Good morning, Riverside! Today is my 42nd birthday, and I'm using it as an opportunity to launch a summer giving campaign to accelerate The Gazette's path to long-term sustainability.

Last fall, I asked Gazette readers to contribute to a campaign to “hire the first new reporter exclusively dedicated to covering Riverside in nearly a decade.” You all contributed $11,375, setting us up for Ken to join the team, who has since written nearly 20 stories per month about Riverside’s happenings!

Today, I’m asking you to contribute to my birthday campaign to help send me to the 2024 Independent News Sustainability Summit (INSS) this September in Chicago. The Summit gathers “independent news publishers, industry experts, and supporters of independent news to share expert knowledge, hard-won lessons, and actionable advice on running a news business.” I've wanted to attend INSS for the last two years, and this is the first year I think it makes sense – not just because of the learning opportunity but because our upstart newsroom is finally starting to get some things right and our participation in the Summit will begin to put Riverside on the map for tackling the future of local news.

What is happening here at The Raincross Gazette is working:

Our audience has grown 37% this year, and we will likely pass 6,000 subscribers by the end of July.
Our 326 paid supporters (Members) regular giving now covers nearly half of Ken’s monthly salary.
In the 15 months since I made this my full-time job, we have grown our revenue from $17,000 to over $160,000 annually.

Our digitally native business model has allowed us to begin filling the gaps in local news coverage that have opened in Riverside over the last 20 years, and I continue to invest our revenue in deeper, better, and more reporting. The Raincross Gazette is growing, and we are on an unwavering path to serve the city of Riverside with meaningful, locally-driven news for the next 150 years, just like The Press-Enterprise did for our city’s first 150 years.

I want to attend the INSS sessions taught by other independent news leaders further down this path who will share their insights on growing our audience, building journalistic standards into our workflow, and effectively reaching Spanish-speaking communities.

I bought my summit ticket on Friday morning and applied for a grant-funded travel stipend. Because all our existing revenue is being budgeted or banked for future reporting staff, I don't have the extra dollars needed for travel and lodging, and I hope your contributions will help me get the rest of the way there.

The total cost of participating in the Summit will be about $3,500 – any additional dollars contributed will be banked toward hiring our second full-time reporter, focusing exclusively on local government, politics, and education. I am currently working to find a professionally and academically trained reporter that we can employ part-time as soon as possible while working toward bringing them full-time as soon as it is financially sustainable.

Thank you for your readership. I am so grateful for each of you and appreciate your contribution to this campaign. If you want to help and are unable to contribute financially, please help a friend or neighbor subscribe to The Gazette—it's free and always will be!

Thank you, for everything–
Justin Pardee

Independent News Sustainability Summit

By The Raincross Gazette

Independent News Sustainability Summit

Justin's 2024 Birthday Campaign