By Debra McCown, Bristol Herald Courier

This weekend, I did two noteworthy things. I received congratulations for winning Virginia Press Association awards; I also spent some early-morning hours rolling newspapers and helping deliver them to the campgrounds around Bristol Motor Speedway.

With all the fans in town during race week, newspaper circulation jumps, and it means a lot more people get involved in distributing the paper. It’s a week of excitement and exhaustion. It also gives those of us in the newsroom an opportunity to see all the things that must happen to get out the news.

As we celebrate the many awards announced this weekend, won by the folks in the newsroom, I think it’s also important to recognize the other people who helped to get us there. If it weren’t for them, there would be no Bristol Herald Courier and there would be no awards.

Late at night, after most of the reporters have gone to sleep, there are folks working down at the production plant on Highway 394, where thousands of newspapers roll off the press each night. They go to the newspaper carriers, who roll and deliver them in the wee hours of the morning.

For example, there’s somebody out there driving newspapers from Blountville, Tenn., to Grundy, Va.—a distance of more than 100 miles—every morning.

When you shiver in your pajamas as you walk out to get your newspaper, it means someone has been out in the frigid pre-dawn hours to put it there.

And then there are the other full-time activities that are necessary for the running of a newspaper. Someone has to sell the advertising that pays our salaries. Someone has to sell newspapers. Someone has to answer the phone and handle customer service calls. Someone has to run this Web site.

For every reporter whose byline appears on the front page, there are dozens of other folks working behind the scenes, and their jobs are just as important as ours.

I had just a small taste of their efforts in the wee hours this weekend—and they were still a step ahead. On both of the nights I helped roll papers, my newspaper actually arrived at my home in Abingdon before I did.