Rogue Valley Times publisher David Sommers

It’s Wednesday afternoon in the downtown Medford offices of the Rogue Valley Times, and I’m finally focusing on writing this column, which I’m told will publish Saturday, centered on the occasion and milestone of the launch of the Rogue Valley Times six months ago.

Sort of a past, present and future all rolled into one.

My office sits in the middle of our building, between the business offices of our advertising and operations teams, and the newsroom where our reporters and editors toil daily.

It’s from this vantage point — the best seat in the house — that I get to witness how much this organization has grown and matured since our launch Feb. 6.

Pull Quote

What wonderful problems to have: A growing local news organization, rapidly on the path to sustainability and sustained service to our community.

There’s a quiet intensity in the newsroom today, as our journalists worked late last evening and then again before dawn to cover the rapidly growing Head Fire which exploded overnight just over the state line.

That’s combined with the extra effort and hours today involved in getting Thursday’s print edition published, which will be our largest so far — clocking in at three sections and 46 pages of local news, sports, opinions and our weekly arts and entertainment magazine.

What wonderful problems to have: A growing local news organization, rapidly on the path to sustainability and sustained service to our community.

If Central Point were the centerpoint of an invisible geographic circle with a diameter nearly 500 miles wide, our nearest major metropolitan neighbors would sit on the outer edge of the circumference, with Eugene, Salem and Portland far to the north and Redding, Sacramento and the Bay Area far to the south.

The Rogue Valley — and the hundreds of thousands of people who call this region home — sits geographically isolated from other major communities.

It makes this a great place for local and regional news: Defined, unique, not much competition from national news sources; our own cultural and economic priorities, challenges and opportunities.

The success of the Rogue Valley Times over the past six months has been thanks, in part, to the uniqueness of the Rogue Valley, but more importantly thanks to the people who have made this possible:

• A company with a 100-plus-year history of family ownership and dedication to serving the local journalism needs of numerous communities across Oregon, with the sheer audacity to launch a new newsroom and new newspaper when the Mail Tribune owner skipped town.

• Partners from other local journalism institutions, who see the launch of another local newsroom not as threatening competition, but as an opportunity for collaboration — better together in how we serve the same mission to our community.

• The countless educational and community leaders, organizations, advertisers and sponsors rooting for our success and making an investment in local journalism and the future of the Rogue Valley Times.

• Our leadership team at the Rogue Valley Times, our editors and directors, and leaders from across EO Media Group, with their own jobs and responsibilities, but generous in advice and assistance in getting us off the ground.

• Every single employee here, from the first to accept a job at the RVT, to the most recent new hire, from the first to arrive for paper deliveries before the sun comes up, to the last ones to leave when the edition is put to bed each night.

• And finally — and especially — my deep appreciation to each and every digital and print subscriber of the Rogue Valley Times, the thousands of you who make a personal choice and investment of your own dollars into the work we do.

Thank you.

I hope we make you proud to be a subscriber of the Rogue Valley Times.

It’s been a wonderful success story here over the past six months.

Here’s to the next six months and to many, many more years to come for the Rogue Valley Times.