Retiring editor remembers top stories
Hundreds of people rushed to lower Main Street, Elkader, in August 2016 to fill sandbags used to build a 7-foot wall to keep back floodwaters.
By Pam Reinig Register Editor
This is the final issue of the Clayton County Register and it also finishes out my 40-plus year journalism career. Beginning next week, the Register will merge with the North Iowa Times creating a new publication. Audrey Posten, who has been the North Iowa Times editor for 7 years, will provide leadership for the new paper. I’ll stick around for a few weeks to assist with the transition. But for the most part, I’m retiring from journalism to focus the rest of my working days in another area.
The Clayton County Register is the only weekly publication I’ve worked on. The first and longest segment of my career was at the Cedar Rapids Gazette. I also did work for the Ames Tribune and stepped away from journalism mid-career for a long stint in marketing.
My 10 years here have been incredible. I’ve reported on a few big events but much of my work has been sharing your stories with our readers—and that’s been a lot of fun. Clayton County is filled with people who have had interesting life experiences, who pursue interesting hobbies, who do amazing work at their jobs, and who devote much time and energy to building an even strong community.
Since I’m still in charge of what appears on these pages, I’ve decided to share the biggest and most memorable stories of my decade reporting on Clayton County. The three biggest news stories have been COVID-19 (no surprise there), the “minor” flood of 2016 (I wasn’t here when the “great” flood hit) and the $6 million renovation of the Central School building. As far as the most memorable stories, that’s a long, long list so I’ve included just a few later in this article.
