FAQs about Salado Village Voice newspaper in Salado, Texas

Question #1: How can I subscribe to the print edition of the Salado Village Voice? What will I get with my subscription? Subscribing to the Salado Village Voice is easy and fast. Mail payment of $26 to Salado Village Voice, PO Box 587, Salado, TX 76571 with your name, mailing address, phone and e-mail address. You can also subscribe on-line by sending your name and address to mfleischer@saladovillagevoice.com. Please put "newspaper subscription" in the memo line of the e-mail. We will send you a bill after we begin your subscription.

Question #2 How can I submit an article, letter or idea to the Salado Village Voice?

We love news of our community. You can find submission forms for engagements and weddings, birth announcements, obituaries,club news, and even sports. The forms are in PDF format so you can download them, complete them and mail to Salado Village Voice, PO Box 587, Salado, TX 76571 or FAX 354-957-9479. Please include a contact phone number for verification. You can e-mail articles and information to news@saladovillagevoice.com

If you know of someone or something that would make an interesting article or photograph, please let editor Tim Fleischer know by writing tfleischer@saladovillagevoice.com.

Letters to the editor can also be submitted via e-mail. Letters should be concise and address issues, not personalities. The editor reserves the right to edit and/or publish any letters written to him. Salado Village Voice does not publish unsigned letters to the editor. Please include a phone number and name with your letter for verification purposes. The phone number will NOT be published. Letters can be e-mailed to tfleischer@saladovillagevoice.com. If you e-mail a letter, please include a daytime phone number for verification purposes (the phone number will NOT be printed). Bulk or form letters will not be considered.

Classifieds are a great way to sell, lease or find employees. The first 15 words are $7, with each word following 25 cents each.

You can e-mail your classified ad to advertising@saladovillagevoice.com. Be sure to include a contact name, hone number and billing address. The deadline for classifieds is noon on Mondays for the Thursday edition. All classifieds are printed in the Marketplace section of the newspaper, as well as the web edition of the Marketplace, doubling your value. Questions can be directed to Marilyn, 254-947-5321.

Salado Village Voice offers quality, effective display advertising in its print edition on two bases: periodic, or one-time, advertising starts at $6 per column inch; contract, or long-term, advertising starts at $4 per column inch. The contract advertising offers flexibility and visibility to businesses who want consistency and recognition. Follow the link below to see some display advertising sizes and their prices. Salado Village Voice staff will be happy to work with you to build your ad. We also have working relationships with area advertising agencies and area publications to help you maintain a consistent image. If you design your own advertisement, we accept PDF and JPEG files for advertising.

Salado Village Voice has a staff of five, including publishers Tim and Marilyn Fleischer. Other staffers are Stephanie Hood, advertising composition, Royce Wiggin, administrative assistant, and Ken Clapp, political columnist..
In addition to individual awards by staff members, Salado Village Voice has been honored by the community and state. The newspaper was the first-ever Business of the Year, awarded in January 2003 by the Salado Chamber of Commerce. The news- paper has also been named multiple times to the Texas Association of School Board’s Honor Roll for news coverage of the Salado school district.

Tim Fleischer has been a newspaperman since he was 16, working for both weeklies and daily newspapers. “I got the Devil’s Ink at an early age and haven’t been able to get rid of it,” he said of his 20 years in the newspaper industry.
For almost 16 years of it, he has been the editor of the Salado Village Voice.
But his love for Salado has been for more than two decades. “I came to Salado for the Art Fair and Gathering of the Clans with my parents when I was rgowing up in Coryell County,” he said. “I drove through it every day on my way to run a small newspaper in Florence.”
Tim and Marilyn Fleischer have published the newspaper since 1988. During that time, the newspaper has grown from an eight-page tabloid to a 36- to 40-page paper of two sections.
“We have grown with the community and are a reflection of it,” he said.
In those years, the newspaper has won several awards from the Texas Community Newspaper Association, where Salado Village Voice competed against newspapers from San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Austin and around the state.
Tim has won several TCNA awards: advertising design (third in state for large ad format and third in state for advertising series); editorial work (first in state for editorial writing, third in state for editorial writing, third in state for column writing) and second in state for community service (for articles during the incorporation election).
He has also served the community in a variety of capacities, including four years on the board of directors of the Salado Chamber of Commerce and six years on the board of directors of the Institute for Humanities at Salado. He was president of the Salado Chamber of Commerce and treasurer for two years of the Institute for Humanities.
He and wife Marilyn share responsibilities at the newspaper. “She runs the office and I make editorial decisions,” he said.

