The Club was happy to see, in person, fellow Rotarian Felix Haynes, who is one of the owners of the Plant City Observer, at Monday’s lunch meeting. Felix expressed his gratitude to attend the meeting live, and to engage with club a level more personal than Zoom provides. He reminded us to not take our meetings for granted, as they are an important fabric of the Club.
Felix provided a brief history of the Plant City Observer, and updated the Club on some possible changes for the newspaper in the future.
Your hometown newspaper goes back almost a century, when it was previously the Plant City Courier. Around 2000, the Courier was sold to the Tampa Tribune, and very soon after that, the news content was less local, and less about Plant City. It lost the Plant City perspective.
In 2012, Ed Verner, Nate Kilton, and Felix decided to bring the publication back to Plant City, and to properly provide coverage of news, sports, and the community. It has been a labor of love since then, but the paper has strived to provide a quality, weekly publication without a subscription, and fully reliant upon advertising revenues.
The paper has never been profitable in its short 8-year life. This trend has the owners considering converting the organization to a non-profit entity so that it can solicit other forms of financial support, such as grants, tax-deductible donations, and other fundraising efforts.
Over the past several weeks, Felix conducted a phone survey among readers to gauge the community’s reaction to this possible change. Most of those surveyed expressed support for the publication, and were generally supportive of the possible change. One concern was that, as a non-profit, the Observer would not be able to endorse any political candidates, but Felix explained that the Observer has not endorsed a political candidate in many years.
Felix opened the meeting for questions and concerns from the membership, and also invited members to reach out to him after the meeting if they wish to share their support or concerns.
Thank you, Felix, for taking the time to update the Club on one of Plant City’s gems, the Plant City Observer!
