Herald Mail

Anniversary Monday — Kevin and Olivia Hammond, Waynesboro, Pa., are celebrating their 13th anniversary. • If you would like a milestone to appear in The Herald-Mail, email the information to tonym@herald-mail.com , mail it to Milestones, The Herald-Mail Co., P.O. Box 439, Hagerstown MD 21741 or fax it to 301-714-0245 two weeks in advance.

John League, The Herald-Mail's editor and publisher since 1995, plans to retire in July, capping a 32-year career with the company. League, 56, revealed his plans Monday during a series of meetings with Herald-Mail employees. There are "other things I want to do with my life," he said Tuesday during an interview. He didn't name anything specific, but said it will be fun deciding what to do next. Schurz Communications Inc., the Indiana-based company that owns The Herald-Mail, plans to have a replacement ready when League leaves.

  The Herald-Mail’s first-ever cupcake contest is on the books, and the response was great. Thirty entries. A wide variety of flavors, colors and decorative touches. Applause from all 10 judges.    And high praise for the winning cupcake, Angela Danko’s Orange Dreamsicle Cupcakes. “Fantastic,” said Katie Wade, a barista with Skyline Cafe in Hagerstown. “Very moist. Very Light. Very good presentation,” said MJ Sommerville, a dessert lover from Hagers-town.

The Herald-Mail won 18 awards Friday in the 2010 Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association editorial contest. The newspaper received nine first-place awards and nine second-place awards in its circulation division. Two photographs, both by Herald-Mail photographer Ric Dugan, were chosen as Best in Show. "It was a great showing," said John League, editor and publisher of The Herald-Mail. "We have a great newsroom and this validates it. " The Herald-Mail submitted stories, photographs and other work published in 2010.

Tuesday marks 150 years since the Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Those shots led to four years of war that redefined the nation. The Tri-State area is steeped in Civil War history — from the major battles at Gettysburg and Antietam, to the other battles at South Mountain and troop action at Monterey Pass, to the abolitionist raid on Harpers Ferry, which ratcheted tensions to a new high. With that in mind, The Herald-Mail is publishing a package of stories to re-examine that history and our modern connections to a painful era. The series begins on page A1 today and will culminate with a special section in Tuesday's edition.

A team made up of workers at The Herald-Mail Co. came away the winners at the 14th annual Brain Games competition Sunday at Shepherd University, the second year in a row a Herald-Mail team won the event and the fifth win for the team in the history of the event. Although excited over the win, it was bittersweet because this was the first year that longtime Herald-Mail reporter Marlo Barnhart was not on the team, said team member Bob Fleenor, a five-time “Jeopardy!” champion who works as a Web updater in The Herald-Mail newsroom.

The aging presses will stop running at The Herald-Mail later this year, but the newspaper will continue to be delivered to homes, stores and boxes throughout the Tri-State region. Between now and April 15, The Herald-Mail will turn over its printing and Packaging Department operations to The Frederick News-Post. The decision is expected to save The Herald-Mail $750,000 in capital expenditures this year and triple that amount over the next decade, money that would have been spent maintaining and upgrading its 34-year-old printing technology, Publisher John League said Friday.

It's a work in progress, but herald-mail.com has launched on a new platform. We are tweaking the online site everyday and many people have said they like what they see. As projects of this size go, it has been remarkably smooth, but certainly not seamless. Two problems rose very quickly to the top of the "what's not working" for some online readers — the way we display obituaries on the site and the user commenting functions. I had no idea so many companies use our obituaries.