Marilyn got the Devil’s Ink in her blood after meeting Tim 17 years ago.
She worked for TU Electric prior to the purchase of the Salado Village Voice in March 1988.
She also owned and operated a plant business in the Killeen/Copperas Cove area for several years while raising her three children.
During their years in Salado, Marilyn has served the community in many ways. “I think I have been most satisfied with my work with the Salado Family Relief Fund,” she said. In addition to her work to establish the Family Relief Fund, Marilyn has also been Art Fair chairperson for two years, and worked with the Ladies Auxiliary to publicize its annual event, Christmas in October.
She has also won awards from the TCNA. She has twice been honored. She won second place for Best Feature Photo and second place for Community Service for her work with the Family Relief Fund.
The Fleischers’ children -- Royce Wiggin, a recent graduate of Salado High School, and Jenny Wiggin, a junior at Salado High School -- have grown up in the eye of the community. “We have dragged them to so many events with us as they were growing up,” Marilyn said, “and now they are participating in many of the events that we are covering for the newspaper.”

A lifelong resident and 1987 graduate of Salado High School, Stephanie is a hometown girl at heart.
“I grew up here, Salado is more to me than just a tourist destination. Salado is its history and its people. I really enjoy working in my hometown where the news is about the people who I know and love.”
Stephanie joined the Salado Village Voice in 2006 as the composition person. She has spent her adult life creating images that express ideas. “My background is in Broadcasting, taking a complex idea and fine tuning it into a few simple images and words that make sense to everyone.” Stephanie finds using those skills to help out in her community to be the most rewarding.
For 15 years she worked with Children’s Miracle Network, creating ‘Miracle Stories’ about patients at Scott & White. CMN is not the only place Stephanie serves her community. Stephanie, her husband Robin and her children finds plenty of places to volunteer.
Stephanie first appeared at Tablerock at the age of 16. She now serves on the Tablerock Board of Directors. The kids are often found helping out both on and off stage.
The family also enjoys Scouting. Stephanie serves as the Cubmaster for Pack 115 in Salado as well as serving on the District Scout Committee for Longhorn Council BSA and as an adult Girl Scout Leader for Senior Juilette Scouts in Salado.

Royce Wiggin
Royce Wiggin is one of those rare species: a native of Salado, born here in 1989.
He attended school in Salado since first grade, graduating in 2007.
He was a trumpet player in the Salado Eagle Marching Band and a tennis player.
He began work at the newspaper two years agao while still in high school. His responsibilities have grown to include placing and rotating ads on pages, directing phone calls in the office, proof reading, typesetting and a myriad of other duties.
He is the son of Tim and Marilyn Fleischer, owners of the newspaper, and is glad to finally get paid for all the hours he spends at the newspaper office.

