My wife, Assistant Managing Editor Jessica Eng, had trouble sleeping the nights leading up to the launch of the newspaper you’re holding in your hands today. And my mood swung wildly — from confident excitement to sheer panic.
Sure, we’ve been publishing the Plant City Observer for more than a year. But this joint venture — a partnership between the Observer Media Group and the Tampa Bay Times — ushers in a new era. Now affiliated with not one but two of the most celebrated newspaper companies in Florida, our staff feels an incredible responsibility to deliver a product worthy of both names.
Ever since we announced our new partnership in June, I’ve been dreaming about this edition. I wanted it to be a definitive statement of the kind of community newspaper we are for our readers and advertisers. As we approached our go-live date, I amassed a list of potential stories that stretched for miles. Our staff compiled a list of new ideas for features and sections. We put up new signs at our Historic Downtown Plant City office and designed new newspaper boxes.
But, as the deadline approached for this first edition, I realized I hadn’t planned for one of the most important pieces of this inaugural edition — the front-page photo.
And, quite appropriately for a community newspaper, our savior wasn’t a member of our staff but rather an esteemed resident of our wonderful city.
About two weeks ago, I decided our cover story would be a Hometown Heroes feature on U.S. Army Sgt. Thomas Adair. Thomas not only is five months into a yearlong deployment defending our country, but also he left a wife and young daughter behind. His is a dramatic, heartwarming story that fits our editorial mold perfectly.
I interviewed Thomas via email and then met his wife, Lauren, and daughter, Autumn, at their Plant City home. But, with Thomas at an undisclosed location in Southeast Asia, I couldn’t take my own photo of the three of them.
Local photog phenom Stephanie Humphrey had taken some family portraits right before Thomas left for his deployment, but she told me she was out of town and did not have access to her home computer.
In any other community, the conversation likely would have ended there. Chalk it up to bad timing.
But, as we all know, Plant City is different.
“I could possibly talk my husband through the process of retrieving some of those images and sending them to you, but I can’t make any promises,” she wrote to me via email — at 10 p.m. Monday night.
I replied that I had a backup plan but that I’d appreciate anything she could do the next day. Then, I went to sleep.
The next morning, Stephanie had four images waiting in my inbox. After receiving my request, she called her husband, Byron, and, for the next hour and a half, tried to teach him Photoshop. Ultimately, she wasn’t satisfied with the crops, so she had him send her the images, and she delivered them to me just before midnight.
“Bless his heart, he never could get it just right, so I had him adjust the image size, then email them to me, so I could then crop them myself and email them to you,” Stephanie told me.
Keep in mind, Stephanie — and Byron — did all of this out of the goodness of their hearts.
It’s this type of kindness that makes Plant City such a special place to live, and it’s only fitting that, for the launch of our new newspaper, a member of our community stepped in to help make it a success.
If you’re reading our newspaper for the first time, I’d like to thank you for giving us a look. We pack every edition full of hyperlocal news about Plant City. We strive to deliver the community’s most complete news report, and our pages always will be filled with coverage that has direct implications for Plant City and its residents. No regional or wire stuff here.
For those of you who have been with us since the beginning, thank you for your support — and for staying with us as we embark on our new partnership. In this edition, you’ll find several new features, notably our Faith and Real Estate pages. We hope you enjoy.
As always, we cherish your feedback and suggestions. I can be reached by phone, (813) 704-6850 or by email, meng@plantcityobserver.com.
