For 40 years, the weekly Pelican Press newspaper has been a must-read for year-round key residents, tourists, and snowbirds alike. At its core, it was a Siesta Key paper, but with its robust reporting on city and county goings-on, it certainly enjoyed a sizable following off the island as well.

Week in, week out, with a small crew and probably an even smaller budget, the editors and office staff cranked out spot-on investigative pieces and local government reporting from a cadre of shoe-leather reporters like the inimitable Bob Ardren, Jack Gurney, and Stan Zimmerman to name a few. Strong editorial pages, witty cartoons, book reviews, and freelance contributions from arts, social, wine, and film columnists, all lent a sophisticated note to this weekly paper that managed, at the same time, to create a bond with its readers by celebrating the natural beauty of the key and featuring stories on local people, businesses, and churches – right down to including occasional photographs and reports of the elusive family of bobcats that had taken up residence on the island.

The paper always had its share of politically and socially conservative readers and advertisers, but for many, perhaps most, the Pelican Press was a welcome reflection of open-minded perspective. Its letters to the editor section, which often filled an entire page, was always lively with well-informed and cogent debate from readers on both sides of the political aisle.

To the surprise of many, over the past month, the Pelican Press was sold off by its owner – the Milwaukee-based publishing company that had owned it since 1998 after acquiring the paper from founder John Davidson. Nearly all of the full-time and freelance contributors – including erstwhile editor Anne Johnson who nurtured the paper and its content contributors to scores of Florida Press Awards over her 30-some-odd-year career there – have lost their jobs and columns as a result of the change in ownership. The new publisher, the Sarasota-based Observer Group, has promised a shift in editorial direction to reflect the philosophy of its existing stable of newspapers, which embrace the “principles of individual freedom and capitalism and Austrian economics, and the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.”

One of the most compelling aspects of the Pelican Press has always been its relationship with its readers, and this editorial shift, along with the loss of well-liked editors, staff, and reporters, has caused a fair degree of teeth-gnashing among longstanding and loyal readers. Because I wrote the “Reality Chick” column for that paper several years ago, I’ve lately been hearing from many of those readers who, very fond of the “old” Pelican Press, find these new circumstances to be an unwelcome changing of the guard.

Matt Walsh, CEO of the Observer Group which has purchased the Pelican Press, also editor and co-publisher of the Observer papers I believe, commented this morning on Stan Zimmerman’s recent guest blog post, and responded point by point to many readers’ complaints about the transition of ownership (read his full comments by clicking here). Mr. Walsh says that his newspaper group has “the desire, will and determination to continue building on the Pelican Press’ original roots and respected past.”

The heartening takeaway from all this sturm und drang is that it is thrilling to hear that so many people in our community — readers, writers, editors, newspaper owners — still care so passionately about content and editorial perspectives and opinions — and are still so personally invested in reading and publishing newspapers.

The challenge then for those of us in the business of researching, writing, reporting, opining about and publishing the news of the day — especially in light of the News of the World debacle – is to diligently strive to earn our readers’ loyalty anew, each and every day, by delivering news unfettered by bias or advertisers’ influence, opinion that is diverse, a platform for earnest debate, and the rigorous application of truth, accuracy and fairness to the printed word.

And the challenge for those of us in the personal business of reading is to strive equally diligently to be as fair in our reading as we want our newspapers to be in their reporting. And, while one may not like what one reads on every op/ed page of every newspaper, I think Voltaire said it best: “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.” — Voltaire, letter to M. le Riche, February 6, 1770