I wanted to take this opportunity today to make sure you know that The Evening Sun still takes part in the ancient newspaper custom of social announcements – you know, births, engagements and weddings (although preferably not in that order, but I try not to judge).

Social announcements are a tried-and-true staple of community journalism, and a centerpiece of many a family scrapbook. Back in the day, we published pretty near an entire page of these announcements every Thursday – now, we’re down to once a month, if that.

I’m not sure why that is really, except to conjecture that Facebook’s immediacy has taken the place of a static print record of major family events (here’s where I’m guilty of joining my whiny newspaper brethren by blaming everything on Facebook, I suppose). Which is too bad, really, because although that online photo album will get a lot of hits, there’s nothing to guarantee that it will be preserved for all eternity, if even in the form of a yellowing newspaper clipping.

Although we don’t seem to get as many as we used to, we still do publish announcements of births, engagements and weddings – for free. Maybe that’s what’s holding people back from entering these events into the public record? Again, folks, it’s free!