The Lenexa Centennial is here! Your hometown newspaper will arrive in your mailbox every week with stories about Lenexa life, families and businesses. Here’s the best part: you don’t have to pay for it.
Lenexa’s growth is such that many residents probably don’t know that this community once had its own paper. In fact, it had two in the 1970s. The Lenexa Times offered a certain political perspective, and the Lenexa Free Press, operated by now-city council member Jane Klein, gave another. Neither paper survived, and that was even before the Internet!
This history serves as a guide for us. We must be fair, honest and accurate every issue. If this paper is fair, honest and accurate, our readers will turn to us for news and views and advertising information.
Meanwhile, we’ll hope this newspaper doesn’t inspire council member Kline to dust up on her editing skills. We want to offer residents a window into the community, celebrate what is right and draw attention to issues that deserve our focus. Initially, we won’t have an opinion page because we don’t feel we can offer an informed opinion. Maybe someday we will, but not yet.
Why Lenexa, why now?
A city council member, who shall remain nameless, asked us this question when we told him our plan to launch a Lenexa paper. Yes, the newspaper industry has taken its lumps in recent years. However, when a newspaper is extraordinarily local, provides news you can’t get from any other source and offers an online community for readers to interact with their real and virtual neighbors, it thrives.
The late Rich Becker, Lenexa’s beloved mayor from 1983-1995, coined the slogan, “I like Lenexa.” Becker was a driving influence in Lenexa and all of Johnson County. It’s in his memory we offer this to our readers: we hope you don’t just like Lenexa, we hope you love the Lenexa Centennial.
In this, the community’s centennial year, we give you the first edition of the Lenexa Centennial. With a nod to the past (see page 2 of the first edition) and an eye on the future (you're lookin' at it), we present the definitive source of all things Lenexa.
This historic moment in the community’s history is greeted with a lot of preparation, planning and weeks of hard work. Now we have to do it again in seven days. That task will be impossible without your help.
You know what matters to your family. Tell us what you’d like to see in your paper. You know the people who make Lenexa a special place. Help us share their stories.
You can email me at dsimon@lenexacentennial.com.
Enjoy the Centennial, Lenexa.

Dan Simon
Publisher