Forum Editorial: Commitment to community journalism

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This weekend, The Forum staff was humbled to once again win the Missouri Press Association’s Gold Cup for class 1 weekly newspapers, the state association’s most prestigious honor given to the newspaper in each class with the most awards for excellence from the prior year.

Led by owners/publishers Ken and Traci Garner and managing editor Skye Pournazari, we strive each week to bring our readers the news from our community. Most of the time it brings smiles, sometimes it arouses passion and even ire.

But we believe the service we provide — quality journalism — is one that no community, of any size, should be without. From the sports pages that reflect northwest Missouri’s unmatched passion and support for our local athletes to the profiles and features that show who we are as a community to investigative, accountability reporting, we’re proud each and every week to bring it to you and serve as what we believe is a vital pillar of our community.

This weekend confirmed that there are very few places across the state our size that have access to the same quality from across the spectrum, and absolutely none with a lower subscription price.

While it is always gratifying to win awards and to know that others believe we’re fulfilling that mission, ultimately statewide recognition doesn’t determine whether we’re doing a good job — our readers do.

The vast majority of the time, we let our work speak for itself, which isn’t always easy. Small-town journalism is filled with challenges and complications, and we do our best to navigate it while maintaining our commitment to respect, responsibility and integrity, no matter what obstacles come our way.

We are honored that northwest Missouri has become known across our state as being synonymous with high-quality journalism.

And we are privileged to be able to continue trying to live up to that expectation each week in providing the news of our community.

Thank you for reading.