Sonny Jones
Mark DeLap loves community journalism, loves our community and loves being able to hold a printed newspaper in his hands, scanning the pages and, perhaps, coming away with a bit of an ink smudge on his thumbs.
You can sense it in his writings as editor of The Bladen Journal. You can sense it in the way he and his wife, Thecia, have fit into our community. In only a couple of years, the DeLaps have become one of us.
That’s not always easy to do in small-town communities, but the DeLaps have done it. Perhaps it helped being self-described “midwestern, small-town folks who have had a chance to see the world,” as was written in their introduction to our community in the Feb. 15, 2024 edition of the Journal.
In those two years, Mark has guided the Journal back to its award-winning days. For the first time since COVID, the Journal received awards during last year’s N.C. Press Association contest. Mark won four, advertising representative Dee Dee Prevatte won two and Thecia won one for her “Recipes from the editor’s wife” column.
The Bladen Journal has, indeed, returned to its pre-COVID glory days when editors such as Alan Wooten and Curt Vincent were leading a group of talented reporters, page designers and advertising representatives to be among the best small-town newspapers in our state.
Now, at 70 years of age, Mark has decided to retire. Who can blame him? It’s on to the next chapter for him. Everyone connected with the Journal and our community wish him the best. He deserves it.
However, the Bladen Journal must press on as it has for more than 125 years. And it will.
As you may have surmised, I’ll be filling in as the Journal’s editor while Champion Media searches for Mark’s replacement. I’ll still be covering sports as I’ve done since June for the Journal. So, I’ll be a busy little bee while the hiring process plays out.
I’ll leave it to you to decide whether replacing a 70-year-old editor with a soon-to-be 69-year-old fill-in editor who has been semi-retired for nearly five years is making progress, but that’s what you have.
Like Mark, I, too, love community journalism, love our community and love being able to hold a printed newspaper in my hands, although I’ve never liked that ink smudge on my thumbs.
I also realize the importance of presenting news online. Us oldtimers may not like it, but it’s the way many folks, especially those under 50, get their news. With the Journal being a weekly newspaper, we must have an updated presence online.
My connection to the Journal goes way, way back. I came to Bladen County in March 1978 to work an air shift at WBLA, moved over to the Bladen Journal in December 1979 to cover sports, where, since we’re bragging, Eddie Nye, the local insurance and real estate mogul, and I won first place awards in the 1982 N.C. Press Association contest. I then went to the newspaper in Rockingham for a couple of years before settling down with The Fayetteville Times (changed to Observer-Times and now Observer) in November 1987 until I retired in August 2021.
I lived in Fayetteville for the first couple of years I worked for the Times, but my heart always was in Bladen County. It has always felt like home the way you welcomed a 21-year-old whippersnapper back in 1978. So, I had a house built in 1990 in the Cape Owen Manor subdivision outside of Dublin and commuted to Fayetteville.
A year after my mother-in-law passed, my wife and I moved to her childhood home in Clarkton in 2020, and here we remain.
I’ve always held Bladen County close to my heart and, unabashedly, admit that working at the Bladen Journal was the best job I’ve ever had.
That’s my story. That’s what you’re getting from this fill-in editor, whether it’s for three months, a year or until I’m 99.
But, enough about me. The Bladen Journal is about you, your stories and your communities. I can’t wait to see what we find together. I hope you’ll join me in keeping the Bladen Journal, both print and online, the place to go for Bladen County news.
Let’s ride.
Sonny Jones can be reached at [email protected].