Teaming up for the Weekender

The start of the 2021 high school football season also will be the kickoff for a new combined Weekender newspaper. "This will be an expanded weekend product for our readers with the addition of a full community section covering Huron and Erie counties," said Ron Waite, the group publisher with Ogden Newspapers. With the ever-changing landscape of the news media industry, newspapers must find ways to provide a wider range of coverage to customers. Combining the weekend editions of the Norwalk Reflector and the Sandusky Register was a natural step toward that goal. "We will be able to cover prep sports better with a later deadline," Waite said. "Our game coverage week-in and week-out has been stellar through the years, but sometimes we've been forced to post game results online and not in print because of earlier deadlines." Waite said readers will see more games covered in print during football season into the winter and spring sports seasons. "On Saturdays, readers want to see that in their newspaper when it's delivered or when they pick it up at their favorite retailers," Waite said. The new community section will be one of three sections in each Weekender edition plus the color comics and TV guide section. The front page lead section will benefit from the news staffs at the Reflector and the Register coming together to build a more robust news service. "For both newspapers, the Weekender has been the place where we try to go deeper with news stories," said Patrick Pfanner, community editor at the Register. "There are so many news stories each week and some of them require more reporting, more digging and more staff hours." Joe Centers, the longtime editor at the Reflector, said the staff working together will mean better news coverage for readers in Huron County. "Having our staffs at the Reflector and Register developing news coverage will strengthen our teams. The new Weekender edition will allow us to get those bigger-picture news stories from Huron County that have an impact," Centers said. "We're excited to have this opportunity to expand our coverage here. The new community section every weekend will have a wide assortment and variety of news, including business, food, lifestyle, faith and health pages — and, occasionally, some surprises. It will also have a photo page that will be included each week on a spectrum of topics. It also will be packed full of fun, with both the Saturday and Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, considered the best such puzzle in history. There also will be a section with our color comics, our daily comics and puzzles. Our weekly TV guide will round out this section of the Weekender and provide daytime and evening listings for every cable news service in the region for the coming week. Register readers will see a change in the comic strip lineup starting Aug. 21. Say hello to "Garfield," "Hi & Lois" and "For Better or Worse," popular family comic strips and longtime features in the Reflector. "Frazz," "Lola" and "Pearls Before Swine," from the Register's lineup are being discontinued.