About Us

SouthCentralFloridaLife.com is a proud member of Independent Newsmedia Inc. USA and part of a non-profit journalistic trust.

Independent Newsmedia is a unique publishing and printing company that supports every American’s First Amendment rights and encourages and assists citizens in exercising those rights responsibly.

We pursue this mission by publishing community newspapers, by providing printing services to other publishers, and by creating citizen-driven community websites for the 21st Century and beyond. Our unique structure is designed to maintain our independence. We pay taxes like any other company, but there are no shareholders, no dividends are paid, and all after-tax profits are reinvested in serving our mission. We are held in sacred trust by a rotating group of five trustees who believe in our mission and are pledged not to benefit personally from their involvement.

Visit newszap.com to learn more about our company.

Our newspapers

  • Lake Okeechobee News (print and e-edition)
  • Caloosa Belle (print and e-edition)

Regional Magazine, Special Sections & Niche Products

We publish a variety of special publications annually including Lake Okeechobee Real Estate magazine (monthly), 101 Things to Do (3x/yr), Explore Okeechobee Visitor & Community Guide, Hendry County Guide, Medical Information Guide, Okeechobee School Information Guide, Holiday Traditions, Fall Sports Preview, Ask the Candidates, Salute to Graduates & more.

About Our Website

SouthCentralFloridaLife.com is the online home to Lake Okeechobee News, Indiantown Independent, Belle Glade & Pahokee Sun, Clewiston News, Glades County News, Caloosa Belle, and Immokalee Bulletin serving the communities between the coasts in south Florida.

About the Lake Okeechobee News

The Lake Okeechobee News covers the communities around Lake Okeechobee, including Okeechobee County, Glades County, Hendry County, and western Palm Beach County.

In September 2018, the weekly newspapers serving the communities around the “Big O” were merged into the Lake Okeechobee News. These included the Okeechobee News, the Glades County Democrat, the Clewiston News, and The Sun (covering Belle Glade, Pahokee, South Bay, and Canal Point). This larger, regional newspaper continues to provide hometown news while also focusing on larger regional issues of concern to all of the communities around Lake Okeechobee.

Lake Okeechobee is the second largest freshwater lake within the continental United States.

About the Caloosa Belle

What is now the Caloosa Belle began as the Caloosahatchee Current, a publication established in 1922 to help bring about the establishment of Hendry County. In 1923, Hendry County was carved from the eastern side of Lee County. The Caloosa Belle is published in print and electronically each week on Thursday in LaBelle, the seat for Hendry County.

Advertise With Us

Our team of marketing specialists offers the following advertising opportunities: retail newspaper printed and electronic edition display, classified liner and display, pre-print insertion, digital display, programmatic digital display, real estate magazine, and tourism publication display and more.

Commercial Printing Services

Let us design your menu, brochure, publication, or more. Printing services range from postcards, 8.5 x 11 signs to multi-page brochures, pre-prints, tabloids, magazines, and booklets. For more information, contact Jaime Limoges at jlimoges@iniusa.org or (863) 824-5935.

Our Events & Community Involvement

Our newspaper company believes in building a stronger community through the support of community enrichment programs and activities. We organize many community events both in-person and virtually including the Lake Okeechobee Outdoor Expo, Senior Expo, and our Salute to Veterans series. For more information, contact Jaime Limoges at jlimoges@iniusa.org or (863) 824-5935.

Archives

Our online archive contains staff-written and other selected articles from Lake Okeechobee News, Okeechobee News, Clewiston News, Glades County Democrat, The Sun, Caloosa Belle, and Immokalee Bulletin from 2007 to the present. Searches are free. You may purchase individual articles for $2.95 or select a package for multiple articles.

Our pledge to our readers makes us different

We pledge:

  • To operate our newspapers and websites as members of a sacred public trust.
  • To report the news with honesty, accuracy, purposeful neutrality, fairness, objectivity, fearlessness, and compassion.
  • To use our opinion pages to facilitate community debate, not to push our own opinions.
  • To provide the information citizens need to make their own intelligent decisions about public issues.
  • To help our communities become better places to live and work, through our dedication to conscientious journalism.
  • To treat people with courtesy, respect, and compassion.
  • To provide a right to reply to those we write about.
  • To disclose our own conflicts of interest or potential conflicts to our readers.
  • To correct our errors and to give each correction the prominence it deserves (on pg. 1 if that’s where the error was).


Paid news service disclaimer

Independent Newsmedia pays for the Associated Press news services. We recognize that sometimes AP stories don’t have balanced and purposeful neutrality that we strive for in our own stories. AP is our most practical and affordable source of national, world and sports news and photos.

 

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