Update: On Tuesday afternoon, J-Lab announced that Vtdigger.org won a New Voices award for a new interactive platform called Tipster that will involve readers in the newsgathering process. This is great leap forward for that special project, and we can’t wait to get started on it. We are still looking to raise about $9,500 for complete coverage of the gubernatorial campaign and for reporting on readers’ tips. Yesterday, we received donations from seven more readers. We very much appreciate your support.
We want to kick our news coverage up a notch at Vtdigger.org.
We know many of you appreciate our in-depth reporting on politics and government, and if you haven’t sent us a donation already, we hope you’ll consider doing so today because our coverage won’t stop with the legislative session.
Our goal is to expand vtdigger.org’s news reporting this summer in three areas.
1. We want to provide intensive coverage of the gubernatorial primary race – and with five Democrats in the running, that’ll be no small feat. We plan to capture the campaign jockeying along the way and to provide profiles of the candidates and analysis stories about their positions and their records. We began our background coverage of the campaigns this spring with a series of stories by Kate Robinson on the executive directors of the three major political parties, and we are working on a second set of profiles of the party chairs in our “The People Behind the Parties” series. In a few weeks, we will begin posting thorough-going profiles of the gubernatorial candidates.
2. We want to respond to the many reporting requests we receive from readers we haven’t been able to follow up on. With a stable of regularly contributing writers to Vtdigger.org, that would change – we would be able to pursue those valuable leads.
3. Ever get sick of politics? Well, even those of us who write and edit at Vtdigger.org need a break from all things political once in a while. That’s why we’d like to run more humor and cultural essays by Barbara Ann Curcio and Donald Kreis.
To do all this, we need money to hire freelance reporters who would contribute three to five additional stories a week to Vtdigger.org.
Right now, we can’t afford to do that without your help.
We need to raise about $9,500 to expand our coverage this summer.
So if you appreciate what we do here at Vtdigger.org, please hit the PayPal donate button in the left hand column, or send a check to Vtdigger.org, PO Box 2, E. Hardwick VT 05836. Your donation is tax-deductible. If you are a business owner who wants to place a sponsorship ad on the site, contact Anne at 441-1016.
We are grateful to the readers and business sponsors who have already contributed to Vtdigger.org. We have received more than $6,175 from 68 individual readers and $3,800 in support from our business sponsors since our fledgling effort began last fall, and we believe it’s possible with our increased readership (we have more than 13,000 unique visitors and about 40,000 hits on the site every month) to raise enough money in the coming weeks to bring you more news, analysis and essays.
We also owe a debt of gratitude to a core group of people who have been directly involved, committing their talents and time toward making this nonprofit, community supported news effort happen. Thanks to Terry Allen, Dan Allen, Paul Bass, Steve Cormier, Barbara Ann Curcio, Jeff Danziger, David Healy, Mel Huff, Donald Kreis, Josh Larkin, Nick Monsarrat, Wally Roberts, Kate Robinson and Tena Starr.
Vtdigger.org’s launch wouldn’t have been possible without support from the Vermont Community Foundation, the Haymarket People’s Fund and the Harris and Frances Block Foundation.
Thank you all for reading Vtdigger.org and supporting our mission – to enhance democracy in Vermont through in-depth, interactive journalism.
–Anne Galloway, editor
