Amidst our amazing winter storm to hit St. Tammany Parish the last couple of days, we who are publishing The Slidell Independent and Tammany West had something to celebrate.
No, it wasn’t the fact that I didn’t break any bones while playing in our “huge” snowfall that was expected, it was the fact that our Slidell Independent newspaper turned five years old on January 29.
Who would have believed it after Jan. 29, 2009 when we debuted with The Independent on the Slidell streets? I can’t tell you how many people questioned and doubted us for starting a paper in the times when papers were steadily going out of business across this country.
Actually, they were right. Many newspapers in this country were in decline, and many have closed in the past five years. But if you look closer, you will see they have mostly been big-city newspapers, or middle-sized city papers.
The last five years, since my family took this pretty bold risk, have been an incredible education and learning experience for me—not just about becoming a small business owner, but especially about the desire for a local community to have its own paper—whether that is in Slidell, or now with Tammany West in the Covington/Mandeville area.
To back this story up, my venture into the ownership of a newspaper started before Hurricane Katrina, where I worked with the Slidell Sentry News for over 30 years as a college dropout who started covering football games, then slowly moved his way up to become the sports editor, managing editor, and then the publisher of L’Observateur in LaPlace—a paper owned by the same folks who owned the Slidell Sentry-News and the News Banner in the Covington/Mandeville area.
But then came Hurricane Katrina in Aug., 2005, giving the ownership of those community papers an idea that folks would rather have one St. Tammany paper, as opposed to the separate Slidell and Covington/Mandeville publications. The St. Tammany News was born and so started three years, for me, of hearing people say they wanted their own paper back in Slidell.
I never seriously considered the idea of launching my own paper until Nov., 2008 when I was driving from Slidell to LaPlace and beginning to question myself about whether I could start and operate my own paper.
My answer, in short time, was “yes,” I wanted to try, and thanks to Gulf Coast Bank in Covington, I was given a business loan to start The Slidell Independent. In a matter of a month we had the first edition ready to roll and since then, we have experienced nothing but terrific feedback from people who were so thankful to have their own paper back in Slidell.
Yes, Virginia, people really do still love their own, community paper, where they can find dozens of news items and pictures that the Internet has no connection to. And yes, I could tell by the regular commentary of thanks to me that Slidell was thrilled to have a paper again.
That is what my family and I have worked hard to maintain for five years, and I hope we have done a good job of it. I know we take the responsibility very seriously of operating the Slidell paper again. We feel very strongly about making sure the Slidell paper doesn’t go away. And it seems that the business community feels the same way—Internet or not—since we have steadily grown in revenue for five years and appear to have a very good, and long term future.
But then came Chapter Two of this little adventure for my family and me. We were all shocked when that parish-wide paper was unable to survive as the St. Tammany News closed almost a year ago, thereby opening the door for us to open a second community paper, which we did in March, 2012, when Tammany West debuted.
Since then, we are again hearing the public making it clear they are happy to have their own Mandeville/Covington/Abita/Madisonville paper back again, and while it is slow out of the gates with advertising support (something we hope to see change soon), it is crystal clear, once again, people want their own paper.
In Slidell, we see every paper fly out of our racks each week—certainly due in part to the fact we made the paper completely for free—and on the west side of the parish, we are seeing just as many people pick up the free paper every week.
The Slidell Independent is heading into year number six and doing quite well, thank you, although it was not without a hard fight to survive for those first five years. Fortunately, we had many local businesses who made it clear they wanted to keep the local paper—and they played their part by supporting us with ads.
Hopefully the business community on the west side of the parish will show the same interest in keeping their own paper, now that we have given you the opportunity to have one again.
But more than anything as I reflect on five years of proving that local papers still have a great future, I feel a sense of gratitude to the communities who put their trust in us with their ad dollars. Without them, the paper truly will not survive.
Kevin Chiri can be reached by e-mail at kevinchiri@gmail.com