Change doesn't have to be scary

Almost anyone I ever talk to in my personal life can all agree on one thing. 

They don’t like change. 

When it comes to my professional career of listening and telling stories I find this to be the same thing. Whether it's someone retiring after a 40 year career, or a company going through major changes, they often have a lot of anxiety and sometimes resentment towards changes. 

The DCI will be going through a major transition in the next couple of months as I will be stepping down from my position as News Editor. I will be leaving Kasson at the end of July and will be helping and overseeing the Editorial end of the paper mostly remotely for the month of August while it transitions and I help my girlfriend pack up her things in Mankato. 

The decision for me to leave the paper came from an opportunity that was presented to me a couple of months ago, when I was asked to work as a campaign manager and do political consulting work in my home state of Rhode Island. 

The opportunity came completely out of the blue, but after sitting down and thinking about it I knew it would be a great opportunity for me, as I always wanted to work directly in politics, since I started my Political Science Major in 2013. 

With all that being said, this is a big change for me. 

Ever since a month after I graduated college in 2017,  I have been in the same profession, and have lived in Minnesota. 

I have made Minnesota my home, meet my soulmate, adopted my dog, and have started to pick up the Minnesota lingo. 

For my girlfriend it means that she will soon be living in a different state for the first time in her 30 year life, and for my three year old dog FInn, it means that he will be living in a different state for the first time. 

While change is scary, as I reflect, I realize that I have had a lot of changes in the last two years especially professionally. 

Since I have been in Dodge County has done a lot to make our paper more modern especially when it comes to our online presence. 

Through the efforts of our team, and believing that change is okay we have gone up 1,300 likes on Facebook, compared to just under 1,600 likes we had before I came on board. 

By making this change of being more active online we are able to reach more people in the community and give our readers even more to look forward to by allowing them to see more photos that don’t all fit in the print edition of the paper, and different videos and live streams that are very common, something that wasn’t common before. 

A big change that also happened with the expansion of our news coverage after Community News Corp closed its doors. 

When the news broke about its closing, there were a lot of longtime readers who were in a panic who didn’t know where they would get their local news from. 

With that in mind, we decided to make a change and made a commitment to do whatever we can to cover more events and news in Byron, Hayfield, and Dodge Center which were the communities most affected by the closing. 

As I begin my transition of leaving the paper, there will also be some internal changes as the paper looks to replace me. I ask that you are patient as we do our best to cover all the important things in the community with a temporary limited staff. 

As always we encourage you to send us different news items, photos and let us know about different story ideas!

Change isn’t always a bad thing and can oftentimes be a good thing! 

One thing I hope never changes though, is your commitment to being engaged readers and community members! Without your help the community newspaper wouldn’t be the same.