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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

This football season, The Clanton Advertiser is tweaking its coverage of all eight Chilton County area high school teams throughout their year. Here is an overview of the changes and procedures this season to ensure you do not miss any of the action from your favorite teams this season.

In past years, our newspaper has held the paper on Friday nights. This means that all of the pages and content for the weekend newspaper is laid out by the 6 p.m. deadline on Friday evening and finalized before the Friday night football games. The only thing that is left is a space for a single game story for the football game that was being covered that night. Once that game was covered by the staff and written, the design team would place the final football story and the newspaper would be sent to press around midnight.

This year, the newspaper not be holding for football games on Friday nights. We will have coverage happening at games on Friday nights, however, those stories will not be in print until the following week’s newspaper. For example, games on Aug. 23 will not be printed in the newspaper until Sept. 1, Sept. 1 games will be printed in the Sept. 8 newspaper and so forth. The newspaper is printed at 6 p.m. on Fridays, leaving football Friday nights in a weird window where they cannot make the print for the next day’s newspaper.

The only time games will be featured in the newspaper that comes out directly after the game happens is the Aug. 25 and Sept. 1 papers. The Thorsby and Isabella High School game (Aug. 22) will feature on the front page of the Aug. 25 newspaper, and the Jemison and Chilton County High School game (Aug. 29) will feature on the front page of the Sept. 1 newspaper. This is only because those games are on a Thursday, and there is enough time to get them into print.

All football stories will run in a ‘Football’ section on pages 2B and 3B in the B Section of The Clanton Advertiser starting with the newspaper on Sept. 1 that will have all the game stories from the week before in it. There will be a small box at the top of page 2B indicating that the stories are from the week before as well.

We are still operating, as of right now, with one writer for all eight Chilton County area teams, so only one game per Friday night will have a writer present. That game will be covered, the story written and posted onto The Clanton Advertiser website, Facebook and X following the game on Friday night. The other games, however many there are that week, will have their game stories written the next day on Saturday morning, and those will be posted on the website, on Facebook and X too as they are completed. All of the week’s game stories and a full scoreboard will be included in a football specific email that will go out to subscribers at 1 p.m. each Saturday during the season that will recap the action from the night before.

Those looking to add unlimited access to the website can do so at www.clantonadvertiser.com/subscriptions where they can sign up with a valid email. To be added to the email list, please email news@clantonadvertiser.com with the email you wish to be added to receive it every Saturday.

Thank you to everyone for your patience as we find the best way to bring the best coverage to you and your readership during this football season.