Thank you all for joining us this evening. We truly appreciate you attending and helping us celebrate Diane Kortus’ time here at The Laker/Lutz News, and to welcome aboard our new publisher, Brian Calle.

Before we hear from Diane and Brian, I want to briefly reflect on our company’s history here in the community.

The Lutz News has been published in Hillsborough County since 1964, and The Laker since 1981. Diane became owner in August 2000, when The Laker was only a Land O’ Lakes newspaper, hence its name, The Laker. Within a few years, The Laker expanded into Wesley Chapel, and in 2005 to Zephyrhills and Dade City.

Diane’s 21 years of ownership has definitely left a big impact on her family, our newspaper family and our community.

In the early years, Diane’s primary focus outside of the paper was raising kids. Her son Andy, and daughter Rachel, who are here today and Andy’s sons Zachary and Conner. Andy and Rachel helped the family business as kids by stuffing invoices in envelopes and licking stamps, adding up customers checks and filling out deposit slips for the bank, and delivering papers when carriers called out.

It was so much a family business that when Rachel needed to be picked up from school, her employees often helped by getting her when her mother was too busy, and a few times, had forgotten.

In the early years, Diane primarily managed sales and business operations. But in 2009, she became publisher and added editorial content, production and distribution to her responsibilities. She brought new ideas and improvements to all areas of the newspaper, and continued to grow and develop her team — most of us have worked alongside Diane for over 10 years.

As publisher, one of the biggest changes she made was back in 2014, when she increased the size of our paper by 25% to make it the same size as a daily newspaper, and also added a B section for photos and feature stories. Even though we continued to cover the news as we always had, our new size and second section changed the way people perceived us. We were no longer the “little community paper,” but now a “real newspaper” to be taken seriously.

The Laker/Lutz News got better every year with more local stories, more advertisers and more distribution. Today, we print and deliver 47,395 papers every week, with a readership of over 70,000. Complementing the print paper is our website, which in December had 30,000 unique visitors and over 50,000 page views. When you add in our social media reach through Facebook and Instagram, The Laker/Lutz News today delivers local news not found anywhere else to over 150,000 people every week.

I also want to make note of some recent awards we received under Diane’s leadership.

In the Fall of 2020, The Laker/Lutz News won the Excellence in Integrity Award from the North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce, which honored an organization that demonstrated commitment and resilience during the year that had benefited the community and region.

Diane said, and I quote “This award exemplifies our paper’s and staff’s ability to make business choices that are best for our readers and our community. Even through times of difficulty, making good decisions begins with integrity and living life with honesty, commitment, selflessness and empathy — the core values that are exemplified by every employee at our newspaper.”

The recognition continued in April 2021, when The Laker/Lutz News was recognized as Area Business of the Year by the Greater Dade City Chamber of Commerce, an honor bestowed “for making an outstanding contribution to the betterment of the Greater Dade City area and business community through commitment of time, talent and resources.”

We continued to shine a few months later when The Laker/Lutz News was recognized by the Florida Press Association as the best weekly newspaper in the state in its largest circulation division. Our editorial staff and designers won an unprecedented 27 awards in this statewide contest, competing with newspapers that have over 50 employees, where we have a dozen. We are especially proud that one of our winners is here with us tonight, Lillian Cucuzza, who won first place in the reader-generated photo category.

All of these accolades led to the grand finale this past November, when she announced in November that she had sold The Laker/Lutz News to Brian Calle at Florida Street Media. This decision exemplifies Diane’s commitment to always look toward the future for her newspaper, staff and community.

Before asking Diane to say a few words, and asking Brian to share his vision with you, I would like to introduce you to my colleagues — all who have been honored to work alongside Diane.

Mary Rathman - Editorial Assistant

B.C. Manion - Editor

Mary Jane Weeks - Account Manager for East Pasco

Kelli Carmack - Digital Content Manager

Trevor Lloyd - Marketing/Advertising Coordinator

Nicole Sanchez - Digital Content Assistant

Mary Eberhard - Accounting Manager

And myself Terri Willliamson, Senior Account Manager

And our other co-workers who couldn’t be here tonight..

Carolyn Bennett - Administrative - Traffic Coordinator

Matt Mistretta - Art Director

Stefanie Burlingame - Graphic Artist

Steve Mistretta - IT Consultant

To wrap up this section of the program, on behalf of everyone here, I want to thank Diane for her commitment to all of us and thank her for the impact she’s left here. Before we bring Diane up, let’s hear from some notable figures in our local community.