On the Occasion of the Standard's Continued Independence
Independence is not a circumstance. It is a practice, renewed daily, in the choices that editors and reporters make about what to cover, how to cover it, and what to say when the answer is complicated.
The Standard has published continuously under independent ownership for decades.
It is an occasion that passes without formal ceremony at most newspapers, which is perhaps as it should be: another year of publication, another year of the work continuing. I note it here not because I think it warrants celebration but because I think it warrants acknowledgment, and acknowledgment of this kind is something newspapers are often too modest to provide for themselves.
The Standard has published continuously, under independent ownership and independent editorial direction, for longer than most of the people who work here have been alive. That continuity is not remarkable in the sense of being uncommon among newspapers of a certain age and regional character. It is remarkable in the sense that it required, at every point, choices — choices about ownership, about finances, about the relationship between the publication and the interests that might have preferred it to be something other than what it is.
What Independence Costs
Independence is not free. It is not free financially, in that the resources available to an independent regional publication are more constrained than those available to a publication that is part of a larger ownership structure. It is not free editorially, in that the absence of institutional protection that a larger organization might provide can make certain kinds of reporting more exposed and certain kinds of pressure more direct.
"The value of independence is not that it makes the work easier. It is that it makes the work honest, or at least gives it the conditions in which honesty is possible."
We continue. We do so with gratitude to the readers whose subscriptions make it possible, and with awareness that their support is both a resource and an obligation. They are not paying us to agree with them. They are paying us to tell them what we find. We intend to continue doing so.