It’s Giving Tuesday, which means this email is almost certainly not the only one in your inbox this morning. Yet, I hope you take the time to read this one.
I’m the editor-in-chief here at Gothamist and WNYC, and I’ve never written to you before today. The truth is, most journalists prefer to stay in the newsroom, working to interview, write, inquire, investigate and fact-check (and re-check) the news we produce. But today, I want to acknowledge something that may seem obvious: The news is exhausting.
Stay with me here.
There’s a lot to want to tune out in the world. Believe me, I get it. But there’s something that keeps me going, the one thing that gets me out of the newsroom and into your inbox: My belief that focusing on truly local news can fix what ails our region and even our country.
As the nation and world become ever more polarized, we can still find common ground by focusing on issues that affect us daily. I’m talking about:
Clean drinking water and air
Reliable subways
How schools are educating our children
We can’t find that common ground without journalists who work to cover the news here, where we actually live.
That’s one reason I ask you to support our newsroom this Giving Tuesday. Here’s another: I have the honor of working alongside talented journalists who fervently believe that the news shouldn’t only be for people who can pay for a subscription.
That’s where you come in. We ask you to donate to our newsroom to help keep it free for everyone, including those who can’t afford to contribute.
There’s lots of national news out there, but a shocking shortage of high-quality, responsible local news produced by editors and reporters who hate alarmist headlines and “gotcha” journalism. That shortage gets more dire every year as more newsrooms shrink or close altogether.
You can ask anyone in our newsroom: Our slogan is that we make New York work for New Yorkers, and every day, this team works to do exactly that.