Vols baseball brought us face-to-face with so many readers

Welcome to Your Week in Knoxville, emailed every Sunday only to subscribers, from Knox News editor Joel Christopher. A selection of our best pieces from this past week are featured at the bottom of this newsletter.

We got to meet thousands of people this past week, courtesy of the Tennessee Vols baseball team and our ability to commemorate shared experiences in a way no other media outlet can.

If you watched the postgame celebration or ESPN SportsCenter after the game, you saw players and coaches holding up copies of our VICTORY special edition. We prepared the four-page section the week before the College World Series finals, printed it at one of our company's presses in Des Moines, Iowa, and drove it to Omaha, Nebraska, the Friday before the finals began. It was a thrill to see it in the hands of players immediately after their win.

Many of you, the subscribers who make our work possible, are full-access subscribers, meaning you take the newspaper in addition to accessing our work online. If you're a digital-only subscriber, you might not have seen the impressive special sections we published after the Vols captured their first baseball national championship. You can get a look in the photo gallery at the top of this newsletter.

We had a blast hearing the stories of so many people who showed up to buy one of the special sections. There are few collective experiences that draw so many people together like this did, and our journalists loved taking time to staff our lobby desk and share the moment.

We're not done yet, either. We're publishing a 160-page hard cover book commemorating the national championship season. It'll be off the presses soon - we're in production already - and it's already available for purchase.

More: Diamond Vols!Celebrate Tennessee baseball's epic CWS national championship with our special new book

And if you didn't get your hands on one of the special sections, it's not too late.

More: Never forget the Vols title runCelebrate Tennessee baseball's national championship with Knox News poster, extra edition

At the same time we were in overdrive covering the College World Series and producing special sections and the book, we kept our foot on the pedal bringing you vital local news. Here, like every week, is a selection of some of our best work from the past week.

Thank you again for your steadfast support of strong local journalism!

Joel Christopher, executive editor, joel.christopher@knoxnews.com