Lake Okeechobee News moves to new offices

Posted 10/4/21

The Lake Okeechobee News has moved! Our new, smaller, offices at 313 Northwest Fourth Avenue are just west of the Okeechobee County Judicial Center in downtown Okeechobee.

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Lake Okeechobee News moves to new offices

Posted

OKEECHOBEE – The Lake Okeechobee News has moved! Our new, smaller, offices at 313 Northwest Fourth Avenue are just west of the Okeechobee County Judicial Center in downtown Okeechobee.

The newspaper had been in the Fountain Square location for 30 years, and the news business has seen many changes in that time. In 1991, when the newspaper moved to the 107 SW 17th Street building, pasteup of pages was done by hand and a lot of space was needed for the large slanted tables used by the production team. The pages were then driven to the printing plant (previously in Lake Placid). The original office space also included a photography darkroom. Now, photography is digital and newspaper production is done on computers and sent electronically to the printing plant in Sebring.

Over the past 30 years, how news staffers work has changed. Instead of rushing back to the newspaper office to write a story, reporters now carry laptop computers with them and can file a story from any location with internet access.

The pandemic also changed how we work. We found not only that many employees could easily work from home, but also that they liked this flexibility and were more efficient.

While we enjoyed our Fountain Square offices and had terrific landlords in Steve and Mary Porter and Jerry Townsend, the new, smaller office space is a better fit for the newspaper today.

Moving out was quite a task, with 30 years of paperwork (some of it to be shredded, some transfered to digital format), office furniture and odds and ends to sort through.

For the items we weren’t taking to the new office, we tried to make sure as little as possible wound up in the landfill.

Those interested in history can read the bound volumes of the old newspapers at the Okeechobee Public Library. The Okeechobee Historical Society picked up the leftover copies of the special editions printed for the city and county centennial celebrations.

Some of the larger tables once used for newspaper paste-up, and inserting ad sections into newspaper (before that process was turned over to a machine) found a variety of new homes. Tables built to hold broadsheet newspaper pages are now in barns and workshops. The conference table went to the Okeechobee Narcotics Unit. Local residents picked up room dividers and file cabinets to create home office spaces. We even found people who wanted to refurbish damaged furniture items we thought no one would want.

At the new office, two parking spaces close to the front door are reserved for customers. Office hours have not changed. The Lake Okeechobee News is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday-Thursday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday. The phone number is still 863-763-3134. Email addresses have not changed. For editorial, email okeenews@iniusa.org. For advertising, email okeeadsales@iniusa.org. For classified ads email classads@iniusa.org. For obituaries, email obits@iniusa.org. For legal advertising, email legalads@iniusa.org.

Our website Southcentralfloridalife.com provides news seven days a week.

The Lake Okeechobee News (previously the Okeechobee News) has been Okeechobee’s hometown paper for more than 100 years. Our address has changed, but our dedication to community journalism endures.

newspaper, moving, 100 years, new

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