Video: See how multimedia journalism has changed the Kentish Gazette

by editor Leo Whitlock

KNOWLEDGE is power and information is key –well-worn cliches, but they hold as true today as they did in 1717 when the Kentish Gazette first hit the presses.

Today the Gazette publishes in Whitstable and Herne Bay as well as Canterbury while its sister paper, the Faversham News, covers Faversham.

Traditionally, the Gazette was a combination of ink, paper and hard graft.

While the hard graft is still a vital ingredient, the Gazette can now also be found in cyberspace at www.kentishgazette.co.uk and on mobile phones.

It has been joined on the media scene by its sister free newspaper, the recently revamped Canterbury Extra, its sister radio station kmfm and a whole host of rivals.

Serving the community is at the heart of the Gazette’s philosophy in all of its guises.

It is your newspaper. Without the support of the community, it is nothing.

Its role is to record as many aspects of life in this area as it can muster whether good or bad, front page or contained in the community news section.

It is there to break news, give people’s views and be a one-stop shop for all sorts of information that is relevant to its audience however they access the stories it contains.

The Gazette is there to give people a voice when they are struggling to be heard and campaign on their behalf.

We are there to keep on their toes those who prowl the various corridors of power, by shining a light into the darkest recesses and using all of the weapons in our armoury to hold them to account on behalf of the public.

The pages of the Gazette are there to celebrate the achievements of those who live in its circulation area.

On a lighter but no way less important note, we bring communities of interest together, whether they are sportsmen, clubs and societies, schools, charities and businesses.

For our journalists this is a time of enormous but exciting change. To their bones, they are storytellers but they are finding new ways of bringing those stories to you in paper, online and on air.

Read about the experiences of one of our reporters elsewhere in this spread.

For our commercial teams, there have never been more ways to promote local businesses and share in their success.

As ever, this is your paper and we want to hear from you.