Like a JV football player who dreams of scoring the winning touchdown in a varsity game, so it was with our vision for the first edition of The Clipper, Fall 2009. Instead of a spectacular victory, we fumbled the ball, disappointing our team along with our Clipper fans.

Consider this our formal apology for the mistakes, unnecessary opinion, inaccurate headlines, spelling errors and bad grammar that you may have found in the previous issue of The Clipper.

As co-editors, TJ Cotterill and I expected to learn a tremendous amount during the process of uniting a team of mostly new staff, organizing this important work and producing a quality newspaper. We did not expect to learn it all in one issue, but we took one heck of a run at it.

We learned that everything takes longer than you think it should, that expectations don't always translate into reality and that patience is vital. We learned that we have an audience who cares when we get it right and wrong. We also learned that letting our readers and each other down is embarrassing, frustrating and painful.

We talked with those who deserved explanations or needed time to vent, and in so doing we have a deeper understanding of our obligation to the EvCC community.

One other way we can make this right is correcting the record. You will find corrections on page three of this issue and on The Clipper web site at clipperonline.info.

Finally, we encourage emails; let us know what you think of this paper and how we can make it more relevant, useful and informative for you. You can reach us at clipper.jody@gmail.com or clipper.tj@gmail.com.

Sincerely,
Jody Hawkins
Co-editor
The Clipper