- January 9, 2025
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The other day, my 6-year-old son, Luke, agreed to go with me on a bike ride around the neighborhood. He’s still nervous about falling down on the pavement, so he was deep in thought over how to prepare.
“Let’s bring Band-Aids,” he said. “Big Band-Aids. The biggest ones we have.”
As we begin 2025, I sometimes feel like I should have some big Band-Aids handy.
In 2024 my wife and I slowly took off our training wheels as new business owners. For those who don’t know, I was the editor of the newspaper since the Walsh family started the Palm Coast Observer in 2010 and the Ormond Beach Observer in 2012. Then Hailey and I bought the two newspapers (and digital properties), beginning with the first edition in September 2023.
Since then, I have thought a lot about the purpose of a newspaper in a community, and since January is a time to look backward and forward, I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce a refreshed mission statement. Thus, I am borrowing the title of my first column in the Observer, from Vol. 1, No. 1, on Feb. 4, 2010. In that edition, I wrote a column called “Why we are here,” and I think it’s appropriate to address the same subject.
Why does the Observer exist? Why are we spending so much time and money to publish local news every day on observerlocalnews.com, and why are we spending even more time and money to publish a print edition in Palm Coast and Ormond Beach every Thursday?
The Observer’s mission is to respond to three problems.
First, on a society level, we are more divided than ever, and if we ever forget that, the national media reminds us every day. In response, the Observer’s mission is to build bridges of understanding, reminding us instead of what we have in common. We do that through fair, accurate, objective, thorough news reporting and by publishing an opinion page, written by our readers, and curated by professional editors so that if facts and figures are presented alongside opinion, the community can trust that the facts and figures have been verified. In other words, this is not a social media rumor mill. We are committed to providing a reliable source of information.
Second, on the community level, we are less likely to talk to our neighbors than we used to. We are more likely to be sucked into social media. We are more isolated and lonely than we used to be. In response, the Observer’s mission is to build community spirit through compelling and comprehensive reporting on you, your neighbors and your neighborhood. We report on the local Corgi that is now working for the Fire Department. We report on the nonprofits that build floats for the holiday parades. We report on the teachers of the year at every school. These are stories that the rest of the nation doesn’t care about, but we know you do. And when we read stories about people who live down the road from us, in our own neighborhoods, we feel connected. We believe there is such a thing as a community. We feel part of something larger than ourselves.
Third, it’s harder than ever to run a business. Once you get your business started, and you set up your social media page and your website and your storefront and your staff, and then you wait for your customers to arrive, sometimes they don’t. They don’t visit your website or like your Facebook page as you had hoped. That’s not necessarily because your business is not serving the community well; it could be that the community doesn’t know about your business. And so, in response, the Observer builds the local economy by helping businesses strategically connect with our readers — their customers — in print and online.
To summarize, our mission statement is as follows:
We build community spirit and bridges of understanding through accurate and compelling journalism. We build the local economy by helping businesses strategically connect with our print and online readers.
Thank you for reading. We know there are many things competing for your time, and when you pick up the Observer, you are showing your interest in your community.
Thank you to our advertisers — our partners in fulfilling our mission. Every dollar you spend with the Observer provides us with more resources to write stories about those Eagle Scout projects, those high school musicals, those neighbors who are volunteering their time to worthy causes.
Hailey and I, and everyone else at the Observer, are on a mission to be better than ever in 2025. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Email [email protected].
