Dear Wednesday Journal readers,
It is a big week here at the Journal and Growing Community Media, our nonprofit newsroom.
We are closing out our Spring Fund Drive as June 30 approaches. No, we haven’t reached our critical dollar goal yet. But we have a little time and a brand new $15,000 Match from a very generous supporter, which is up, running and already working.
That makes this your moment to invest in local news if you see its value and understand just how fragile a moment this is for independent, authentic local reporting.
Today’s paper is also chock full of news, letters to the editor, prep sports and three special sections. Tumbling out of the paper will be our annual Answer Book. This wonderful guide to Oak Park and River Forest is full of surprises and tops out at 108 pages. The annual Pride section is tucked in at the end of the news section. Urge you to read a very thoughtful essay by a junior at OPRF about coming out to family as transgender. A remarkable piece of writing that we are honored to share. And there is also a special section from Austin Coming Together, one of the most impactful organizations on the West Side. Want to shatter some of your perceptions of Austin? Take a look at this celebration of the opening of the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation. It’s at Madison and Laramie and is a stunner.
Because of all the energy (and hard work and advertising) in this issue, we are also mailing an extra 5,000 copies of the Journal to people across Oak Park and River Forest. If you are one of them, if you say, “Did not know my hometown had an honest-to-God newspaper!” or “Why did I ever let my subscription lapse?” then take action. Re-up your sub. Details are just to the right of this column.
Or if you’d rather have your news in your inbox that is great. Sign up for our newsletters at OakPark.com/newsletters and we will keep you in the know. And at some point we will ask you to invest in this hard-working, award-winning, always innovating nonprofit newsroom.
We’ve got 6 days to the end of this fiscal year. Yes, we know you don’t really care about our fiscal year. But it is important to us. And with this $15K Match, every dollar donated by a reader will be doubled. That is a lot of positive impact flowing into our small newsroom. And be clear, every reader dollar goes straight to support a reporter’s salary, a freelancer fee, an assignment for our photographer.
We know you are reading our stories. We need you to help pay for them. We sell ads. We sell subscriptions. We sell sponsorships. And now we need to sell you on becoming an investor in our newsroom. Reader support is the future of a thriving local nonprofit newsroom.
You know that local news is under stress. Whether it is the intentional undermining of a free press in a fragile democracy or the challenges of reinventing how we do business, our needs are genuine and immediate.
If you value what we do, then join in right now. It is easy and it will connect you even more with your hometown. That’s what we do. Connect.
So donate. Right now.
OakPark.com/Donate.
With gratitude,
Dan Haley
Interim Editor
