As your community newspaper, The Garden Island endeavors to deliver a wide range of mostly hyper-local content in an easy-to-digest format. But this simple-sounding mission is naturally complicated due to the diverse interests of its readership. Public feedback is the
As your community newspaper, The Garden Island endeavors to deliver a wide range of mostly hyper-local content in an easy-to-digest format. But this simple-sounding mission is naturally complicated due to the diverse interests of its readership.
Public feedback is the best way for us to continue growing in an ongoing effort to meet or exceed your expectations. As such, we encourage our readers to never hesitate to send comments or concerns — positive or negative — on particular stories, features or the newspaper as a whole.
We welcome the opportunity to hear suggestions on how or where we might make changes to improve our overall quality.
The Garden Island makes a deliberate effort to provide balance in its coverage. First and foremost, we believe the newspaper plays a critical role in keeping the community informed not only by keeping tabs on local events but digging into the major issues impacting Kaua‘i.
But this is a two-way street. The public at-large has a responsibility to educate itself with hard facts before making crucial decisions.
In nine days, community members will head to the polls to elect leaders who will shape the future of our county, state and country. We encourage residents to learn all they can about these individuals before checking the boxes next to their names. Name recognition alone does not make someone qualified to serve us in government.
The Garden Island has published a plethora of candidate information based on responses to questionnaires, one-on-one interviews and coverage of political forums.
More candidate responses and election information will be published next week in one final push to put out as much as possible before voting Nov. 2. (Walk-in absentee voting has already started and continues through Oct. 31 at the Historic County Annex Building.)
We don’t pretend to be the exclusive resource for information about candidates or other topics. In these technologically driven times, a good Google search can yield a heap of results.
But we become a bit concerned when we see readership soar for a story about a brushfire that didn’t threaten any structures or lives and we see readership plummet for a story about the decisions our elected officials may be making behind closed doors.
Some readers call in or send e-mails asking why we even bother running an article about a minor brushfire and they ask why a more substantive story was slid down to the bottom of the front page to make room for it.
The answer involves our effort to give readers what they want. Papers fly off the rack when we publish photos of fires or crashes. They stack up when we run stories letting candidates communicate directly to readers, explaining why we should elect them to office.
This data serves as a strong indicator of what our readership is interested in seeing in their local newspaper and what they can do without. That said, while we may adjust where stories are placed in the paper, we can not in good conscience simply abort our mission to keep the community informed on the issues that matter most.
A minor crash or fire may have a momentary sense of urgency and interest, but the critical reports about the direction our leaders are taking us can not be ignored.
The Garden Island will continue providing coverage of both to the best of its ability in its quest to deliver the news you want.
And again, we want to hear from you. The Garden Island is your community newspaper. Our readers remain the best source of information on how we can continue marching forward.
