We’ve been on a brief hiatus, but we’re coming back stronger

Dear Reader,

You may have noticed that we’ve published fewer articles than usual in the past few days, and we want to be transparent about what’s happening. In brief, the our staff was laid-up, one sick and the other injured, and we couldn’t get everything done; we’ll be returning to a regular publication schedule tomorrow.

In the near future we want to hire more staff so that this doesn’t happen again, and so that our day-to-day coverage is more thorough, faster, and more reliable — you can help us with that goal by becoming a member — and with your help, we’ll be coming back from this hiatus stronger than ever and will continue to improve.

Advertisements

Our young publication (we turned three in September) has a full-time staff of only two people, doing everything from reporting to running the business. With such a small staff, when one of us is incapacitated things slow down a lot. This, of course, is one of the reasons why we’re working so hard on expanding our staff, and building our publication into a community owned co-op (more about that soon).

But anyhow, last week we had been in a business development period, where we were working a lot on the back-end of the website and meeting with people who will help us grow this publication into something far more extensive and robust. Then this weekend, we had a perfect storm in which our editor injured himself and our publisher had to go to the ER with an illness (our thanks to all the nice people at Adventist Health Howard Memorial and their great work).

Advertisements

Both of us are on the mend now, and sorry for the lapse this week, but these kinds of things are inevitable with such a small staff. We’re regular people, wearing lots of hats, and juggling all the demands of running a small business, as well as the news cycle, and sometimes we wind up in the hospital and can’t pull it off. But nonetheless we wanted to apologize to you, our most dedicated readers, for this little lapse.

In the coming months we will be expanding significantly. First we’re launching a membership drive as part of our transition to a community owned co-op. With this increased monthly revenue we hope to hire more staff so that lapses like this never happen again — you can hear more about that on KZYX’s Byline Mendocino from last Friday.

We are also the recipients of a Report for America grant which will allow us to hire another reporter to cover the environment and local natural resource issues. This means that by June we hope to at least doubled our editorial staff, ensuring a much higher quality and frequency of news for you, our reader.

But we won’t be able to get there alone, so if you want to help us reach this goal, and ensure that there is always fast, accurate, and locally-controlled news about Mendocino County, head over to our Patreon page and sign up to become a member. And if you are already a member, thank you again for your support.

As always, thanks for you support and thank you for believing that together we can build a better news service for all of Mendocino County, one that is locally controlled, community owned, and provides people with the news they need.

Advertisements

Yours,

A.F. Baumann
Managing Editor