For many communities this month brings a fresh start.

We have new mayors, new town supervisors, new council members and a new sheriff.

For those of you new to the jobs, I wish you well and I appreciate your willingness to serve the public. I also invite you to help us share the work you're doing.

I want to let you know that we can help each other and I look forward to working with you.

You can make North Country This Week a better publication by keeping us in the loop about what you're doing, what your plans are and what struggles your communities are facing.

We have a small staff that works very hard to cover news happening across St. Lawrence County, but it's not easy. With instantaneous news cycles, 32 towns and villages in St. Lawrence County and 18 school districts in our region it's truly an impossible task, we'll always have room for improvement here.

In recent years there has been an unfortunate move by government and school organizations to use social media to share news rather than sending it to the local news organizations.

While platforms like Instagram and Facebook can be great, if you look at the traffic you'd find that you're reaching very small niche circles. Mind you, there is value in that, but undoubtedly your message would have further reach if you shared it with us as well.

I'm asking our public officials, schools and community groups to buck that trend.

Share your news with us, so we can share it with others.

Let us highlight the work you're doing, let's make it reach more people.

I extend this offer further to our viewers as well.

Over the years we've been asked many times about our ability to cover sports. The reality is that it is a monumental task because of the number of communities we cover.

That said athletic directors, parents and those attending games can help us share some of those achievements.

If you send us photos from these events or call us with stories of successes we'll do our best to share them.

We have an entire section of our paper which is set aside to highlight the achievements of community members and we'd love to make it stronger.

So as we start this new year I'm asking for a little help from our leaders and community members.

I'd also love to see more letters from the public sent to us, just make sure you cite your sources and keep them within our 400 word limit.

If you're a public employee looking to share news and you're taking the time to post it to social media, consider shooting it to us as well. Those few extra minutes could help you reach thousands of more viewers.

You can send your news and photos to news@northcountrynow.com If you're sending photos please include some basic information, like who is in it, where it was taken and when. Include some contact info so we can properly attribute the photo credit and give us a number so we can follow up with questions.

We appreciate the help and we hope you give it a shot.

Jimmy Lawton is news editor of North Country This Week and NorthCountryNow.com