Parma Observer Is Six Years Old

Six years is a decent stretch of time in the life of anyone or anything. Just think about your own life during the past 6 years; the time goes by so fast, but when you look back, so much has occurred and a lot of changes have taken place. The same is true with the Tri-City area of Parma, Parma Heights, and Seven Hills. When the Parma Observer came to life in October of 2009, the three cities all had different leaders than they do now, there were businesses and institutions that today are no longer here, just as there were brand new entities just coming into existence, especially the Parma Observer. Although our paper wasn't the first Observer in the Cleveland Area (it was the 4th), the very concept of citizen powered media was, and in many ways still is, completely unique to our particular section of Cuyahoga County.  

Our square mile area is so large that even now, after six years, there are many who are only now discovering the Parma Observer for the first time. True, a good part of the reason for this is due to our limited budget, which is directly related to the slower than anticipated pace of advertisers joining our voluntary citizen journalism project than we had initially hoped for. I accept full responsibility for that, as it has always been my duty to engage the business and non-profit community, and perhaps I didn't allocate and mange my time as effectively as I should have in that respect; I am currently re-doubling my efforts in this area of publishing the Parma Observer.  

We have, I believe, done much to achieve our mission of helping to unite the large, wonderful Parma community through citizen powered media, but there is still much to be accomplished. Awareness is and always has been a key element in stitching together the considerable resources that exist in our area. For people to share a vision for our future that will inspire others to choose our cities as places worth moving to, settling here and raising a family, we must offer a wide variety of features that are indeed attractive, even enviable. Being optimistic is essential, but we must also have realistic plans and a definite way to make them a reality, sooner than later. If we do this, we will remain a place that is known for the quality of life which indeed made us a desirable place to live since the beginning, and we will continue to attract new residents that represent a great future for our city, as well as inspiring our children to remain here and take their turn raising their own families.

Daniel P. McCarthy

I am the publisher of the Parma Observer. Lifetime resident of Parma for over 50 years.

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Volume 7, Issue 10, Posted 2:11 PM, 10.02.2015