Hello, I’m David Hoffmann. Like many of you, I’ve been thinking a lot about our country, our communities and how we find our way back to one another.
There is too much friction, too much anger and, often, too little understanding of the people and places closest to us.
I serve as chairman of the board of Lee Enterprises, the company that owns this publication. More importantly, though, I’m a husband, father and grandfather who cares deeply about the kind of communities we are leaving to the next generation.
None of us can fix it alone. But together, I truly believe we can do more to strengthen the places we call home. And local news has an important role to play.
A few years ago, I found myself looking for the kinds of stories many families look for: Coverage of young people excelling at community sports, updates on local businesses and news about neighbors doing meaningful work for people around them. But what I found was sobering: In too many places, local news had been weakened, and in some communities, it had disappeared altogether.
People are also reading…
That experience deepened my respect for local journalism and for the people who do this work every day. It also made me want to help ensure that communities continue to have trusted places to turn for local information.
I know we will not always agree about our communities, our states, our nation and our world. But I also believe most of us share more common ground than we realize. When local news helps us see that common ground, and helps us see the good people are doing around us, it can make our communities stronger.
Across Lee and the local news organizations my family and I are connected to, I have come to appreciate the remarkable range of communities served by local journalism, from large cities such as St. Louis and Buffalo, to midsized communities in Indiana and Iowa, to smaller places such as Hickory, North Carolina, and Butte, Montana.
One of those papers is especially personal to me: The Washington Missourian in Franklin County, Missouri, where I grew up and where my wife, Jerri, and I began building our life together. Places like that shape who we are, and they deserve strong local journalism.
Every one of these newspapers and websites exists to serve its community with useful, reliable local news. Our responsibility is to listen, to earn your trust and to keep improving that coverage.
The credit belongs, first and foremost, to the journalists in our newsrooms. They tell the stories people need to know. They cover public meetings, local schools, businesses, neighborhoods and high school sports. They also tell the stories that remind us what is possible when people help one another. Those stories matter. They are part of the roadmap for hope.
Local news also needs the support of the people it serves, including readers who subscribe and businesses that choose to reach their communities by advertising with us. Your support helps make this work possible.
From time to time, I plan to write here about local news, the communities we serve and the challenges and opportunities ahead. I hope my columns feel like the start of conversations with readers, advertisers, community leaders and anyone who cares about the future of local journalism.
My goal is not to write about politics, though politics touches almost everything these days. What I do want to make clear is this: Local news should serve the whole community, not one side of it. That means making room for people who see things differently, and remembering that most communities are stronger when people are willing to listen as well as speak.
I suspect many of you feel the same way.
My son Geoff likes to remind me, through our family’s dairy business, that people of every political view can still agree on ice cream. That may sound simple, but sometimes simple reminders are useful.
I believe local news can be one of those shared experiences, too.
I believe in downtowns, small businesses, community organizations, local schools and all the people who keep a place vibrant. I believe entrepreneurship and civic pride can bring people together.
I believe in community — yours, mine and the thousands of others that make up this country.
And I believe we do better when we collaborate instead of drifting farther apart.
Yes, I’m concerned about America. But I’m ultimately optimistic because I have seen what people can do when they care about their neighbors and invest in the places they call home.
Thank you for reading, for caring about your community and for helping local journalism continue to serve it. I look forward to continuing the conversation — right here in this local news publication.
