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Courtesy photo. Michelle Lott, president and publisher of the weekly Observer newspaper greets visitors at the Farmer's Market on Canal Street. The newspaper is trying to increase its paid subscriptions.
I walked into the Canal Street office of the Observer newspaper Tuesday and plunked down 20 bucks for a subscription.
I did it, so perhaps you can, too.
After all, the more information that's out there, the better it makes our community here in Southeast Volusia.
I know a little bit about the Observer newspaper. I was its editor from January to mid-July of 2007. In fact, I was its last editor when the newspaper was published daily.
I worked every single day during those nearly seven months with the exception of July 4. Tons of people used to comment how they'd see my white Audi TT convertible parked out in front of the former office on U.S. 1. I was there seemingly all hours of the day and well into most nights -- even for more than a few sunrises.
The day the newspaper was converted back to a weekly and I had finished the prototype, I was shown the door. That final issue under my belt was a pretty decent read, with an in-depth centerpiece story on then-Death Row inmate Virginia Larzelere, who was appealing her sentence in the killing of her Edgewater dentist-husband, Norman Larzelere.
Of course the newspaper was owned by a Midwest outfit that shut it down completely several months later after subscriptions trickled down to a few hundred.
Then a year ago, the Observer name and its extensive archives were purchased by Robert and Michelle Lott, who are really good people. Mrs. Lott assumed ownership under Coronado publishing as president and publisher. Mr. Lott continued with his other civic and professional duties, becoming president of the Southeast Volusia Chamber of Commerce, continuing his volunteerism as a trustee on the Southeast Volusia Hospital Authority, which oversees Bert Fish Medical Center, and as economic development chairman in Edgewater.
The Observer was reopened as a weekly with a new office on Canal Street, not far from the Chamber office on Canal and a brisk walk to Lott's full-time job as principal of Lott Financial Services on Flagler Avenue.
Like many people familiar with the media and especially print newspapers, I was skeptical that the Lotts could make a go of it, trying to keep a nearly century-old institution going, but they have bucked the system.
Even in this national recession that has hit newspapers especially hard, they're giving it a good fight with a dedicated staff led by Editor Robert Burns. The Observer is not a metro. That's the job of dailies like the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Orlando Sentinel, but it serves a vital community function in getting news out about not-for-profits and civic-minded activities, weekend festivals, local school and government happenings and the slice of life stories that stand out. And it has the potential to do investigative reporting.
Even with an advertising base, name recognition and marketing, the Observer can't survive without paid subscriptions. The Observer has its share of critics, myself among them that it could have more hard news, but it has also been pointed out to me that focusing on the good works of the community has been the Observer's niche for decades.
Of course, I'm proud that NSBNEWS.net has plenty of daily hard news as well as the community features that supplement our exclusively-online newspaper. The focus on daily journalism with emphasis on breaking news, blogs and in-depth reporting that comes with a 24-hour news cycle is something I developed in Volusia County dating back to 1996, when I was a police and courts reporter in Daytona for eight years.
We're all trying to fight our way through this terrible economy and keep the flow of news going. Ultimately, people make choices on what they want to read, watch or hear in terms of the news media. But the community benefits as a whole from strong support of media and the first amendment privileges that come with it.
Here in Southeast Volusia, we're lucky to have the offerings of really local media in the Observer and NSBNEWS.net.