Dearest readers and supporters,
We’ve been a little quieter recently, but it’s for a good reason — we’ve got some big changes happening here at The Voice that I’m excited to share. This month, The Mendocino Voice will begin a partnership with the non-profit Bay City News Foundation, and as part of this new chapter, I’ve chosen to move on from my role as publisher. Thanks to this partnership,our local journalists can continue the essential community reporting we’ve provided since 2016, with additional support and expanded capacity from BCN, so that The Voice can continue to grow and serve Mendocino residents for years to come.
When we launched The Voice in 2016, we had little clue what it would take to make a local news organization successful. It has been all thanks to the ongoing support of you, our readers, that we’ve built a sustainable business, hired staff and grown into the award-winning community-centered news outlet that we are today. In a decade when so many news outlets have cut jobs or closed their doors, particularly in rural areas, our experiment in launching a local news organization not only took off, but grew and evolved significantly.
When we started, there weren’t any online local news outlets like ours in the county, and not many around the country, but it was clear Mendocino residents deserved useful news about important community issues. It certainly hasn’t been easy — from covering historic wildfires like the Redwood Fire and Mendocino Complex to reporting on storms and floods without power, tracking elections, hosting candidate forums, covering local government and ever-evolving cannabis regulations, advocating against public records fees, sharing the news about everything from community events, drought and fisheries, from protests to the Covid-19 pandemic to police corruption and court cases — it’s been an amazing journey.
Thanks to your support, we’ve published nearly 5,000 articles, reached millions of readers, created living wage jobs for experienced local reporters, held government officials accountable, received national funding and awards, and shared important Mendocino stories with readers around the state and country. Most importantly, we’ve been able to provide the diverse communities in Mendocino with news that’s been useful to you, our friends and neighbors.
I’m excited for this new era of The Mendocino Voice, in partnership with the Bay City News Foundation, which will provide our local reporters with crucial operational support towards continuing and expanding the community-centered, accurate, and original local reporting on essential issues we’ve always provided into the future.
In the last eight years, I’ve worn many different hats –- reporter, photographer, editor, salesperson, farmers market tabler, grant writer, and much more — but I’m most proud of the reporting we’ve been able to bring to our community, and so appreciative of your trust in making that happen. From readers who have let us know what issues they think are important and sent us tips to investigate, to the many hundreds of members who have contributed to support our work, to business partners and funders like Community Foundation of Mendocino and Report For America, your support has literally kept us alive over these last eight years. I am so grateful to have been able to serve as your editor and local news publisher here in Mendocino County, and to work with such dedicated local journalists and community leaders — it has been an honor — and I hope you continue to support local journalism here and across the country into the future.
You can read more about our new chapter in our partnership announcement here.