There’s a certain mix of anticipation and dread that occurs when your hometown newspaper makes a change. It can be as minor as a moving a favorite feature to a different page, or as big as making a substantial change to the staff you’ve come to respect and… on occasion… revile.

Hello, my name is Change.

Actually, the name is Rusty Carter. I’m the new managing editor for The Farmville Herald.

My goal is to make an already thriving newspaper into an even better product. I have a team of young, energetic reporters. I imagine most of our readers have been interviewed by Titus Mohler, Emily Hollingsworth or Morgan White.

That’s exactly what I want to keep happening. I want you to stop me on the street and tell me about seeing yourself in the latest edition of the Herald. I want you to tell me you were thrilled to see your children or grandchildren mentioned for their achievements in sports or, even better, academics. Tell me what’s going on in your neighborhood. We want to share that news with all of our readers.

Where my role may differ from my predecessor is that I will be a teaching editor. While presenting the news to the public as accurately as possible, I also want to prepare my reporters not just for this job, but for their next job.

I bring to Farmville both a breadth and depth of newspaper experience. I grew up in southeast Virginia, and my journalistic teeth were cut at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, followed by two years at The Suffolk News-Herald, 28 years at The Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg, and more recently, a disappointing stint at a paper in Florida.

That last experience helped me appreciate Virginia even more.

It’s good to be home, and it’s good to be in Farmville.

RUSTY CARTER is managing editor of The Farmville Herald and Farmville Newsmedia LLC. His email address is Rusty.Carter@FarmvilleHerald.com.