There’s never been a year like 2020. There’s never been a better time to say thank you
Dear Readers:
I’ve always thought December is a good time to look ahead, rather than back. To new beginnings and new hopes and aspirations.
As we do that, I want to say thank you to you. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for supporting journalism and your local paper. Thank you for staying informed and engaged with your community.
As you look ahead with us, we ask you to share what stories you’d like us to devote time to in the coming year. You can do so here. Your feedback, ideas and tips are invaluable, and we are listening.
Thanks to you, we were able to expand our team and increase our coverage this summer. Through your donations and a grant from Report from America, we were able to add Sam Ogozalek to report on COVID-19 developments and Kate Hidalgo Bellows to write about housing and livability issues.
Sam wrote about trends, safety precautions, health care preparedness and how it all was affecting you, such as your health, child care issues and paying bills. And Kate helped give voice to the voiceless and kept everyone abreast of the status of eviction laws and unemployment benefits.
The new reporters just added to the great work being done by our existing staff. No one covers Hilton Head better than our Katherine Kokal. She let you know how our mayor was spending public money, how the restaurants and resorts were faring and provided in-depth coverage of local elections and the search for a new town manager.
You probably would never have known how bad things were at the county level if not for Kacen Bayless’ reporting. Kacen exposed a troubling pattern of secrecy, abuse of power, and a culture that led to an exodus of county staff, and ultimately, the forced resignation of the new county administrator and the demotion of both the county council chairman and its top attorney.
COVID-19, of course, remains our top concern. It has created a huge food insecurity problem in our community, as we’ve written about. Many families are finding it difficult to feed their families. To help, we ask that you consider donating, if you are able, to our long-time partners Deep Well Project at deepwellproject.org and Bluffton Self-Help at blufftonselfhelp.org.
Thank you again for being a subscriber, and here’s to a joyful 2021.
-- Brian Tolley, president and editor
