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This community newspaper is owned, written, produced, printed and distributed
by Beaches residents proud to be celebrating more than four decades together. That
tradition of local people producing a local community newspaper has been
The Leader's hallmark since its founding.
A local newspaper,
doing its job, is the voice of the community. It presents the universal
store of information that gives people a sense of the place where they
live. It is, or should be, the organ that connects people to each other
and to the town or village they call home. A good local newspaper will
also supply the institutional memory that gives the community continuity.
Bob and
Ruby Scott said it very well when they introduced The Beaches Leader
on page one of the first edition in June 1963. They proclaimed that The Leader
would be "a real voice of the people, a newspaper dedicated to presenting
all the facts, pro and con, on civic issues; a newspaper helping neighbors
to become better acquainted with each other."
The Beaches
community is a far cry from the Norman Rockwell village it was when Bob
and Ruby founded The Beaches Leader, but our role has not changed.
When we are deciding what to put in The Leader we are guided by
one imperative: Provide the local news and information that our readers
consider important.
Local is
our beat. But we try hard to be more than hometown refrigerator-door journalism.
Of course I would be disappointed if thousands of magnets were not holding
clippings on thousands of refrigerators in the Beach community. But beyond
the youth soccer, dance recitals, fishing success stories, famous cooks
and local heroes are hard news stories that need ink.
The Leader
has covered the hurricanes, fires, police blotters
and tragedies that befall us. We have also covered the festivals,
concerts, parades and everyday activities that make the fabric of beach
life so rich. We have covered sewers, taxation, roads, and schools. We
have attempted to keep you informed about development, redevelopment,
rezoning, and street closings.
The advertising
on our pages has provided a catalog of items for sale by local merchants
and by local professionals. Classifieds have supplied jobs, service providers
and garage sales. For the last century, advertising has been among everybody's
top five reasons to read a newspaper.
Since a good
newspaper is a community talking to itself, we have printed thousands
of your letters. Before any one ever dreamed of talk radio or "chat rooms,"
Leader readers were writing letters to the editor. We want to print them
and stimulate discussions and public debate.
In all this
we have fallen short of our readers' expectations many times. But it has
not been because we were not trying. In 1986 we decided to make a formal
statement of our mission. What we adopted back then follows:
Our mission
is to publish distinguished community newspapers. Among our overall goals
are the following:
- To publish
products that are of high quality in terms of news and advertising content,
reproduction, and service.
- To maximize
profits consistent with product quality, but in no case less than required
to assure long term growth and our editorial independence.
- To be
fundamentalists in our support of the public's right to know and the
right of free speech and press.
- To maintain
competitive market leadership in the communities we serve.
Even though
we have now added beachesleader.com and pontevedraleader.com to the
printed version of our newspapers, and are now using the technology of
the web for delivering Beaches news and advertising, I cannot
think of any good reason why that mission statement will not provide a
roadmap for the future.
Tom Wood
Publisher
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