You probably noticed an odd front page in the June 9 issue of the Lake Placid News. Underneath the headline, “What community looks like,” there is a gallery of headshots from Lake Placid Community Day on Sunday, June 4. There were even more photos from that event on other pages of the same issue and in this issue.

Why so many photos of people at Community Day?

To make a point.

The Lake Placid News is your community newspaper, and we are proud to feature the people who make the Olympic Region one of the best places to live and visit on Earth.

Having a community newspaper in the United States is becoming more rare every year as small-town newspapers suffer in the Digital Age — and some eventually close their doors.

Andrew Regnier lays some burgers on the grill Sunday, June 4 during Lake Placid Community Day at the North Elba Show Grounds. Employees with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center cooking staff were grilling for the event and supplying food and beverages for the free picnic. (News photo — Aaron Marbone)

Daily newspapers, such as our sister paper, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, are filled with stories from around the Tri-Lakes region and the North Country, but there’s also a lot of state, national and international coverage from the Associated Press, which is required to fill all the pages six times a week.

Weekly newspapers such as the Lake Placid News and the Tupper Lake Free Press, however, print few stories from the region, the state, the nation and the world, unless there is a local connection. We fill our pages with community news from local clubs, schools and civic organizations. Our focus is on the people who make up our Olympic Region communities, those who are active in making them successful.

Yet, we’re not only interested in showing faces and printing names. We want to hear the voices of our community, and we have a forum every week on our Opinion Page for your letters and guest commentaries.

We also use the newspaper’s voice to better our communities. In the past, we’ve advocated for the state government to pledge money to improve the USA Luge facilities to keep our Olympic luge team in Lake Placid. We’ve highlighted the town of North Elba’s LEAF program and shown all the local organizations it has helped with the county’s bed tax. And we will continue to use the newspaper’s voice to show the community how important it is to rally together to raise money for local projects, such as refurbishing the 1980 Olympic cauldron site at the North Elba Show Grounds and funding a summer watershed steward at Mirror Lake to prevent the spread of invasive species.

Take a monthly snapshot of the Lake Placid News pages, and you’ll see regular profiles on local people, event coverage in Naj Wikoff’s “On the Scene” column and monthly updates from organizations such as the Lake Placid Public Library, Rotary Club of Lake Placid, Lions Club of Lake Placid, Garden Club of Lake Placid and the Ausable River Association. We also print columns from the Mirror Lake Watershed Association when they are submitted, and we celebrate local history every week with stories from the Lake Placid News archives in Editor Andy Flynn’s “History is Cool” column.

Joey Marra, 2, Adrianna Rivera, 7, and Jaren Marra, 5, are decked out in face paint during Lake Placid Community Day on Sunday, June 4 at the North Elba Show Grounds. (News photo — Aaron Marbone)

That’s in addition to coverage of important issues and meetings from the village of Lake Placid, town of North Elba and Lake Placid Central School District. When we can, we also print features and news from the towns of Keene, Jay and Wilmington.

We welcome more groups to share their news once a month in a column format. Invitations have been to extended to organizations such as the Wilmington E. M. Cooper Memorial Public Library in Wilmington, Keene Valley Library and the state Olympic Regional Development Authority. Our goal — as you flip through the pages of the Lake Placid News every week — is to get news from every corner of the community.

You won’t get this news anywhere else, not in this format and not this personal. This is hyper-local coverage that regional media outlets — those small-town daily newspapers, magazines, radio stations and websites — do not cover on a regular basis. We are proud to cover these events; it’s our bread and butter.

Always remember, this is your newspaper.

Yet we can only stay committed to hyper-local news with your support. Out of all the organizations we cover regularly — and offer free space to in a monthly column — we hope those people reading our stories and benefiting from them are buying the newspaper and advertising.

Lake Placid Central School District Superintendent Timothy Seymour gets ready for the children's dance time during Lake Placid Community Day on Sunday, June 4 at the North Elba Show Grounds. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

With your support, we will continue to be the Olympic Region’s community newspaper and we will continue to celebrate you — the people of our communities — every week.

Trish Friedlander gets ready for the children's dance time during Lake Placid Community Day on Sunday, June 4 at the North Elba Show Grounds. (News photo — Andy Flynn)