What should the role of PRT be in relation to our business community? Are we adequately promoting local enterprise? What kind of image are visitors getting about our community when they read our newspaper?
PRT’s mission is to create a dialogue between the diverse factions of this community, to talk about our town’s concerns as well as its accomplishments. We feel that our job as a newspaper is to inform. We are not an extension of the Chamber of Commerce, dedicated to printing only promotional articles that will draw people to our lovely community. Nor are we a publication whose profit margin dictates that its pages be dominated by advertisements, with a little news squeezed in. We chose to be a non-profit newspaper so that our decisions as to content would not be subject to such influences.
When a local business opens, or makes improvements, we want our readers to know about it. And if a local enterprise is hosting an event, we will always try to include such information in our paper—along with everything else we attempt to include each month within our space limits.
We truly appreciate the support of our advertisers, whose interest in the purchase of ad space continues to rise. We believe that their increased patronage can be credited to our growing readership, which looks forward each month to an issue that they can be entertained by, learn from, criticize, and talk about with each other. And that’s the point.