Nine­ty-nine years ago to­day a group of ad­ven­tur­ous pi­o­neers pub­lished the first ever edi­tion of the Trinidad Guardian–a bold move giv­en pre­vi­ous failed news­pa­per projects on the is­land and the fact that the launch took place as World War I still raged, bring­ing with it eco­nom­ic and sup­plies un­cer­tain­ties. The bold move paid off, with the Guardian and its trade­mark An­gel of Democ­ra­cy be­com­ing part of dai­ly life and the longest run­ning news­pa­per in the land.

This pa­per's jour­nal­ists and pro­duc­tion teams, past and present, are proud of their role in wit­ness­ing ma­jor events in near­ly a cen­tu­ry of ex­is­tence. We were present through­out ma­jor so­cial and po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments, some peace­ful and some not. We were there for, at last, T&T's in­de­pen­dence in 1962, al­so cel­e­brat­ed this week. We were there cov­er­ing many painful and joy­ous mo­ments of a new na­tion find­ing its iden­ti­ty and its own ways of do­ing things: be­com­ing a re­pub­lic, democ­ra­cy tak­ing root through suc­ces­sive peace­ful elec­tions, the cel­e­bra­tion of the best of T&T through its cul­ture, its en­tre­pre­neurs, its sports and, above all, its peo­ple. And al­so through tense but im­por­tant times in our na­tion's his­to­ry such as the Black Pow­er move­ment in the 1970s and the at­tempt­ed coup in 1990. The news­pa­per it­self went through some of its own grow­ing pains, like any oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion does.

Those pi­o­neers no doubt would sup­port the growth of the news­pa­per in­to a ful­ly fledged me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tion, now in­clud­ing six ra­dio sta­tions in T&T, CNC3 tele­vi­sion, ad­ver­tis­ing elec­tron­ic bill­boards and a grow­ing dig­i­tal pres­ence.

Just over a week ago, Guardian Me­dia an­nounced a ma­jor shake up of its struc­ture to align its op­er­a­tions with the new re­al­i­ty of the me­dia world as dig­i­tal con­tent grows in im­por­tance and chal­lenges the in­dus­try mod­el that would have been fa­mil­iar to our founders. It has grouped all its jour­nal­ism–print, tele­vi­sion, ra­dio and dig­i­tal–un­der one op­er­a­tion to re­flect the way we are now con­sum­ing news: every­where, any­time and on mul­ti­ple de­vices. This will help us make our news more dy­nam­ic, stronger and ef­fec­tive be­cause our read­ers de­mand a tra­di­tion­al news­pa­per of­fer while al­so ex­pect­ing to have news de­liv­ered at the time they need it. The dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion al­so means that the dis­tinc­tion be­tween print, tele­vi­sion and ra­dio be­comes more and more blurred.

The me­dia en­ti­ty birthed in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry in tur­bu­lent war, years has al­so weath­ered many oth­er dif­fi­cult times, nev­er wa­ver­ing from its com­mit­ment to the high­est stan­dards of jour­nal­ism, re­port­ing the news in a way that is re­spon­si­ble, time­ly and ac­cu­rate. These val­ues will see us through the 21st tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments that now sees the me­dia in­dus­try on the cusp of a new era.

Find­ing the way for­ward in this ex­cit­ing but con­fus­ing dig­i­tal world is the chal­lenge that this news­pa­per and news­pa­pers all over the world are fac­ing but we re­main con­fi­dent that with the right con­tent and the right plat­forms, we can con­tin­ue to serve the peo­ple of T&T.

Whichev­er way we de­liv­er news, in­for­ma­tion and opin­ion, what is im­por­tant to us at Guardian Me­dia is that we re­main true to our founders' fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple, summed up by them as "to en­cour­age al­ways the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad, her peo­ple and re­sources". We have re­newed our com­mit­ment to these prin­ci­ples by stat­ing that our aim at Guardian Me­dia is to help make T&T a bet­ter place. We will achieve that by hold­ing peo­ple to ac­count and ex­pos­ing what is wrong, by cel­e­brat­ing all that is great about this coun­try and by en­gag­ing with you, our read­ers, in worth­while cam­paigns for our coun­try's im­prove­ment and de­vel­op­ment.

Thank you for your sup­port over the years. To­geth­er, we are the guardians of democ­ra­cy.