What sets us apart from others?
2. We don’t operate on click baiting, salacious headlines, steamy gossip stories, or stories we cannot confirm. Sometimes that means we aren’t “first” to a breaking news story because we would rather be right than first. We are the source you can trust. We have had breaking news where we can only say what is confirmed – and people want all the details. We aren’t going to provide those if we don’t know them to be true. We also consider the public’s right to know and need to know. We don’t print everything we know – because that would be wrong.
3. “Gotcha” journalism is wrong – period.
Rarely will a public figure or elected official not know about a story we are going to press with because we will have already reached out to them to let them know we are covering whatever the story is. And we will only cover it if it is indeed a story. They have the opportunity to respond. “Gotcha” journalism may sell papers, but we value our integrity.
4. We are the only profession mentioned in the constitution – the first amendment’s freedom of the press. Our founding fathers expected the press to be an integral part of our democracy by being a watchdog for the people. The press can and should investigate and report on government wrongdoing or overreach. We believe the second amendment is just as important as the first…and all the amendments except for the eighteenth which made it illegal to sell alcohol in the United States.
It was later repealed by the twenty-first amendment – about fourteen years later in 1933. If a news organization isn’t a watchdog – it is a lapdog. We have seen reports of newsrooms being raided by the local police and even the FBI. Sadly, it came as a result of an elected official being investigated. It’s a violation of the First Amendment. We are not afraid.
5. We will continue to print our news, in addition to online news. Why is print so important?
Because it is permanent.
You cannot go back and change it. It protects history, it protects a reporter’s work, it protects what we know to be true. In an all-digital format, history can be changed, deleted, rewritten, reshaped and no one would ever know. Think about that. Today’s news is tomorrow’s history.
6. There are bad reporters and bad newspapers out there that do not operate the way we do.
They are hurting the very industry they claim to love. They are closing printing presses leaving others with nowhere to print. Our country needs more good newspapers in print.
We are changing the minds of people in our communities. If someone tells you newspapers are old and no one reads them, show them this editorial. Show them why it is important to read a newspaper and how we inform and lift our community. We do the work, so they don’t have to.
Our company is living proof that people read newspapers here. In addition, 218 million Americans read their local newspapers. And 74% of Americans believe that it is important to have a local newspaper provide community news and information (newspapers.org 2024 Local Newspaper Study).
Our newspapers will continue to grow in circulation and distribution. We defy the odds – because we do it right. One newspaper judge said something like, “If all newspapers did it like this newspaper, there wouldn’t be talk of newspapers dying.