For some folks, staying on the job for 20 years is a remarkable achievement.

In fact, doing almost anything for 20 years seems like an accomplishment.

This week, the Tulsa Beacon marks its 20th anniversary. The first issue came out on April 25, 2001.

The longevity is not impressive because of me but because God has sent people our way to sustain this newspaper for so many years.

My wife Susan is invaluable. She runs our business office. She does the bookkeeping. She keeps track of our subscription list and mail list. She handles our legal notices (the bread and butter of our revenue these days). She answers the phones.

Every week, she puts mail labels on our papers, sorts them in postal containers and hauls them to the Post Office. She gets our tax information ready for our accountant. She makes bank deposits every day. She tracks our finances online. She pays the company bills and sends out invoices to advertisers and subscribers.

Whew.

I just write and talk to people on the phone.

(I actually do a bit more than that.)

I hesitate to start naming folks who have helped us the past 20 years.

Bill Bickerstaff helps us maintain our printers and copiers and his wife, Cathy, was a long-time proof reader.

Architect Randy Bright advertised with us and wrote a column for years.

Author/entrepreneur Jim Stovall has sent his column to us almost from day one.

Sportswriter Jeff Brucculeri has been with us for almost the full 20 years.

Ken Staley, former general manager of KCFO AM970 (Christian talk radio), is retired now but in the first few weeks of business, he promoted our paper on his radio station. He’s retired now.

Some of our advertisers, Elite Service; H.L. Gaston Oil Properties, Cartec Automotive Services and Houchin Electric Company have been with from the first year. And others, like Bob Keathley Opticians, helped us for many, many years.

We run the Focus on the Family column every week and have for 20. We started with Dr. James Dobson. But Focus on the Family also supplies us Christian movie reviews from Plugged In Magazine.

Dr. Matt Hunt of Hunt Spinal Care has written a health column for more than a dozen years and it is a great feature.

We don’t have a printing press. We have been printed for 20 years by the good folks at the Muskogee Phoenix. They have helped up through thick and thin.

My son Brian is our webmaster. He updates our website each week and helps us set up new computers when we purchase them. Brian, my son Josiah and my daughter Sarah were invaluable unpaid workers for years and years. Frankly, there were times we couldn’t afford to hire someone to do the various tasks they did.

I have to say thanks to former Tulsa County Treasurer Dennis Semler, who gave us a wonderful boost in our legal publication efforts and to former Tulsa County Commissioner Fred Perry who helped us win that account.

Marti Weese and her husband David are special friends. They help Susan prepare the papers for mail each week and they are great encouragers.

The late Dan Keating and Robert McDowell were invaluable friends to the Tulsa Beacon.

I cannot express how important our subscribers are to our newspaper. When we first started, all new publications were free – with no subscription price. Now, most of those are gone because they had no circulation revenue and fading reader loyalty. You just don’t value something that’s free.

So, can we publish the Tulsa Beacon for another 20 years? Susan and I can’t or won’t but perhaps someone else will.

At some point, Susan and I will retire. We don’t know when. We are not sure what will happen to our family newspaper. It doesn’t look like any of our kids want to take over our business. That’s understandable. They have their own interests.

And the nature of news has changed. Young people just don’t read newspapers. They get news from their cellphones and on social media. They don’t listen to the radio or watch the TV news.

Advertisers don’t want to go into print. They want the internet.

Newspapers are fading. The Tulsa World has been sold twice. The Oklahoman dumped their production department and are printed by the Tulsa World. Broken Arrow, Bixby, Jenks, Glenpool, Edmond and other Oklahoma cities and towns have lost their longtime newspapers.

I think there will always be some kind of market for newspapers. It will be smaller and less lucrative. So many papers have brought this downfall on themselves because they are so cotton-pickin’ liberal and they have erased the separation between news and comment.

There is a market for honest news and conservative comment. That is a big reason for the longevity of the Tulsa Beacon. We hold to traditional values, conservative politics and Biblical principles.

That’s a winning formula.

And even if a time comes when our print edition ends, I think I will somehow still be involved in spreading the news.

Of course, the Good News is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the reasons I quit the Tulsa World was that they wanted a secular newspaper without direct Christian influence.

We have produced this paper for 20 years through God’s grace. There is no other explanation for this run.

Thanks everyone.

We accept the challenge to keep adding some good news to this troubled time.