The Keynoter Publishing Co. operates two community newspapers in the Florida Keys, the Keynoter and The Reporter, as well as FlKeysNews (flkeysnews.com), its digital site for both newspapers. The company also publishes unwind, a quarterly lifestyle magazine serving all of Monroe County.

The weekly Reporter covers news in the Upper Keys, from Layton to south Miami-Dade County. The Keynoter covers the entire Keys and publishes twice a week. Both papers are owned by the McClatchy Co., are subsidiaries of the Miami Herald Media Co., and employ reporters and sales staff in Key West, Marathon and the Upper Keys.

The newspapers employ about two dozen people in two offices, in Marathon and Tavernier. While these bureaus directly serve Monroe County, they also serve the Miami Herald in providing complete news coverage of the Florida Keys and South Florida.

The newspapers have been continually judged among the best in the state, repeatedly earning awards from the Florida Press Association for design and newswriting. The newspapers' coverage of fishing and diving in the Florida Keys and surrounding waters has been repeatedly praised.

The Keynoter was created in 1953 by Michigan newsman Edgar Seney Jr., a Monroe County vacationer who felt that the Keys were missing a platform for happenings and issues. The first issue published on Feb. 19, 1953, and the staff consisted of Seney, his wife, Pat, and fewer than a half dozen others who wrote the stories and sold the ads.

Seney’s involvement with the Keynoter did not last long; he moved on to a college fellowship in 1955 and sold the paper to Nicholas Mitchell, then associate editor of the Greenville, S.C., newspaper. A year later, James L. Knight, co-founder of what would become Knight-Ridder newspapers, purchased the newspaper.

In 1960, after Hurricane Donna swept through the Keys, the Keynoter joined forces with the Florida Keys Sun, initially in a post-Donna temporary merger, then later permanently. This provided the Keynoter with an Islamorada bureau until 1977, when the Keynoter moved its Upper Keys office to Key Largo. Today, the Keynoter’s Upper Keys bureau is in Tavernier, home of the staff of its sister paper, the Reporter.

The newspaper continued to publish weekly until December 1984, when it started publishing twice weekly, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Over time, many publications have been added to the Keynoter’s portfolio, including L’Attitudes, Fishing the Florida Keys magazine, and the Key West Keynoter.

In 2006, the McClatchy Co. bought all the Knight Ridder newspapers, including the Keynoter and Reporter.