As we race toward 2008, forgive a reflection on an extraordinary year at the Anderson Independent-Mail. …

• Hear here: We’ve been on a campaign to add more voices from the community. “On My Mind” essays from readers have become the Spectrum section centerpiece each Sunday. Guest commentaries run frequently on our editorial and op-ed pages. “Be a Critic” offers readers a chance to review movies, music, video games, etc., for Be, our weekly “Best Entertainment” section. On IndependentMail.com, our audience can blog and comment on stories.
• Pointing Our Way: For the first time, we asked for nominations for Pointing the Way Leadership Awards. Your response delighted us.
• Best of Be: We celebrated the one-year anniversary of our “Best Entertainment” section with our Best of Be edition. In our first “Best of Be” survey, readers selected the businesses, places and personalities that they like best.
• Charity record: You contributed more than $118,000 to the Brighter Christmas Fund, far surpassing an ambitious $100,000 goal.
• Obit rates: Now the first 10 lines are free.
• High school journalism: We launched a partnership program with schools in our circulation area.
• Hello, Oconee Today: We launched this weekly newspaper in August, and we’re pleased that readers in South Carolina’s Golden Corner are pleased.
• Goodbye, TV Week: Ending this weekly section midway through the year was our toughest business decision. We’ve greatly improved our daily TV listings, and we’ve added TV Guide’s listings to our Web site.
• Hello, SNAP! We hope you enjoyed our new college football section each Saturday in the fall.
• High school football: SNAP! made room for bigger and better high school coverage.
• GoFridayFootball.com: Those who couldn’t wait for Saturday’s paper could read about high school games even before they were over by visiting IndependentMail.com.
• Hot Routes: Our weekly high school football “show” was a big hit. Greg Beckner, Keith Farner and Scott Adamson were the stars.
• Video: We plunged into this exciting world of multimedia and are excited about a storytelling form that goes beyond static words and still photos.
• Media partnerships: We share content with WSPA-7, including videos, and WNEG (TV and radio).
• Web First: In June, we dedicated a reporter exclusively to covering news for IndependentMail.com, our biggest step yet toward growing as a multimedia newsroom.
• Reinvention: As we prepare for a reincarnation of the Independent-Mail in 2008, we reorganized our newsroom in 2007. City desk editors and reporters and lifestyles staff editors and reporters have merged into a content staff, and copy editors/page designers from our news desk and lifestyles staff have merged into a universal production staff.

Enough of auld lang syne and a loud laud column. Here’s one last toast to a good year that almost is toast. Cheers!