Dear Readers,
First, thank you for supporting New Times Broward-Palm Beach.
Since 1997, you’ve come to us to read the stories no one else in town was telling, written in a way no one else was writing. For the first several years, you probably picked us up from a box on a nearby street corner, or at your favorite restaurant or bar. After that, increasingly, you found us on the internet.
You’ve continued to seek us out for coverage you know you won’t find elsewhere, and for that, we’ve always felt close to you.
We know you’re reeling from the sweeping consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. So are we. As local businesses have had to close up shop or cut back, our advertising has taken a serious hit. Everyone in our company has taken pay cuts, and we’ve had to let go some of our colleagues. None of us knows when our lives will return to normal — or what “normal” will look like.
But we want to assure you that whatever happens, we aren’t going anywhere. (Literally! We’re all working from home.) We fully intend to keep serving our readers, advertisers, and the many other partners who’ve helped us in our mission to provide an independent voice for the people of this city.
We know you value that mission. We’ve seen it in the spikes in web traffic we’re getting for our coronavirus coverage. These are the same spikes we see whenever major news hits. And it’s all the more gratifying now — to see so many people coming to us for our no-bullshit, we’re-in-this-together approach.
And even though we’ve been digital-only in Broward since 2016, we offer a convenient option for South Floridians who prefer the tried-and-true print newspaper experience but might be stuck at home these days: You can easily find an elegant digital facsimile of our sister publication, Miami New Times, via our online flipbook.
We want to stay close to you. That’s why we write our stories, and that’s why I'm writing to you now. Our reporters, editors, photographers, illustrators, salespeople, production-department workers, and business-office employees are still on the job, keeping New Times up and running to get you the news. And our digital-marketing specialists stand at the ready to help businesses across the region weather the crisis and bounce back once the clouds have cleared.
We’ll keep fighting through this catastrophe. Stick with us and we’ll do it together.
Oh, and one last thing: Local business owners have always populated our editorial coverage as well as our ads. We write about their venues. We salute them with Best of Miami® awards. (And sometimes we get under their skin.) We also eat, drink, shop, or otherwise plunk down our own cash to avail ourselves of their wares. To us, they too are like family. Please do what you can to support them.
Tom Finkel
Editor-in-Chief
