When times are tough economically, people get very careful with their hard-earned money. When it comes to spending, it’s a common practice to give special consideration to summer vacations or other leisure trips.
Rather than make that summertime trek to Disney World, Myrtle Beach, or any number of fabulous destinations around the country, many folks look for recreational opportunities closer to home. Indiana and the Midwest are a playground for families, as long as they know where to look.
Assuming that vacations would be planned closer to home this year, we began searching in early spring for ways to provide useful information and recreational ideas for the approaching travel season.
As a newspaper, our primary mission of gathering news and information relevant to our vast and diverse audience is focused on telling stories about events, people, places and issues of importance in our readership area. But in this case, we needed to extend our reach and tell stories about things a bit farther away, yet within easy and inexpensive travel distance.
Still, gathering good information for such a project would be taxing for our staff resources.
Newspapers everywhere face similar challenges, of course, so the Tribune-Star teamed up with three other newspapers — The Herald Republican of Angola, The Republic of Columbus and the Evening News of Jeffersonville — to produce a package of travel features that all of us would share with our readers.
This unique collaboration resulted in the first of a four-part feature series published on the cover of today’s Valley Life section. Titled “Adventures in Indiana,” the series targets four beautiful state parks that are situated in geographically diverse regions of Indiana where seasonal activities are exciting and abundant.
Featured in our opening segment today is Pokagon State Park located near Angola in Steuben County in extreme northeast Indiana. I think our readers will be amazed at what this park and adjacent community in the far reaches of the Hoosier state have to offer.
The Pokagon feature package was generated by The Herald Republican of Angola.
Other sites to be featured include Brown County State Park and Nashville in central Indiana; and Clifty Falls State Park and Madison on the Ohio River in southeast Indiana.
The final installment will be produced by the Tribune-Star and will feature Turkey Run State Park and Parke County in west-central Indiana.
The feature packages will be published every other week through the end of July. The publication schedule and source newspapers are as follows:
• Today — Pokagon State Park, Angola (The Herald Republican, Angola)
• June 28 — Brown County State Park, Nashville (The Republic, Columbus)
• July 12 — Clifty Falls State Park, Madison (Evening News, Jeffersonville)
• July 26 — Turkey Run State Park, Parke County (Tribune-Star, Terre Haute)
We are proud to be part of the series and to be associated with these other fine Indiana newspapers.
As always, we welcome reader comments and suggestions about this and other potential content projects in the future.
Jones can be reached at (812) 231-4336, or by e-mail at max.jones@tribstar.com.
Editorials
Editor's Note: Team effort tells stories of Hoosier travel spots
- Editorials
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EDITORIAL: Waging the ‘readiness’ campaign
Almost every Hoosier who starts college intends to finish. Unfortunately, those who arrive on campus unprepared in key academic areas are far less likely to fulfill that aspiration.
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EDITORIAL: Insult to an independent press
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: Dashing finish for the Sycamores
It’s always thrilling to see Indiana State University’s athletic teams do well in high-level competition, and two specific teams rose to impressive heights last weekend in the Missouri Valley Conference outdoor track and field championships.
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EDITORIAL: Better monitoring needed to prevent local environmental messes
The nasty, hazardous messes lurking in the community raise a bottom-line, red-flag question. Could these environmental problems have been monitored and, thus, prevented?
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EDITORIAL: Memo to U.S.A.: You can ‘SPPRAK’ just as we do in Vigo County
Our kids, truly, are ‘Making a Difference’
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Some words in praise of boring government — Indiana’s
A conservative Republican governor has super majorities in both branches of the legislature. One might suspect such one-party government leads to major changes in public policy. This did not happen in 2013 in Indiana.
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EDITORIAL: Doc’s prescient prescription
Viewed through a 2013 prism, Doc Bowen’s response to the AIDS epidemic looks merely prudent, routine.
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EDITORIAL: Education remains worth the cost
Within the next few weeks, each of the local colleges will have conducted graduation ceremonies. A few days later, a different Class of 2013 will don caps and gowns for commencement — the seniors at five Vigo County high schools. It is still a smart, worthy aspiration for those high school grads to replicate the achievement of those college students by earning a higher-education degree.
