Booyah! It’s a new year and it’s time to MAKE SOME NOISE!
The Moonshine Ink Membership continues to grow and it is wonderful to hear from our readers and witness the support you offer — each one of you makes us want to shout from the mountaintops. Thaaaaannnnk YOOOOUUUU!
One reader shared an editorial by David Leonhardt published Dec. 10 in The New York Times. The opinion columnist announces the first batch of grants from the American Journalism Project, which is a new group on the scene aiming to support nonprofit local publications. This organization has immense ambitions. They’d like to see the country raise “about $500 million a year in national philanthropy for local news, which could then be matched by another $500 million in membership fees, advertising and other local revenue.”
Leonhardt goes on to say that this amount would “make a meaningful dent in the roughly $2 billion annual decline of local newspaper budgets in recent decades. From 1990 to 2016, about 60 percent of American newspaper jobs disappeared, according to the Labor Department, and the decline has surely continued since 2016. The main reason is the sharp drop in print advertising revenue.”
Check out the editorial online (search nytimes.com for Save Local Journalism!).
In closing, Leonhardt entreats readers to put in a good word for your “favorite local publication” at leonhardt@nytimes.com. While the entreaty is geared toward potential grantees of this new project and it doesn’t apply to us, as we’re not a nonprofit, why shouldn’t we get on the radar of the NYT?
Thus, I am officially asking you to MAKE SOME NOISE! Email Leonhardt and tell him about Moonshine Ink (be sure to include the word “local” in the subject line). Let’s see what magic can happen.
Click here to contribute online!
