Published: June 13, 2009 05:47 pm         

Editor's Note: Team effort tells stories of Hoosier travel spots

When times are tough economically, people get very careful with their hard-earned money. When it comes to spending, it’s a common practice to give special consideration to summer vacations or other leisure trips.

Rather than make that summertime trek to Disney World, Myrtle Beach, or any number of fabulous destinations around the country, many folks look for recreational opportunities closer to home. Indiana and the Midwest are a playground for families, as long as they know where to look.

Assuming that vacations would be planned closer to home this year, we began searching in early spring for ways to provide useful information and recreational ideas for the approaching travel season.

As a newspaper, our primary mission of gathering news and information relevant to our vast and diverse audience is focused on telling stories about events, people, places and issues of importance in our readership area. But in this case, we needed to extend our reach and tell stories about things a bit farther away, yet within easy and inexpensive travel distance.

Still, gathering good information for such a project would be taxing for our staff resources.

Newspapers everywhere face similar challenges, of course, so the Tribune-Star teamed up with three other newspapers — The Herald Republican of Angola, The Republic of Columbus and the Evening News of Jeffersonville — to produce a package of travel features that all of us would share with our readers.

This unique collaboration resulted in the first of a four-part feature series published on the cover of today’s Valley Life section. Titled “Adventures in Indiana,” the series targets four beautiful state parks that are situated in geographically diverse regions of Indiana where seasonal activities are exciting and abundant.

Featured in our opening segment today is Pokagon State Park located near Angola in Steuben County in extreme northeast Indiana. I think our readers will be amazed at what this park and adjacent community in the far reaches of the Hoosier state have to offer.

The Pokagon feature package was generated by The Herald Republican of Angola.

Other sites to be featured include Brown County State Park and Nashville in central Indiana; and Clifty Falls State Park and Madison on the Ohio River in southeast Indiana.

The final installment will be produced by the Tribune-Star and will feature Turkey Run State Park and Parke County in west-central Indiana.

The feature packages will be published every other week through the end of July. The publication schedule and source newspapers are as follows:

• Today — Pokagon State Park, Angola (The Herald Republican, Angola)

• June 28 — Brown County State Park, Nashville (The Republic, Columbus)

• July 12 — Clifty Falls State Park, Madison (Evening News, Jeffersonville)

• July 26 — Turkey Run State Park, Parke County (Tribune-Star, Terre Haute)

We are proud to be part of the series and to be associated with these other fine Indiana newspapers.

As always, we welcome reader comments and suggestions about this and other potential content projects in the future.

Jones can be reached at (812) 231-4336, or by e-mail at max.jones@tribstar.com.