ColoradoGives and local journalism

Dear Readers, Subscribers, Sponsors, and Advertisers,

The Estes Valley Voice is six months old today and we have until midnight on New Year’s Eve to benefit from the generous match of ColoradoGives to support our work in providing local, independent, and journalist-led news reporting for the Estes Valley.

If you like what we are doing, we hope you will lean in.

We are more almost three-fifths to our goal of raising $5,000. Your gift to the Estes Valley Voice through ColoradoGives will support and sustain local, independent journalism in the Estes Valley community and will be matched dollar for dollar. That’s right — it will be doubled — $5,000 will provide the Estes Valley Voice with a grant of $10,000 to support our journalists and newsroom.

What do we mean by local? The Estes Valley Voice is headquartered in Estes Park, not by a company officed down valley owned by a corporate hedge fund headquartered in New York City. We are local with boots-on-the ground in our community: our address is 1180 Graves Ave., A7 Estes Park and our phone number is 970-586-1888.

What do we mean by independent? None of our editorial board members are advertisers. They are community members who serve as a sounding board on our coverage. We don’t publish advertorials — stories written by the marketing department of a business — as if they are a news story. We do our own reporting, and we are accountable and responsible to you, our readers and subscribers. And because we live in a small town, that demands transparency, availability, and accessibility. If you want to talk about a story we have written, call us. We are happy to sit down in person over a cup of coffee and talk. We care about your opinion on issues of importance to our community.

What do we mean by journalist-led? No one dictates what we do or do not cover. And no one reads or screens our stories before they are published. Our editorial team–all experienced journalists–plan our story coverage. In addition to covering local elected taxpayer funded boards, our journalists select news and feature stories based on an extensive network of community connections, and as professionals we provide feedback to each other about the balance of coverage.

And while we are political — meaning we cover the civic issues of the community — we are nonpartisan. As a reader, if you have a concern with our coverage, we want to hear from you. Our name, Estes Valley Voice, is intended to encompass the many voices of the Estes Valley.

We are incorporated as a Colorado public benefit corporation and our purpose is to deliver news connected to our community. Our goal is not to turn a profit but we do want to stay in business in order to provide the Estes Valley community with a reliable source of local news. We are deeply grateful to the supporters who have provided us with an initial runway to get the Estes Valley Voice off the ground.

In six short months we have published more than 340 stories, sponsored two community events, and provided eight Colorado journalists, creatives, and administrative staff with income.

Our hope is that in 3-4 years we will be successful enough to transition the EVV into a non-profit news firm in the same way The Colorado Sun has gone from being a public benefit corporation to a 501(c)(3) in order to leave the Estes Valley with a local news firm it can call its own.

With so many local newspapers going out of business –“since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished, newspapers continue to disappear at a rate of more than two per week; in the past year alone, 130 newspapers have shut their doors” including more than 52 in Colorado, plus one more, the Flagler News, just this week – and so many being gobbled up by media hedge fund conglomerates, the Colorado Media Lab and the Colorado News Collaborative – CoLab – have worked hard to support the new wave of local, independent, on-line news firms around the state like the Estes Valley Voice, and we are honored and humbled to be selected by COLab for the ColoradoGives matching grant fiscal partnership.

Your contribution through ColoradoGives is tax-deductible and for every dollar we raise, it will yield $2 to support our newsroom. Please click here to make a contribution by midnight on New’s Year Eve.

If you are a reader but not yet a subscriber, please support our journalists by becoming a subscriber. An annual subscription of $7 a month, or $72 a year is 20 cents a day.

Our Super Subscribers – $15 a month – have provided us with a bit more runway to pay our journalists, and we are very grateful for their support.

Our Benefactors — $180 a year — have provided us with a great deal of runway to pay for the publishing platform and other costs of running the newsroom.

And thank you to our sponsors and advertisers who have helped us to pay the bills, including our state-of-the-art Newspack publishing platform, a postage stamp-sized office, and other related costs of running a business. If you want to advertise with us to reach some 2,000 Estes Valley residents with our newsletter at least three times a week, let us know. The Estes Valley Voice website is getting more than 40,000 local views a month.

A free press does not mean that running a news firm is free or cheap, and the old model of a local hometown press has been swallowed up by media mogul publishers that have created homogonous news narratives. Since more than 80% of news is read online, it makes no sense to lay a newspaper out, then print it on paper, and then distribute it. By the time people get it, its history not news. Publishing on paper is just not cost effective. Publishing in pixels on line provides immediacy in sharing the news; for you, as a reader, to respond; and for you as an advertiser or sponsor, to get your message out in front of the community.

Help us to keep local news local and to keep local advertising dollars local.

Thank you for supporting local, independent, and journalist-led news for the Estes Valley over the past six months. Looking forward to the next six, and beyond.

To contribute to Estes Valley voice through ColoradoGives, click here.