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EDITORIAL: Good news for downtown
For decades, it seems, downtown Terre Haute has been in the throes of change
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EDITORIAL: Overall, state budget step in the right direction
For average Hoosiers uninterested in political point-scoring, the budget crafted by the Indiana Legislature inspires only muted, if any, fanfare.
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EDITORIAL: The lessons of organ donation
The range of emotion surrounding life-saving transplantation of a vital organ is extreme. It is the ultimate “good news-bad news” scenario.
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READERS’ FORUM: April 26, 2013
• Pence’s tax cuts benefit wealthiest
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
This does not qualify as a surprise in any way. But the Wabash Valley’s response to widespread flooding of recent days has been nothing short of impressive, even inspirational.
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EDITORIAL: Still waiting for the jobs reward
The forces in control of Indiana government for most of the past decade need to show some results to Hoosiers in one primary category.
Good-paying jobs. -
MARK BENNETT: Littered with irony: Why do people callously discard their trash, and who are they?
Though they aren’t acknowledged by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are basically two demographic groups of people … Those who would dump their old toilet on the banks of the Wabash River or a rural roadside. And those who wouldn’t.
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EDITORIAL: Doing the dirty work to clean up tossed trash
A first-of-its-kind, coast-to-coast project to remove litter from U.S. roadsides brought the Pick Up America crew through the Wabash Valley two years ago.
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EDITORIAL: Keep school security a local issue
The decision to provide armed security inside a schoolhouse should be made locally.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
Indiana’s parks need your help.
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EDITORIAL: The return of terror
Emotions today remain strong and raw in wake of Monday’s terror bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
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EDITORIAL: A solution to distracted driving … stop it … now
You’ve got to stop. You know you do it. It’s a miracle you haven’t caused a tragedy already.
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EDITORIAL: ‘Women of Influence’: 2013 selectees have given much to their communities
For the second year, United Way of the Wabash Valley has teamed up with local sponsors to select and honor a group of women who have made outstanding contributions to their communities, professions and families.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: A new honor for our veterans
A commendation goes out today to state Rep. Clyde Kersey, a Terre Haute Democrat who led the charge this week in the Indiana House of Representatives to pay tribute to the nation’s Purple Heart recipients.
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EDITORIAL: Shifting view on marriage
One could argue, as many have, that Sen. Joe Donnelly did the right thing last week when he dropped his support of government-sanctioned opposition to same-sex marriage. It wasn’t a radical move, considering most Democrats have now made the switch.
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MAX JONES: The American Newspaper: Changing? Yes. Dying? No way!
It happened again this past January when all those “looking at the year ahead” stories started popping up on Internet “news” websites and broadcast “news” programs. Under a provocative headline reading something like “Five industries/businesses doomed to tank in the coming year,” there it was, a prediction based on an unsubstantiated “expert” analysis that the newspaper industry will continue in 2013 to suffer its slide into oblivion.
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EDITORIAL: A chance to change our bad cultural habits
The sight of diligent, eager young people dragging trash out of the Wabash River wetlands is both inspiring and sad.
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EDITORIAL: Maintaining high standards
Standards
It’s the raging buzzword in education circles these days. Everyone insists that higher standards must be met. Anything less is, doggone it, unacceptable. -
Noteworthy in the news
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EDITORIAL: Crack down on dumpers
There is a reason it’s called “illegal” dumping. It’s against the law. And there is a very good reason illegal dumping is against the law.
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Season of Day 2s arrives
Calendars in Cincinnati contain one extra holiday — Opening Day, traditionally the first Monday in April.
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Congress fails to recognize problem of education costs
Who hasn’t gotten this message yet? The cost of a college degree has become unaffordable for a wide swath of middle-class America.
- More Editorials Headlines
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EDITORIAL: Waging the ‘readiness’ campaign
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Lotto Fever Sweeps the Country
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NM Mom Chases Down Child Abductor
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SF baseball player overpaid $500,000 RETURNS money -- and team says KEEP IT
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