Spring and the time leading up to Easter – like the weeks and days before Christmas – is a very busy time in Brookhaven.

Last Saturday alone there were 11 events in the local area, and those were just the ones in The Daily Leader calendar.

Each day, our events calendar is filled with postings ranging from church revivals to civic club meetings to school activities and special programs sponsored by the chamber of commerce and other organizations.

Add to those activities the city and county governmental meetings held each month and the spot news events that crop up from time to time, and you can see there’s a lot for the newspaper’s staff to cover and get into The Daily Leader each Sunday and Tuesday through Friday.

The three other members of our news and sports staff, plus our freelance contributors, and I do our best to cover as many of the events as humanly possible, but we need assistance to get to the rest. And that’s where you, our readers, can help.

Please let us know as far in advance as possible when you are aware of an upcoming event. Items to run in our calendar can be emailed to events@dailyleader.com. Information for our Lifestyles section, such as births, engagements, weddings and club news, can be sent to lifestyles@dailyleader.com. General news items should be submitted to news@dailyleader.com.

If you think your event also needs to be covered with a story or photo, I encourage you to call us at 601-833-6961 and ask for me (I’m the only Rachel at The Daily Leader, so feel free to just ask for me by my first name) or email me at rachel.eide@dailyleader.com.

You also can email me at news@dailyleader.com. I personally check that email account as well as the emails submitted from our website, dailyleader.com.

If we are not able to send a reporter to your event for some reason, we may ask you to take a picture and/or send us information for a story. You do not have to be a writer yourself, just be sure to include all the pertinent information and give us a phone number where we can call you if we have questions or need more information.

As a general guide for determining what to include when sending in a write-up of your news item, I suggest you use the same guide that news reporters have used for years: The “five ‘W’s'” or the “five ‘W’s’ and the ‘H.'”

The five “W’s” are “who, what, where, when, why.” Who is involved? What is the event or significant activity? Where did it occur or will it occur? When did it happen or will it happen? Finally, why is the event or activity being held?

The “H” is “how.” This information may or may not be necessary to the story, but if you think it is important, add that information, too.

If you provide all of the “five ‘W’s” (and the “H” if relevant) in your email to us, we should have everything we need to put together a story for the paper. By emailing this information to us, you will help us get the story published as quickly as possible. Information that comes in via printouts requires retyping, and that takes a little more time.

Many news stories in our paper each week are compiled from emails and other information submitted by our readers. We greatly appreciate this help, and all of our readers benefit from the additional news coverage that might not otherwise have appeared in the paper.

The goal of our news staff is to have the best newspaper we can in Brookhaven, and we believe that is also the goal of our readers and the community as a whole. So please join us in the reporting of the news and special activities going on in our community. We welcome your participation.

We also appreciate your feedback and comments on important local issues through letters to the editor. You can mail letters, drop them by or email them to me at my email account or at editor@dailyleader.com. Please include your full name; we do not run unsigned letters. Also include a phone number for verification.

So, for all the budding Lois Lanes and Clark Kents out there, here’s a chance to help report the news.

And to everyone, please have a Happy Easter!

Rachel Eide is editor/general manager of The Daily Leader. Contact her at rachel.eide@dailyleader.com.