media, music, more ...
When I formed LkldNow in 2015, I became a reporter again after 38 years as an editor.
At first, it felt like it was taking me longer to write articles than when I was a fresh-out-of-college rookie in the mid-1970s. I thought it was because I was re-learning the craft — and that might have been true.
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I’ve felt a bit like a proud parent as I’ve watched more businesses and organizations in Lakeland include the abbreviation Lkld in their names and online identities.
LkldNow, the news website I founded, wasn’t the first; I believe LkldTV gets that honor. But I was there when some early Twitter adopters decided more than eight years ago to formalize use of #lkld to identify posts about Lakeland.
Somebody posed the right question the other day when I asked on Facebook for reactions to the new design of The Ledger’s print edition: Why did they do it?
It’s been a busy month in Lakeland, Florida. I finally launched lkldnow.com – mobile news to connect you to Lakeland.
Reaction has been great. I had my best day ever yesterday, driven by a story I broke about a $13 million plan to buy and renovate Lakeland Cash Feed into a much larger home for Catapult.
A screenshot from the real estate listing.
The Ledger’s headquarters building in downtown Lakeland is up for sale, as is its office housing The News Chief in Winter Haven.
It’s been 35 years, but I have vivid memories of the morning of May 9, 1980. I left home for my job as city editor of The Tampa Times during a blinding rain. Fearing flooding on my usual scenic route of Bayshore Boulevard, I took the higher-ground Crosstown Expressway instead.
As I approached the door of the newspaper building around 8 a.m., the early-morning copy editing crew was leaving; they had put out the first street-sales edition of the afternoon newspaper and were heading for breakfast before diving into the home edition.
In Lakeland, the revolution might not be televised, but it will play out in social media.
There’s a push to replace the city’s council-manager form of government with a strong mayor system, and the people promoting it are using Facebook as a listening post to get feedback before they even offer a formal proposal.
Eleven news employees, including four reporters, three photographers and three copy editors, were laid off by the Ledger Media Group this week.
Hey, Lu —
Lucinda Williams
I hope you don’t mind the informal greeting. I figure we’re on a first-name basis since we exchanged tweets recently.
I’m listening to your new album now. I just bought it from iTunes. I don’t buy much music these days. Mostly I rent it. I subscribe to Beats Music, and for the most part its 20 million songs are enough to keep me happy. I know I don’t own the music, but it satisfies my musical curiosity, and the $10 a month it costs me is less than I’d probably spend to buy albums, many of which I’ll rarely return to after a few listens.
Bob Turner
Bob Turner, my first city editor, didn’t do social media. His heyday as a journalist was in the 1950s through 1980s, and he was more comfortable with a typewriter than a computer. (When I moved into his old desk at The Tampa Times, I had to switch things around so that I faced the computer terminal instead of the old typewriter.)
But if Bob were a reporter now, I think he would embrace social media – mostly because it would expand the number of sources he could talk with.
I'm a digital journalist and recovering newspaper guy who lives in Lakeland, Fla. more...© 2025 Barry I. Friedman
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