Editorial: What we’re thankful for: you

Thanksgiving is a time to express gratitude. And this year our tiny editorial board agrees that we are collectively thankful for our readers, the folks who keep us in business by subscribing to the Daily Pilot and reading us online. Without all of your support, we would not be able to continue serving as Newport Beach and Costa Mesa’s newspaper of record, a position that the Pilot — and its antecedents — has enjoyed for a century.

We are grateful that we still have the staff and resources to watch the government, report on schools, tell interesting feature stories, dig into issues, employ columnists with a variety of viewpoints, publish letters to the editor signed with real names, cover high school and college sports, photograph interesting subjects, critique vibrant arts and culture, and introduce interesting business people to the community.

Many of our peers, many of them excellent journalists, no longer get to do this because of the economic pressures on the industry, so we arrive at work each day a little bit more grateful than we were the day before. We’re sure some of you surviving these battered economic times in other industries feel the same way.

Our readers are a loyal bunch. They have seen us through good times and bad, and we are grateful that they are still with us. This is an educated, interesting and curious community, and the fact that it can support us and a host of competitors shows the vibrancy of this area’s news market.

It doesn’t hurt that there’s more news than we can get to. Without our readers, we would not be able to examine why a tree fell in Costa Mesa and killed a motorist; why families in Mesa Verde flee neighborhood schools for those in Huntington Beach; why the area schools chief is on trial for three felonies; why a plane crashed on approach to John Wayne Airport; and multiple other stories we reported in 2010-11.

Teams of reporters, photographers, editors and designers still assemble to make sure these events are explained in compelling, thoughtful and accurate ways. Above all, we strive to be fair, a quality sometimes lacking in these days where anonymous online cruelty passes for reasoned opinion and linking passes for independent reportage.

There are, of course, a good number of ways to get your news in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine and the rest of Orange County, and many of our competitors do an excellent job of digging and espouse similar values that we do.

We are glad they are there. We believe a competition makes us better. We hope that they too stay in the fight to free information from those who would rather suppress it.

But most of all, we are grateful to all of you for supporting your hometown paper, and giving us so many good stories to tell. We hope to be around — in some form — for at least another 100 Thanksgivings.