And of course Independent’s overall philosophy for community news gave us the guideposts we needed to make sure we hit all the right marks on the way to the first issue.”

Patrick O'Grady, First editor of the Peoria Independent

By Charlene Bisson
Twitter: @charlene_bisson

Peoria’s hometown, nonpartisan newspaper is celebrating its 20-year anniversary.

The Peoria Independent established Oct. 7, 1999 with a newsroom staff of three dedicated team members – Patrick O’Grady, editor, Mark Pollack,generalassignment reporter and George Witkowski, sports reporter.

When the issue published, I was fortunate to be part of the team serving as a general assignment reporter at the Arrowhead Ranch Independent.

Peoria resident Patrick O’Grady recalls fondly his time as the first community editor of the Peoria Independent. He moved to Peoria, and stayed, shortly after becoming editor.

I’ve have lived in Peoria for four years. Coincidently, Mr. O’Grady and I live within walking distance of each other.

“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years,” said Mr. O’Grady, who is the managing editor at the Phoenix Business Journal. “The main thing I remember is the amount of time we had to start it up. Normally it’s like a months-long process to get a paper up and running, get people in place, make contacts. We did it in four weeks.”

He explained the news goal was to produce a paper that looked and felt like it had always been a part of Peoria.

“Hopefully readers got that when they picked up the first issue. Although I’m not sure how much I slept in the two weeks leading up to it,” he joked. “Truthfully, we had a good model to follow. Several of us had been around when the Arrowhead Ranch Independent had launched a few years earlier.

“And of course Independent’s overall philosophy for community news gave us the guideposts we needed to make sure we hit all the right marks on the way to the first issue. We also had a good group of people who were vested not only in journalism, but doing good journalism in a community many of them had connections to.”

Independent Newsmedia still follows that business model of hyperlocal journalism with the community submitting stories, photos and opinions.

Peoria resident Bret McKeand, now senior executive editor at Independent Newsmedia, was publisher of the Peoria Independent when it launched.

“I recall the staff spreading out the pages (we still pasted up the pages back then) on the floor and we all diligently reviewed every wordtomakesuretherewere notypos,”Mr.McKeandsaid.

I shared an office with Mr. Pollack. He would ask me to review the lead sentences of his articles.

Mr. McKeand said the team debated how far north circulation should reach, and thought it was “dramatic” to go north of Bell Road.

At the time, there weren’t many neighborhoods to the north, besides Westbrook Village, Ventana Lakes and Parkridge.

Today, our circulation goes far north to Terramar and Vistancia.

Mr. McKeand said there were few businesses up north so ad support was downtown or along Cactus and Thunderbird roads.

“Probably the best memory, especially in the days of shrinking newsrooms, is that I was part of starting a paper, and that it still exists,” Mr.O’Gradysaid.“Notmany peopleinjournalismcansay that.”

I couldn't agree more.