Kalamazoo Weekly::About Us

About Us

Welcome to the Kalamazoo Weekly Newspaper website. We are a community newspaper, locally owned and operated, that has made its primary goal to provide news from only Kalamazoo County. Our mission is to: Provide news in a positive format; no murders, kidnappings, fires or shootings. To provide an inexpensive medium for businesses to advertise within their community. To present the stories, without bias or political agendas. To stay outside mainstream media by not making stories bigger than they are and not dragging on topics that should be left to history.

We are here to make a difference in our community and to promote the well being of the place we all live, work and play.

Why is Locally Owned and Operated such a big deal?
It means money you spend with this newspaper stays here in Kalamazoo; it doesn't leave our community or our state, like it does when you buy ads with those other big media operations. It also means we give more back to the community and without having to get it cleared with some "higher up" person usually not located in this state. It allows us to care more, do more and have a better idea of what is going on in our community. It can even have an impact on jobs; those big guys bring people in, people who don't live in our community, to work for them, either temporarily or sometimes full time. Locally owned and operated businesses, such as ours, are typically totally staffed with people who live right here in Kalamazoo.

Finally, we just plain tend to care more. We live work and play here in Kalamazoo, even the boss. If our newspaper does something it shouldn't, we live with that and our friends, family and loved ones do too. Big media does something wrong, you think the boss who lives in Florida cares as much? Doubtful.

There are so many advantages to being locally owned and operated, but it isn't all easy, we run tighter budgets and rely a lot more on the local community and their support. So the next time you think about spending your money with a chain restaurant or one of those big newspapers, consider the actual value of your dollar and the impact it is having on you and your family here in Kalamazoo.

It's time for independence!
The time for independence has arrived and we're blazing a trail. In this day and age of chain restaurants and mass media, we're proud to bring you an independent voice for Kalamazoo County and strive to keep it that way. What is Independent media you ask? Independent media is a news source, such as ours, that reports on topics without regard to political ties. We tell the story like it is, even if some big wig might not advertise with us if we do. Maybe the story is very “Democratic” or has a “Republican” feel to it, therefore, it isn't covered. Not here. We are the voice for the readers and nothing more. We won't spin articles to make them fluffy or biased. We don't conveniently leave out information or add only certain information to change the meaning of a story. We don't tell city officials after city meetings to just “let us know how you want the article to sound”, like we have heard other media say, with our very own ears. (I know, isn't that crazy?)

Now, just because we're independent, doesn't mean we go around trying to pick battles. We're not here to ruffle feathers, we're not a “underground” newspaper, we don't try to find dirt on people or businesses or air dirty laundry; we just find stories and report on them. We hope you see the importance in media such as ours. Without independent media, the “big guys” would control everything you read and hear. I don't know about you, but we don't want to live in a world controlled by mainstream media.