Five years ago, the Plant City Observer opened its doors and began a journey to become the go-to
community-centered paper for the city.
Along the way, it’s covered stories ranging from heartwarming features to informative pieces, from highlighting a Strawberry Crest student who found brotherhood in his school’s football team, to a local look at how America’s new immigration policies impact Plant City. It was all in an effort to be the undisputed source for local news.
“I wanted Plant City to have a true community newspaper,” Ed Verner, a founder of the Plant City Times & Observer, said.
Verner said he was disappointed with the state of the Plant City Courier at the time. He said he felt the quality had declined over the years and that it became the voice of Tampa, rather than the voice of Plant City.
Verner reached out to the Tampa Tribune twice to buy the Courier but was turned down both times. When he realized they were not going to sell and would never return to covering Plant City in depth, he decided to start his own paper.
He reached out to Felix Haynes and Nate Kilton to pool funds to create their own community focused newspaper for Plant City. The partnership with the Observer Media Group was formed and the Plant City Observer was born.
“People sometimes say to me, ‘Ed you killed the Courier,’ and I always have to tell them, ‘No, I tried my best to save it,’” Verner said. “But now I’m really proud, I think the Plant City Observer has become a name brand in Plant City that owns the local news market … I think people recognize we care.”
Part of the success of the paper, Verner said, is having reporters that live in the city. He said he wanted the writers to have to live with the results of the coverage they create. He wanted coverage to come from someone who cares about the city, rather than someone who lives in Tampa and pops in every once in a while to fill a news hole.
Amber Jurgensen, a reporter for the Observer’s original staff, quickly learned how crucial establishing relationships and becoming entrenched was to becoming an effective community journalist.
Jurgensen was hired in late May 2012 after seeing the
position on journalismjobs.com. She originally believed she was going to be working in Tampa and wasn’t told until the second interview that the position was actually in Plant City, a tactic designed to keep the new paper a secret from the Tribune.
“We were really excited to get entrenched in the community and learn what Plant City was all about,” Jurgensen said. “We went around to every business in downtown. Back then our office was in Historic Downtown on Reynolds Street … I dropped a card off with every principal in town. It was a lot of just trying to engage with the community and interact and find out the inner workings of the city.”
Jurgensen said the goal for the Observer was always to be community-oriented. She said they wanted to target things people in Plant City would care about. To her, the paper stood out from other media outlets because it was able to get the story, and check the facts, but still have heart and care about the community it was in.
“It was a really exciting time,” Jurgensen said. “And I am so thankful to this day that I was able to see the building of a newspaper from the ground up.”
Verner said Plant City needed a hyperlocal paper with news that reflected its community, rather than news from nearby cities twice its size.
“A hyperlocal paper means it isn’t just covering the problems, it’s part of the solution,” Verner said. “Small sections inside juggernaut papers often fail to take that responsibility seriously and I’m honored the Observer was able to fill that hole.”