It could be pushing the season for a year-end column however I’d prefer to share updates on a number of tales from 2023. Moreover, I solely lately mailed Christmas playing cards.
I’m happy to report that three native information ventures I wrote about, together with a web based startup and two courageous newspaper tasks, are doing properly and slowing the unfold of stories deserts in Washington.
That is early days and a small pattern. But it surely suggests there’s nonetheless hope for sustaining America’s native, impartial press system, particularly when there’s the right combination of help, enterprise alternative and other people motivated to serve their communities by reporting and publishing the information.
Gig Harbor Now rising: The information startup, Gig Harbor Now, reached a number of milestones since I wrote in Might about its emergence.
Involved concerning the lack of native protection, a bunch of residents raised practically $100,000 from associates, household and grants to launch the net, nonprofit information outlet in 2021.
It ended 2023 with a surge of donations, greater than 1 million webpage views and three,500 subscribers to its digital e-newsletter.
“All the pieces’s rising fairly a bit,” mentioned Government Director Jenny Wellman.
The outlet additionally handed huge checks when it unhesitatingly coated points round a park district in search of to increase and lift its levy.
The protection precipitated a stir, in response to founder Pat Lantz. It got here as Gig Harbor Now’s enterprise facet was searching for extra donations and sponsorships.
Lantz, a former legislator who lately retired from the outlet’s board, mentioned such protection can get a powerful response as a result of some grew accustomed to having no native reporting.
Masking controversies “will check our fortitude” however Editor Vince Cube, a Kitsap Solar veteran, held agency, she mentioned.
“I feel it was an excellent check of Vince’s and our firewall as a result of we have been completely robust and preserving that firewall up,” she mentioned.
Lantz doesn’t imagine the protection damage fundraising. Help is definitely rising, because the outlet grows its stature and respect throughout the neighborhood.
“I feel there’s a recognition of the worth of what we’re doing now that transcends an individual’s private ideas on points,” she mentioned.
Wellman mentioned fundraising in November and December blew previous its $50,000 purpose, drawing round $104,000. That could possibly be matched by at the very least $20,000 from the Institute for Nonprofit Information’ NewsMatch grant program.
With that help, and rising advert gross sales, the outlet is contemplating hiring a journalist to complement Cube and a cadre of freelancers.
“Throughout the fall we had simply quite a lot of actually good impactful tales, issues that folks have been actually focused on,” Wellman mentioned. “I feel individuals turned extra conscious of us over time, the tales have been getting talked about in the neighborhood extra. I feel it simply grew based mostly on that, based mostly on the standard of tales.”
Eagle evolving: In August I wrote that the Wahkiakum County Eagle would proceed underneath new co-publishers, Jacob Nelson, a Microsoft researcher, and his husband, theater actor, director and playwright Brandon Simmons.
Nelson’s household printed the paper since 1966 however its destiny was unclear after his father, Rick Nelson, died in June.
The brand new publishers spent the following months determining how the paper works and are starting to make small adjustments, Jacob Nelson mentioned.
“We need to make some tweaks to make issues function extra effectively, to assist the paper higher serve the neighborhood,” he mentioned.
One change, introduced Jan. 4 in response to reader suggestions, was to ask that letters to the editor handle “native social or political subjects” or reply to the paper’s reporting.
Additional adjustments could come after the paper meets with readers and non-readers in February, to collect extra suggestions and strategies.
The co-publishers nonetheless divide time between Seattle and Cathlamet, with Simmons spending extra time on the paper as he’s extra concerned with design and manufacturing.
“It’s been quite a lot of enjoyable,” Nelson mentioned. “I’m focusing extra on the enterprise facet and its been actually satisfying to grasp the basics of the enterprise and get all of them into good order. Brandon is having a ton of enjoyable, he’s actually having fun with utilizing his artistic juices on this extra structured approach.”
The Eagle can also be discussing collaboration with the Chinook Observer and an Astoria public radio station, to share some reporting.
“Subscriptions have held regular, we’ve had plenty of constructive suggestions, individuals grateful for us preserving the paper going,” Nelson mentioned.
Increasing in north-central Washington: A fast turnaround adopted the August sale of a bunch of small papers in north-central Washington.
I wrote about how Port Townsend-based Terry Ward and Amy Yaley acquired the group because it teetered on the point of failure.
The sale included the weeklies Leavenworth Echo, Cashmere Valley File, Lake Chelan Mirror and Brewster’s Quad Metropolis Herald and the month-to-month Wenatchee Enterprise Journal.
Ward, a former Sound Publishing government, mentioned the corporate is secure and rising. Eight days into January, it had already doubled the quantity of income the papers made in all the earlier January.
Three gross sales staffers have been added together with two further reporters plus freelancers, they usually’re interviewing for a further reporter.
Mixed, the papers are getting three or 4 new subscribers per week. “It’s nothing big however for small communities like this it’s fairly good,” Ward mentioned.
Progress ought to speed up after a brand new web site launches in February and the crew begins pushing for extra engagement.
“My focus has been how will we get staffed up, how will we get sufficient contributors,” Ward mentioned.
Ward and Yaley achieved their preliminary purpose of hiring one reporter per newspaper, or at the very least they’d till one left for Seattle.
Pioneer Sq. press standing: There are nonetheless no takers for the Seattle Day by day Journal of Commerce’s printing press. In September I wrote about CEO Phil Brown wanting to provide the gear to a different writer without cost.
“Up to now it’s simply sitting there gathering mud,” he mentioned by way of e mail on Jan. 2.
