At Lee Enterprises, we believe quality journalism is central to our company’s success.

We believe our fundamental duty is to watch out for our communities through exercise of our First Amendment rights and responsibilities.

We believe our newspapers must pursue the truth and must maintain independence from undue influence by government, advertisers or other powerful forces in our communities.

In order to uphold these core convictions, each Lee newspaper will:

• Be accurate.
• Be fair.
• Be timely.
• Provide depth and continuity in coverage that can't be found from other local sources.
• Set and meet high standards for quality reporting, writing, editing, photos, graphics and design.
• Emphasize local coverage, starting with the front page of the paper and continuing by making state, national and world news relevant to its community.
• Be interesting, amusing, entertaining and surprising.
• Concentrate on being intensely helpful and useful in everyday coverage, helping people cope with life.
• Focus on understanding and serving the needs and wants of the people in its community, including those who are most vulnerable, such as the poor, minorities or elderly.
• Identify and aggressively cover the most important issues to the local community.
• Play a leadership role and be a force for change in the community through coverage, editorials and civic involvement.
• Show courage and independence in faithfully reporting both good and bad news.
• Inform, educate, explore solutions and give readers information on how they can take action or get involved when appropriate.
• Encourage and involve the community in journalistic efforts, including promoting public contact with staff members, editors and the publisher.
• Provide a regular opinion page with local editorials, plus local and national content reflecting a wide variety of views.
• Pursue diversity in its coverage and its hiring practices.
• Act compassionately in actions and words, respecting people's privacy except when those concerns are outweighed by the greater public good.
• Maintain a keen, honest eye on government and other forces that may threaten the individual or the community.
• Defend the First Amendment rights of all citizens and vigorously pursue open meetings, open courts and access to public records.
• Recognize and cultivate the newspaper's role as a community historian.