Do you care about the truth? Do you want the facts, the full facts? And do you want to have sources that you can trust? Then there are three subscriptions you need to purchase, right now.
Support your local news outlets
Across America, local news is dying. Local newspapers are shuttering, broadcast media outlets are cutting staff. From Pew Research:
From 2008 to 2018, newsroom employment in the U.S. dropped by 25%. In 2008, about 114,000 newsroom employees – reporters, editors, photographers and videographers – worked in five industries that produce news: newspaper, radio, broadcast television, cable and “other information services” (the best match for digital-native news publishers). By 2018, that number had declined to about 86,000, a loss of about 28,000 jobs.
You can complain about the coverage, or the grammar, or whatever. But even while you are complaining, support your local news. Remember, it’s local news outlets that often break the story of the graft at City Hall, or reveal the local hate group, or keep the local big factory owners honest. You need your local news – so support them.
Support the big state-wide outlets
There are some news organizations that try to cover most or all of the state. You need to support those as well. Why? Because they have resources, including researchers and lawyers, that your local outlets just don’t have.
There are big, complicated stories that only the state-wide outlets can manage. Some of those stories take months of digging and reporting and fact-checking to finally get published. If you don’t support the state-wide outlets, those stories won’t get done.
I have subscriptions, for example, to both the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, as well as some other news outlets around the state. I WANT those newspapers to not only survive, but to thrive. You may have other big outlets you want to support, and that’s fine. Just be sure to do so.
Support Forward Kentucky
I don’t talk about our own memberships much. Normally, I try to let our work speak for itself. But, unlike those outlets I’ve listed above, we exist almost exclusively on the income from our supporting members. Whatever costs we have — paying contributors, purchasing other content, hosting the site, software we use — either comes from our members, or out of my pocket. We don’t have ads on the site, and we don’t get grants. It’s up to our readers to decide that what we do is worth becoming a paying member.
We are starting a three-week membership push. Obviously, the more members we have, the more we can do. I would like to hire a reporter to cover the General Assembly, for example. I would like to pay our contributors more. I would like to find someone to cover eastern Kentucky more. All of these things take money.
So, if you think our content and our work is worth something, or you think Forward Kentucky provides a valuable service to the state, or you want to support a progressive voice for Kentucky – then you need to become a member. The Basic membership costs $3 a month, which is less per month than a large coffee at Starbucks, and about the same as one Big Mac a month.
We want to continue growing. We want to do more to promote good journalism and a progressive voice in Kentucky. Help us do that be becoming a member today. Just click the link below to go to the membership page!