By Judy Clabes
NKyTribune editor
The NKyTribune is approaching the end of its third year aimed at becoming Northern Kentucky’s primary news source. Our numbers grow daily in every way. Our readers clearly value the professional journalistic efforts that make the daily, 24/7 news and features possible.
We are pleased to tell you that our efforts are getting national attention as well. The NKyTribune has been chosen by News Match for an incredible matching grant aimed at helping us increase our revenues through an individual membership campaign.
News Match is a collaboration between the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support nonprofit news organizations that play an increasingly vital role in informing the public across America. It is in fact the largest grassroots fundraising campaign ever. That means that between now and the end of the year, individual contributions to the NKyTribune (tax deductible) will be matched up to $1000 for each individual.
This is important to the Tribune on many levels. It advances us both strategically and financially to the next step of the model we set out to build. It’s time to engage a broad-based network of individual supporters that will solidify our base and grow it. We have said from the beginning that our region CAN have its own newspaper — but only if the community wants it and will support it. As a nonprofit, the NKyTribune belongs to the community.
The team at the NKyTribune is deeply committed to its community. We live here, raise our families here and are engaged in the community, just as our readers, neighbors and friends are.
We provide news about our schools and our governments, free obituaries and free classifieds (including free legal classifieds), prep sports coverage, health care coverage, nonprofit stories and opportunities, a platform for ideas and civic discourse . . . and more. We are nonpartisan, champions of community good and quality of life, and hold up as examples the role models we should emulate. We write compelling stories about our neighbors, have partnered with others in our community on news and commentary, have reached out to important local organizations to share content and empower community engagement. We bring news of the state into NKY and have strategically partnered to get NKY news out to the rest of the state. We have stretched ourselves to keep our services free from paywalls or fees.
We have enjoyed amazing support from the business and nonprofit community, and we have to continue to grow that support and our advertising/sponsorship base. But we have not yet reached out to individuals – and that’s what News Match wants to encourage. It’s time for us to do that, and the added value of the match makes the timing really good.
We are far from perfect, but we believe we are on the right track. We are limited only by our own imaginations (that’s where you come in) and by our resources. Every new penny from this extraordinary INDIVIDUAL membership campaign will go back into the news site – to hire more reporters and editors who, like us, just want to tell the stories the way they are supposed to be told – honestly and fairly, ethically and professionally.
We share your concern about the “state of the news,” and we’re here – your neighbors and friends – to answer for what we do and why we do it. We value your regard and your views – however divergent they may be – and we expect to hear when we don’t measure up.
Please help us advance the work we’ve started.
Contribute as you can to help us reach our goal, leverage as much of the News Match as we can, and continue to serve our community.
Any amount will matter. Every penny counts.
Amounts up to $1000 per individual are matched by News Match.
Send your check to the NKyTribune, 644 Braddock Ct., Edgewood, Ky. 41017 or make a contribution online at this link on the Tribune’s homepage.
Whatever you do will matter. And that’s really what all this is about.
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