Type Weekly Headquarters Sarasota, Florida | Founded 2004 | |
The Sarasota Observer is one of three weekly newspapers published by the Observer Group Inc., which was formed in 1995, and whose headquarters are located in Sarasota, Florida. Established in 2004 to serve downtown Sarasota, the weekly publication joined the family of hyper-local newspapers in the region that in 2012 changed its name to the Observer Media Group (OMG).
The free newspaper is distributed to neighborhoods by delivery and made available at media racks, local businesses, and libraries. It often features significant festivals and activities sponsored by local arts organizations. For example, the Sarasota Observer published an extensive guide to the 2012 Sarasota Chalk Festival, a free event lasting ten days in downtown Sarasota that is produced by a local nonprofit, Avenida de Colores, Inc.
The Festival Guide is a forty-page booklet that features articles on the international festival, its history and that of the art, the artists who would be performing the street art, the special events and programs scheduled for the event, and a map showing the location in the city for the events. The guide was inserted into the newspaper for the week prior to the festival and besides its normal distribution locations, the free guide was made available at numerous outlets throughout the community and at the festival. It is estimated by Visit Sarasota County that between 80,000 and 100,000 people attended the ten-day festival and that besides the local residents who are drawn to the popular festival, the attendees included visitors from many states as well as many countries who had scheduled vacations around the event.
The paper has garnered recognition and many awards. In 2011 the paper was among the top-three weekly newspapers named in Florida by the Florida Press Association.