Welcome to High Center

Editorial

Today is the 55th anniversary of 403 U.S. 713 (1971), the Supreme Court decision that allowed the New York Times and Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers.

I was a child then, but the significance of the ruling and what followed did not escape me.

It meant my Uncle Jimmy shouldn’t have been drafted, let alone sent to Viet Nam.

My family was lucky. Uncle Jimmy came home and led a relatively normal life. For other families, the revelation came much too late for that.

If it’s a coincidence that I arrive with my first editorial on this revolutionary platform today, it’s a fitting one. The kind of coincidence that makes me wonder if I believe in coincidences at all.

Why I am here

The people deserve careful reporting, verification, and context. The people deserve reporting that follows the evidence wherever it leads. The people deserve a free press unbeholden to advertisers, special interests and, most especially, governments.

High Center assumes that difficult questions deserve careful thinking and that no person or organization has a monopoly on either truth or error.

Why “High Center?”

At a glance, the name might suggest notions of centrist philosophy, but this publication isn’t named for any party or position.

It’s named for its purpose and for the land upon which it sits:

Highlands County sits in the center of the peninsula at one of Florida’s highest elevations.

Center evokes a place where people meet, not a place where everyone agrees.

High suggests aspiration. Not perfection, but uncompromising standards of reporting, verification and community responsibility.

High Center’s reason for existence

We exist to help Highlands County understand itself in context of its history, of its present and the future it imagines for itself and its descendants.

We are committed to evidence over outrage, context over slogans, and questions over certainty.

We welcome disagreement conducted in good faith.

Our only loyalty is to the community and the public record.

We hold ourselves and our collaborators to these stated standards of fairness, truth-seeking and sense-making on behalf of the community.

Welcome. Thanks for joining us.