We’re Staying OPEN

The reason you’re reading this is because 1,745 of you chose to pay for local news. So we are going to keep publishing. Just how long will ultimately depend on you, our reader-subscribers. To keep our small, high-impact newsroom sustainable, we calculate that we’ll need 3,000 subscribers — less than 1% of our readers — to support us at $5/month. But with everyone’s help, we are on our way.

Thank you.

The last three weeks have been a nail-biting experience around here — wondering if we can make it, if enough people will care, if enough people will get around to actually pulling out their credit cards to sign up.

I had promised myself not to give this thing up without a fight. As I think I told a few of you, the beginning of our subscription drive felt like heading full speed ahead into a brick wall. Well, it seems that brick wall did not kill us, and if anything, is showing some cracks.

Now we are a tad dazed and overwhelmed — in a good way. I am still working through the many, many emails of support that so many of you sent offering encouragement, help, ideas, and suggestions — forgive me it’s taken so long to get back to everyone individually. Receiving them has meant so much more than you can imagine.

I can say the same about the incredible outpouring of support in the online communities — from fellow reporters and publishers to caring neighbors who have gone out of their way to share our story, and sometimes tell it better than we could, and giving when we know they have so little themselves.

I shared yesterday some of the stories we are working on, and we will continue on those. We will also send a survey to ask you to share your thoughts on what issues you think we should be paying particular attention to — probably early next week.

We’ll be putting all the money from subscriptions to fund reporters and editors — full time and freelance, and the more we have the more reporters we can pay to tell the stories that need to be told in Brooklyn.

Off to work.

Yours,

Liena