The Tribune is 10 years old

This week marks the 10th anniversary of The Orange County Tribune.

The Trib was started in 2014 as website devoted to Orange County history. In August 2016 the content was switched to news coverage of Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Stanton and Westminster.

While the web-only Tribune was well-received, some of our older readers preferred a more traditional format, such as a newspaper. While the cost of printing a newspaper for a wide distribution is prohibitive, electrons are cheap, so we went and added an “e-paper” which started as a Wednesday-only publication. We later added a Saturday paper to broaden our coverage and to be more timely.

As most readers know, the newspaper business is going through tough times. Competition for eyeballs is fierce: TV, radio, internet, etc. have appealed more successfully to readers/viewers than newspapers have.

Surveys have revealed some heartbreaking developments. According to them, young people are getting much (or most) of their news from unlikely sources such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

The arrival of AI (artificial intelligence) is close to terrifying. Even now – in the early stages of AI – images can be created with exacting detail, meaning that there are college sophomores who could create a totally convincing video “proving” that the 1969 Apollo moon landing was faked. Ironic, right?

 

Local news is getting rare. The countywide paper (we’ll name no names) frequently carries front page articles with datelines of Ontario and San Bernardino. And good luck finding the Angels and Dodgers results from Friday in the Saturday paper. Searchers are referred to the website, which likely has a paywall.

(Note: The Tribune – to the extent possible – has next-day coverage of local MLB teams, on Wednesday and Saturday at least).

Now that we’re done patting ourselves on the back for doing a job for which (mostly)no one pays us, let me make this confession.

We’re having a lot of fun doing this. We feel The Trib fills a void in local news and says to the people of our cities that “You are important. Your lives matter.”

I’ve got a plaque on my desk that reads, “Someone out there needs your writing.” Well, someone out there needs local journalism and we’re here to bring it for as long as we can.