The Journal-Enterprise launches website

The Journal-Enterprise officially launched it’s own website on the morning of Wednesday September 11, 2013.

“We’ve enjoyed working with Surfky the last several years, but we felt it was time to go out on our own,” said Editor Charlie Hust. “Webster County and it’s people have always been and will remain our main focus.”

In the past “journalenterprise.com” has linked readers to a section of the Surfky news site. That is no longer the case. Now it will take visitors to a site created and maintained by The Journal-Enterprise staff.

“I think this will give us greater flexibility to serve both our readers and our advertisers,” said Matt Hughes, News Editor of The Journal-Enterprise. “We can update stories on a day-to-day basis, and we can link ads right to our customer’s own websites. It also gives readers the chance to read and discuss the article right on our site, or to share it with friends through social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter."

Anyone wishing to advertise with The Journal-Enterprise online can contact us at 270-667-2068 or email matt@journalenterprise.com.

School Board reduces transportation fees for teams/organizations

by Matt Hughes

J-E News Editor

Webster County sports teams and organizations received a boost on Monday night when the Webster County School Board addressed the issue of transportation.

Until that meeting the districts policy was to charge $1.06 per mile (the board paid an additional 30 cents per mile) plus the regular hourly rate of the bus driver for any extra curricular activities. The pay range for Webster County bus drivers runs from $9.35 and hour to $11.56.

The new policy, adopted by a unanimous vote will now charge organizations only 50 cents per mile , but the cost of the driver will be raised to $13.00 across the board.

One of the reasons stated for the raise in the driver’s rates were that many of the sports teams had started providing only one-way transportation to games so they didn’t have to pay a driver to sit and wait until the end. Some drivers who had been pulled off of their normal routes to drive to the game were actually losing money.

So how do the numbers actually break down? Under the old system if a sports team took a trip to Hopkins County Central High School, they would pay approximately $72.02 in fuel for the round trip (67 miles). If they used a bus driver for four hours the cost would run between $37.40 and $46.24 for a total ranging between $109.42 to $118.26.