Your donation can help support local journalism.

If you didn’t realize how essential local newspapers were before COVID-19, you probably do now. But just as demand for our product has reached unprecedented levels, the business model that keeps our lights on – primarily advertising – has been disrupted.

That’s nothing new, as it’s been happening for more than a decade. No longer do we get to subsidize our journalism with the revenue from abundant classified ads, home and car listings and department store inserts. Newspapers all over the country now have to rely on readers more than ever to fund the content they want to see.

If you’ve been a reader of one of the four community publications in Unified Newspaper Group – the Verona Press, the Oregon Observer, the Stoughton Courier Hub and the Fitchburg Star – we don’t need to tell you how seriously we take our duty to keep our readers informed.

We report on the schools your kids attend and follow the sports they play. We keep you up to date on businesses in our communities, tell you stories about your neighbors and bring you great photography. We provide complete, fair coverage of local cities, villages, towns and school districts. And we bring together editorial boards in our communities to ensure we’re representing our readers’ needs.

We also provide enterprising stories digging further into meaningful issues, like difficult government decisions, changing education models, business and family struggles with COVID-19.

Such stories take time to produce, and as a result, those are the efforts that are the most in danger.

While the pandemic has affected us all in one way or another, it has jeopardized the financial health of many news outlets, particularly smaller, independent ones. The advertisers that are our bread and butter struggled in the early months, and many did not know whether they would open again. Even as the economy began to reopen, some didn’t.

So we’re looking to our readers to help us continue to bring you the exclusively local stories you won’t find anywhere else – not in Madison TV or newspapers, not on Facebook or Twitter. Any funds we raise through these tax-deductible donations through the WNA will be used to ensure a sustainable amount of reporter staffing levels and prevent disruptions in essential government coverage, including of our local cities, villages, towns and school districts.

Our news staff is already down two people since the start of COVID-19, and we don’t know how much longer our advertising customers will be hampered. So please consider donating to help us return our staffing levels as soon as possible so we can continue to put out more quality journalism. And while you’re at it, please feel free to let us know where you think we can improve the most.

It’s not about our survival. Unified Newspaper Group publications have support from our employee-owned corporation and have time to right our financial ship.

The greater risk is limiting our coverage – both because of limited space and limited staff time – the way we have been since March.

Jim Ferolie
Group editor
Unified Newspaper Group

About the Wisconsin Community News Fund

The Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that works to support local newspapers and the communities they serve, created the Wisconsin Community News Fund to help ensure Wisconsin’s newspapers can continue fulfilling their critical mission of providing consistent, fact-based information to the public. The initiative allows newspapers to solicit tax-deductible donations from their community to support critical reporting on public affairs and current events.

Community News Fund Donor Policy

The Wisconsin Community News Fund is committed to transparency in every aspect of funding.

Accepting financial support does not mean the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation or its grantees endorse donors or their products, services or opinions.

The Wisconsin Community News Fund, managed by the WNA Foundation, distributes grants to Wisconsin newspapers to help those organizations educate the public on substantive issues of public policy and report on public affairs and current events.

The news judgments of our grantees are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors or any revenue source. Supporters are not given the rights to assign, review or edit content.

The WNA Foundation avoids accepting charitable donations from anonymous sources, government entities, political parties, elected officials or candidates seeking public office. We will not accept donations from sources who, deemed by our board of directors, present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence.

Support the Stoughton Courier Hub

By Wisconsin Community News Fund

Support the Stoughton Courier Hub