We’re fired up, the core Triad City Beat crew, about the plans we’ve laid that are just beginning to come to fruition.
Maybe you’ve noticed some increase in posting on our website, a call for more freelancers, a new bomb-ass Monday newsletter that in its first week has already made our open rates jump.
As a group we made a decision: Limping out of the pandemic period (it’s not over!), with readership up and revenues still down, watching as our big-city dailies put out fewer and fewer important stories each week, intrigued by new revenue models and the power of collaboration, we decided lean into the grind and just fucking go for it.
Damn the torpedoes!
So we’re doing more: more reporting, more stories, more points of entry, more topics for your consideration, more of what you love us (and hate us!) for. Behind it all we’ve got new streams of income ready to be developed, a new sales department to keep the fire lit and new infrastructure to keep the trains running on time. In the coming months we’ll be redoubling our efforts, exploring different ways of bringing the news and even rewriting our mission statement to reflect our new mandate.
How, you may ask, are we doing this?
Answer: We don’t really know; we’re just doing it — which is kind of the TCB way.
Remember, we started this paper on the fly in 2014, with three weeks of editorial lead time and very little notion of what would come next. Slowly the business infrastructure grew, infinitesimally, like a coral on a reef. We’ve ridden through changes in the industry, staff impermanence, societal upheaval and, at times, outright hostility. We’ve sacrificed.
We do it because we must.
All we ask in return is that you support our work: Read our stories and share them on social media, talk about them with your friends and — most important — use our reporting in your daily life. If you own a business, consider advertising with us (hit me up at [email protected]!); if you’re able, you might want to join our First Amendment Society with a small monthly donation.
If not, no matter. At TCB, the news is always free.
Join the First Amendment Society, a membership that goes directly to funding TCB‘s newsroom.
We believe that reporting can save the world.
The TCB First Amendment Society recognizes the vital role of a free, unfettered press with a bundling of local experiences designed to build community, and unique engagements with our newsroom that will help you understand, and shape, local journalism’s critical role in uplifting the people in our cities.
All revenue goes directly into the newsroom as reporters’ salaries and freelance commissions.
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