This may be my final blog post, for reasons I explain in its opening paragraphs.

So I'm using this last opportunity to sum up the huge challenge that faces newspaper companies – and the things I believe could possibly turn the tide from ongoing decline to growth.

It's a very tall order – but with the right leadership and commitment of resources, perhaps it could be done.

One drawback to great teamwork is that, because of the effort and time it takes to work well together, team members may become isolated from the rest of the organization. To keep that from happening to your team, here are some questions team members should be answering periodically.

On Nov. 8, by a vote of 49 to 46, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Trump's nomination of Peter Robb to be the next NLRB general counsel. Robb, a management labor lawyer from Vermont, replaces Richard Griffin, whose term expired on Nov. 4.

In this column, also read an update about the U.S. Department of Labor overtime rule, news about an EEOC case, plus a case regarding the ADA.

Newspaper companies can't take a passive approach in how they approach the hiring of salespeople. They must implement a proactive hearts-and-minds marketing campaign in order to build what Charity Huff, managing partner of Maroon Ventures, calls the A-Team.

During the SNPA-Inland Annual Meeting, Huff shared proven, successful strategies to build a productive sales environment, maintain a healthy pipeline of qualified sales professionals, and reach new customers with compelling marketing tactics.

Learning to be a good coach for your employees doesn't mean mastering complicated techniques or memorizing dozens of rules as much as simply developing the right attitudes in yourself. To be an effective coach, you need to follow some basic guidelines to help you cultivate the habits and perspective that bring out the best in your staff.

Responses to the Fall 2017 Publisher Confidence Survey conducted by Cribb, Greene & Cope indicate publishers continue to be encouraged about the short-term future, and are somewhat more confident than they were a year ago.

On the evening of Monday, Sept. 25, the U.S. Senate voted 49 to 47 to confirm William Emanuel to the National Labor Relations Board.

Newspaper owners and executives are encouraged to participate in the Annual Publisher Confidence Survey.

The survey asks 11 questions that provide direct feedback from publishers on revenue, profit and other current trends in the publishing industry.

The survey takes less than two minutes to complete, and results are provided immediately so publishers can see how others are responding.

We have been writing for months about the never-ending saga of legislative attempts to remove from North Carolina law a provision in the workers' compensation law that presumes newspaper carriers are independent contractors. This presumption has been very valuable since it was passed almost two decades ago. Since that time, there has not been a single reported independent contractor versus employee case in the workers' comp arena in the state of North Carolina.

Fending off another attack by industry opponents in the Oct. 4 special session of the N.C. General Assembly, the North Carolina Press Association stopped an effort to presume all newspaper carriers in the state to be employees, subject carriers to state workers comp and unemployment insurance taxes, and create a new test for independent contractor status.