest in our community that has been so exceptional and made her the obvious choice for SAIL’s Jack and Martha Young Community Service Award. Her work has been particularly important to older members of our community, who rely heavily on the traditional methods of staying in touch with each other.

Mike Austin, of Shepherdstown