Ray Eckenrode, publisher

December 1961. Social upheaval, global angst, the space race.

But in the newly founded Cape Coral, a few thousand early residents had different concerns: Canals being dug, streets being paved and businesses being built. Enter the Cape Coral Breeze, which published its first newsprint edition that December with a keen focus on local issues.

As the Cape grew (and grew and grew) over the next six decades, The Breeze remained a constant. Readers might go to Walter Cronkite or USA Today or CNN for their national and international news, but no one would out-local The Breeze. And that’s still the case today and hopefully will remain the case for a long time.

Although the Cape is much bigger and the world moves much faster than it did in 1961, our core mission at The Breeze remains unchanged: Local, local, local. That means local news for readers, and local solutions for advertisers. That news and those solutions will remain rooted in our weekly hometown newspapers, but when you’re around for 60 years, you become more than just a product, you become a brand.

And we’re preparing take our “local, local, local” Breeze brand onto other platforms and into other spaces.

In the coming months and years, you’ll continue to see The Breeze grow its presence online and on social media. You’ll see us expand our capability to deliver value to advertisers with digital ads, digital services and online promotions. Audio and video content creation is a natural evolution for us, as are local events. If you think of The Breeze as a brand, the possibilities are nearly endless for growth and change and adaptation.

But our proud past and exciting future all start with an investment in local news. That means reporters sitting in council meetings and walking the sidelines at sports events. That means developing relationships with civic, government and business leaders. That means keeping in touch with what’s important to the now “few hundred” thousand Cape residents.

And that means staying in touch with our roots as a newspaper company while exploring the opportunity technology gives us to expand our brand, grow our business and make sure we’re here in December 2061.

– Ray Eckenrode is the publisher of the Cape Coral Breeze and Breeze Newspapers.