The Lexington Ledger is an all-digital, all Lexington County, SC only news source. You can find it on a computer, tablet, or by handheld device. The daily headlines are updated instantly as news occurs at facebook.com/swlexledger, and in-depth news stories can be found at lexingtonledger.com.

 

Paul Kirby is the founder and editor of The Lexington Ledger. He is a graduate of Chapin High School who went to work for Lexington County’s fire service at the age of 19 at the Chapin Fire Station. He spent most of the next 16 years at the South Congaree fire station where he had transferred in 1984.

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In 1991, Kirby married Susan Jones who was raised in South Congaree. The pair met at the fire station, were married, and they have three daughters and an adopted son. They have raised a number of other children that have come to them from poor home lives that required their natural parents to give them up.

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He began his writing career by doing some short food tasting columns for The State newspaper. Later he wrote the South Congaree / Pine Ridge weekly column for the Lexington Chronicle & Dispatch News out of Lexington, SC. He has also written for a small weekly paper called The Messenger out of West Columbia, SC and contributed a number of articles to the Chapin News.

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After leaving the fire service in the late 1990’s, Kirby owned another business until 2008 when he had to retire because of bad health. Over the next few years he was in and out of the hospital numerous times.

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In the winter of 2014, Kirby had some surgery that greatly improved his health. At the insistence of his wife, he began looking for a hobby to occupy his time. He started the South West Lexington Ledger all digital community news with the basic intent of keeping his friends and neighbors informed about what was happening around them and in their communities. He built his own website and began to work several hours a day from his living room reporting the news with a laptop. Over the next few months, The Ledger grew quickly and became the “go to” source for news from southern Lexington County. Kirby leveraged his intimate knowledge of the county and its emergency services to become the fastest, first, and most accurate news source for purely Lexington County news..

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The summer of 2015 saw tremendous growth for The Ledger. Daily readership doubled and people from all over the world looked at The Ledger each day to keep up with what was happening in Lexington County.

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The floods of October of 2015 hit Lexington County. On Saturday evening of the first wave of storms, Kirby recruited his 13-year-old daughter Kaitlyn as a camera person, and the two began to report on the effects of the floods across Lexington County. Their small crew stayed out all night and covered every corner of the county through Facebook. That week, more than 750,000 people were reached by The Ledger and its Lexington only news.

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In the weeks that followed, Kirby and the staff of The Ledger became very active in flood relief. He appealed to The Ledger’s mass audience on behalf of people who had lost so much during the floods. People from across the Midlands of SC pitched in after hearing his requests and the community showed their love for one another and their willingness to serve others selflessly. The Ledger sponsored a flood relief telethon, a food and clothing drive for LICS, and several other efforts that had a tremendous impact on the area and its people.

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In the late spring of 2016, The Ledger opened its first office in South Congaree. This office included a well-equipped studio where Kirby could stream live over the internet daily. At that point, Good Morning Lexington County was launched. This is a live streaming morning show, streamed using Facebook LIVE that covers all Lexington county news, weather, sports, and community events and also has interesting guests that cover topics that impact the residents of Lexington County. The show streams from 7 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. every weekday morning.

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In September of 2016, Kirby re-branded the business from The South West Lexington Ledger to The Lexington Ledger to reflect more accurately the audience and news that had grown to countywide. People across the county were asking for more local, fast, accurate, unbiased news, and Kirby felt it was his calling to provide that.

 

In the first 36 months of The Ledger’s existence, more than 1,000,000 people have visited The Lexington Ledger’s website for Lexington County news..  More than 80,000 people per week on average are reached over social media and thousands are being reached daily by the Good Morning Lexington Countyshow.

 

In October of 2017, The Ledger opened its first satellite office in the town of Chapin, SC. This was done with the thought that you can’t cover all Lexington County news well without being in all of Lexington County. The Chapin office will allow The Ledger to do a better job of covering news in northern Lexington County meaning Chapin and Irmo. Another office is planned for the southwestern region of the county sometime in the future.

 

At this point, the management and staff of The Ledger are just waiting to see how far Kirby’s “little hobby” will actually go.

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Kirby is an accomplished public speaker who is available to speak at schools, civic groups, places of faith, and for corporate events. He can be reached at (803) 587-3144 or by e-mail at thelexingtonledger@gmail.com.