White County News: Cleveland's Award-Winning Weekly for Northeast Georgia
The White County News is a weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Cleveland, Georgia, the county seat of White County in the mountains of northeast Georgia. Published by Community Newspapers Inc. of Athens, the News covers Cleveland, the Alpine-themed tourist town of Helen, Sautee Nacoochee and the rural communities between them — reporting county and city government, the White County school system, Warrior athletics, business, faith and family life for one of Georgia's most scenic counties.
In recent years the paper has been recognised as one of the strongest weeklies in the state, winning a dozen awards in a single Georgia Press Association Better Newspaper Contest, including second place in General Excellence in its division. Its website, whitecountynews.net, carries news through the week and showcases the paper's growing multimedia work.
Overview
White County sits at the southern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, home to the Chattahoochee National Forest's headwaters country, the Bavarian-styled village of Helen on the Chattahoochee River, and the historic Sautee Nacoochee valley. Cleveland, a small city of a few thousand, anchors the county's government, schools and commerce. The White County News is written for that whole community: commissioners and council members, teachers and coaches, merchants on the Cleveland square and in Helen, farmers, church congregations and new residents drawn by the mountains.
The paper's stated approach, shared with its sister Community Newspapers Inc. publications, is that strong newspapers build strong communities, and that a community newspaper should publish distinguished, community-oriented journalism dedicated to truth, integrity and hard work.
Newspaper History in Cleveland
Cleveland has a newspaper tradition stretching back to the nineteenth century. The Digital Library of Georgia's Georgia Historic Newspapers collection preserves the Cleveland Courier, a weekly that began in 1896 and was published in Cleveland by Geo. S. Kytle; its catalogued run extends to volume 85, number 13, dated December 31, 1975. The Courier's surviving issues — now digitised and searchable — record White County's life across the first three quarters of the twentieth century and give today's readers and researchers a direct line into the county's past.
The White County News carries that Cleveland weekly tradition into the present day under Community Newspapers Inc. ownership, publishing on Thursdays from Cleveland and covering a county that has changed enormously since the Courier era — from a remote farming county to a tourism and retirement destination whose population and school system keep growing — while keeping the same basic assignment: tell White County what happened in White County this week.
Ownership
The White County News is published by Athens-based Community Newspapers Inc., the company founded by N. J. Babb that operates community newspapers across Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. CNI's leadership includes chairman Tom Wood and W. H. "Dink" NeSmith Jr.; Mark Major became the company's president in 2021. The White County News operates with its own Cleveland newsroom and staff, sharing the company's printing, technology and business support while keeping editorial decisions local.
Coverage and Content
News coverage follows the White County Board of Commissioners, the Cleveland City Council and the Helen City Commission, along with planning, roads, water and development questions in a county balancing growth with a mountain landscape. The paper reports the White County Board of Education, school events and student achievement, and public-safety news from the sheriff's office, fire and emergency services and the courts.
Sports are a major franchise. Sports editor Mark Turner has covered White County High School's Warriors and Lady Warriors for years, across football, volleyball, softball, basketball, baseball and the region tournaments that structure community life each season. Lifestyle and community coverage — church news, clubs, weddings, anniversaries, obituaries, opinion columns and letters — rounds out the weekly edition, and the paper publishes the legal notices required of a county newspaper.
Community Role
The News functions as White County's shared diary and civic forum. Its editorial page hosts local debate, its columns celebrate neighbours, and its reporting explains decisions made in Cleveland and Helen that affect taxes, roads, schools and the tourist economy on which many families depend. When the Alpine Helen transformation marked its 50th anniversary, the paper produced a multimedia oral-history project of video interviews preserving first-person memories of how a declining mill town became a Bavarian alpine village — work that won first place in Multimedia Journalism in the state press contest.
Print and Digital Presence
The print edition appears every Thursday, and whitecountynews.net publishes news, sports, opinion, obituaries and community items daily, including photography and video. The site offers e-edition and subscription access, classified and legal advertising, and the paper promotes its coverage through social media channels. Its journalists have been recognised for photography and photo essays as well as writing, reflecting a digital-era emphasis on visual storytelling alongside the traditional weekly package.
Audience and Reach
The News serves households across White County — Cleveland, Helen, Sautee Nacoochee and unincorporated communities — and readers in adjoining northeast Georgia counties. In state press contests it has competed in a weekly division for papers with circulations in the low thousands, a scale that in a county of White County's size represents deep local penetration. Local retailers, banks, real-estate firms, attractions in Helen and public agencies use the paper and its website to reach that audience.
Notable People
Wayne Hardy serves as editor and publisher of the White County News and is himself an award-winning columnist and photographer, with state honours for serious columns, feature photography and news photography. Samantha Sinclair became editor in December 2022 before Hardy took the combined editor-publisher role, and won Georgia Press Association awards during the paper's transition period. Reporter Stephanie Hill earned first place in Multimedia Journalism for the Helen anniversary project and awards for photo essays. Sports editor Mark Turner is a longstanding fixture of the county sports scene, and columnist Emory Jones has won first place in Humorous Column writing for his tales of Cunningham, a mischievous pet pig. Office manager Susan Egan and marketing specialist Aileen Hood are among the small staff that keeps the weekly running.
The paper's day-to-day value showed clearly during the COVID-19 years, when its website carried a running record of White County case counts, Cleveland City Council and school board meeting notices, the county's CODE RED emergency notification arrangements and joint reporting with the Capitol Beat News Service on state vaccine policy — hyperlocal public-health information no other outlet assembled for White County. The News has also used its editorial page to champion the institution itself, marking National Newspaper Week with editorials on the First Amendment and applauding young journalists, including the elementary-school pupils at Mt. Yonah Elementary who launched their own school newspaper, the Lighthouse Ledger.
Its contest record continued in the Georgia Press Association's 2025 Better Newspaper Contest results, where the White County News again appeared among the weekly winners, including a first place in the Best Use of Graphics and Illustration category for weekly papers credited to Samantha Sinclair.
Recent Developments
The paper's recent honours underline its momentum. At the Georgia Press Association's 2023 Better Newspaper Contest, for work published in 2022, Turner won third place in Sports Coverage and Jones third in Humorous Column, in a division for weeklies with circulations of 2,000 to 3,799. In a later contest year the News won twelve awards overall — highlighted by second place in General Excellence for its division and first places for its Editorial Page, Lifestyle Coverage, Multimedia Journalism and Humorous Column — one of the strongest showings by a Georgia weekly of its size. The News continues Thursday print publication with daily digital coverage from Cleveland.
