Given the steady flow of articles, newsletters, and social media posts that Lakeland Gazette produces daily and weekly, I sometimes wonder: Do we give the impression of a much larger newsroom than we are?
We have only one full-time staff member and a team of freelance photographers. Some days, we’re up and out before dawn and still working through well after dark.
Lakeland Gazette is lucky; many talented groups of freelancers and contributors support us.
Although small, I’m incredibly proud of what this team does and how they do it.
Robert, our publisher, brings the perspective of a businessperson and an entrepreneur, along with an openness to new ideas and a discipline that keeps the work grounded in our “Mission Statement”.
Mission Statement
Lakeland Gazette “Where local always matters”
Our mission is to publish a distinguished and profitable community newspaper. Among our overall goals are:
To publish a community newspaper whose focus will be excellence in terms of news and advertising content, reproduction, and customer 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 right to know, and the right of free speech and press.
And to provide aggressive and visionary leadership.
This mission will be accomplished through the teamwork of professionals who are dedicated to truth, integrity, loyalty, quality, and hard work. We believe that a community must first know about itself in order to act in its own best interest.
We believe that a strong newspaper builds a strong community
The principles that the staff, editorial board, and corporation of the Lakeland Gazette should operate on are:
- To assertively seek content that has high interest, impacts the reader, provokes discussion, and advances the reader’s knowledge.
- To react quickly to any newsworthy events around Lakeland or in another part of the world (if it impacts our readers).
- To make the products as relevant to readers as possible by knowing what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen in the news and our community.
- To create a product that is a reflection of the diversity of the backgrounds, goals, and interests of the readers and the community.
- To consistently adhere to the highest ethical guidelines and foster the most professional environment possible at all levels.
- To develop and promote student journalists through a school mentoring program.
But there’s a difference between what a small newsroom can accomplish and what a community like Lakeland deserves. And I think about that difference often.
I think about what one more full-time reporter could mean for Lakeland: more stories we could chase, questions we could pursue more deeply.
Imagine what we could accomplish together.
Thank you for reading, for caring about this community, and for making Lakeland Gazette possible.