Editorial: A pledge of continued community service
Every day the sun comes up, and when it does, it brings renewed purpose and new opportunity. Every day.
That's the magic of life, the magic also of any enterprise. It's an ingredient, at least, of happy people and of successful organizations.
Which brings us, if you'll permit a momentary aside, to the Magic Kingdom. We're charmed by a few devotees of Mickey in our newsroom so perhaps it only is appropriate that we as an organization always have embraced the sense of optimism that has served so long as the backbone of the Disney phenomenon.
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things," the legendary Walt Disney said long ago, "because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
This week, we start a new era in the life of the Daily Herald, the Daily Herald Media Group and Paddock Publications, Inc.
For the first time in 120 years, the company is not owned by the Paddock family. Instead, it is we the employees who now own it and we the employees who carry on its traditions and its civic obligations.
The company carries on with the same leadership team at the helm, the same board of directors, the same news operation, the same enthusiasm and the same set of guiding principles.
Today, as curiosity keeps leading us down new paths, we dedicate ourselves anew to you and to the community.
Our commitment is a commitment to excellence in suburban journalism, a commitment to listening to our subscribers, a commitment to evolving as the needs of the suburbs evolve, and a commitment above all to community service.
The suburbs are our home too. We don't just report here. We live here. We are your neighbors.
We aspire always to do right by our community.
The times, as have been well publicized, have been tumultuous in the newspaper business the past 10 years as they have been for so many legacy businesses challenged by the digital revolution.
But the paper abides. With the support of our readers; the hard work of our staff; and disciplined and innovative business decisions, the paper abides.
We've owed that to the community as well as to ourselves.
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
This is the formula for our continued success, as it has been the formula for our past successes.
But it is more than that. Curiosity, after all, is the nature of reporting. So it is the nature of who we are. It is the nature, we suspect, of you, too.