At the Moultrie News, we take pride in our staff of trained and dedicated professionals. We work tirelessly to provide the East Cooper area with quality informative reporting on local events with knowledge, perspective and compassion. We hope you find these qualities each time you read a copy of the Moultrie News.

The Moultrie News was started in 1964 as a tabloid shopper by Carl Meynardie, who was the publisher of the Hanahan News. He ran the little paper for 8 years. In 1972 the Moultrie News was bought by Charles Diggle and J.C. Long. At the time Mr. Diggle was publisher of several small papers. Mr. Long was the wealthy and powerful landowner who created Wild Dunes and founded the Beach Company, which continues to develop East Cooper property today.

When Mr. Long died in 1987, Charles Diggle bought the Beach Company’s Interest in the Moultrie News, and the Diggle family ran the paper for 11 years before selling it to the Evening Post Community Publications Group, which is under the vast corporate umbrella of The Post and Courier.

The company owns several Lowcountry papers, including the Berkeley Independent, the Goose Creek Gazette, the James Island Journal and the Summerville Journal Scene. After the Evening Post Community Publications Group bought the Moultrie News, Charles Diggle and his son Chuck continued to run the paper until 2002 when Vickey Boyd, who is from Kingstree, S.C., was named publisher.

Here are some statistics about the East Cooper area:

• The population is about 68,000, which is 12 percent of the tri-county.
• The median age of our population is 37 years four months, which means that all of us in this room are dinosaurs.
• The median income for our 5 primary zip codes is $65,592, compared to $42,710 for the tri-county median.

As this area has grown and prospered, so has its newspaper. An average edition of the Moultrie News contains:

• 46 pages
• 36 local photographs
• 42 local stories
• 82 locally submitted news releases and/or other informational items
• It has 240 local names in its stories.
• It has 219 advertisements.
• It requires the hard work of 15 employees to produce our weekly newspaper.
• The Moultrie News reaches 27,000 households east of the Cooper every week. By comparison, The Post and Courier delivers about 15,000 papers per day east of the Cooper.