By Tim Fleischer
Editor-in-Chief

“Your troubles are over because here I am!”
Ken Clapp would announce his arrival in our newspaper office with that phrase -- or one similar to it -- almost every week day.
He would always bring with him some tidbit gleaned from the Do-No-Gooders (the coffee group he haunted for a quarter century), the Post Office parking lot (Salado’s most social place) or from one of the three newspapers he read daily.
A bee-line he would make past the desks and anyone sitting at them for the coffee pot in the back. If the pot was empty, we’d know about it.
In the 23 years I have known Ken, I do not know that he has ever brewed a pot of his own coffee. I think it was a form of complex science and mathematics -- quantum physics to a native of the rain forest.
His brain was far too filled with politics, history and jokes to have room in it for the skills of coffee making.
But -- like any real newspaperman -- coffee ran through his veins as much as the Devil’s Ink.
Clapp was a muckraker. Pure and simple. Muckraker, by the way, is not an insult. It is the highest compliment paid to a newspaperman such as Ken.
His love of newspapers began as a child, delivering the Cleveland Plains Dealer during the latter years of the Depression and beginning years of the FDR Presidency.
After a series of careers, Ken landed in Salado. He was in the Air Force at an early age, which brought him to Texas, where he met and married his lifelong love Melba and where he spent 60 years of his life. He taught school, became an administrator, wrote for the local valley newspaper, became a publisher and then got involved in politics, working with one of the last old-style conservative Texas Democrats, Dolph Briscoe.
Ken’s tribute to Gov. Briscoe last year in his “Off the Record” column gave a little insight into one of his great loves: real Texas politics.
Ken brought a maturity to this newspaper that was (and sometimes continues to be) sorely lacking. He joined us just a couple of months after we purchased the newspaper from the founding Kelley family 23 years ago. Since starting for us, he never missed a column. Think of it: 1,100 plus deadlines met in a row.
He wrote about George Herbert Walker Bush not knowing what a cash register scanner was and how this contributed to his ultimate political downfall. He wrote about William Jefferson Clinton and the sordid impeachment. Back in 1993, he wrote that “If Clinton wins, we all win.” He wrote that missive following Clinton’s first inauguration. It was filled with hope for that young President.
He wrote about George Walker Bush both as a Governor and as a President. In the days following the terrorist attacks on America, Ken wrote about how this country -- Republican, Democrat and undefined -- needed to unite in support of the Commander in Chief.
And he wrote about Barack Hussein Obama. Ken grew up and became an adult during a time of segregation and struggle. He wrote of Dr. King. He wrote of being in the classroom teaching when word came of President Kennedy’s death.
And on the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII, Ken bravely and correctly wrote about the necessity for Hiroshima.
Not all of Ken’s writings was serious, lofty stuff. He loved to tease politicians -- from Claytie Williams to Ross Perot to his latest favorite target Governor-for-Life (also known as Governor Good Hair) Rick Perry.
His April 1 columns were the stuff of legends... and myth! Every year, he got over on his readers. We knew when his column hit the stands that week to man the phonelines. Most calls were congenial... “You got me good.” Some were angry. A few furious about being had with such obvious spoofs as the discovery that Salado was actually an Indian reservation and that casinos would soon be going up. Or the “loop” around the village.
Even though I was always on the inside of his spoofs, I will miss them as much as I know you readers will. I will miss his columns, but I will miss him blazing through the door much, much more.
Last time that Ken Clapp and I sat down in the back of the office for coffee, I told him I remembered when President Ronald Reagan said that he never worried too much about the deficit “because it’s big enough to take care of itself.”
Even though he had been in pain for some time and had become weaker and weaker with each passing day, Ken’s face visibly brightened at the mention to a passage midway through his 1,000-word weekly offering.
With the mention of his column, we quickly turned to politics -- local, state and national. He left that morning and it was the last time I would see him.
I heard from him two days later. He called from the hospital bed to ask if I would pull an old column to run in this space, because he wasn’t going to get one done. He passed the next afternoon. Up to the last hours of his life, Ken was a worker and newspaperman.
Every day, when he would leave the office, he would leave with one of two sayings. If he had to go by the church before going home, he would tell us “I’m off to do the Lord’s work.” If he was heading straight home for lunch with Melba, he would say, “Time to go see what the neighbors have brought in for supper.”
Ken is done with the Lord’s work now and he enjoys the reward of a good and faithful servant.
He signed each of his columns with the slugline -30- which is the traditional way to mark the end of a story.
Ken’s story will not end with a -30-. His story will live on in the lives of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. His story will live on in the Salado Civic Center and Salado Church of Christ.
His story will live on in the memories and stories shared among the Do No Gooders and in his many stories printed indelibly in black and white.

Salado Village Voice Q & A

Ken Clapp leaves legacy

of a life of words, service