From the editor: The NoCo Optimist is growing. Here’s what we’re doing and what we’d like to do next.
Hi there, Optimists! I hope you’re just as excited as I am about the leaves changing and the weather getting cooler. There’s just something magical (get it? We’re close to Halloween? No? Well I’m sticking with it anyway) about this time of year. Maybe I’m feeling the magic, or maybe your continued support of the NoCo Optimist has me feeling confident – but I feel good about trying something new.
This week, you may notice the newsletter looks a little different – and there’s a reason for that! Starting this week, we’re going to test out an additional newsletter. Yes, that’s right, two newsletters for the price of one.
Thursday’s newsletter will focus a bit more on business coverage and things to do in Greeley – something our Patreon supporters told us they wanted. That way, you’ll have a chance to learn about cool activities going on in and around town (often covered by Dan England or myself) and cool restaurants (often covered by Emily Kemme) before the weekend.
We’ll bump city and county coverage to a Sunday newsletter. This will give us a little bit more time during the week to ask good questions and to keep an eye on what our elected officials are up to.
What does this mean for you?
It means you’ll have access to more content. You’ll have the chance to be more plugged in to what’s going on in your community. If you’re a Patreon supporter, it means you get more bang for your buck!
As we experiment with growth and figure out how best to serve you, we welcome tips and suggestions (send emails to TheNoCoOptimist@gmail.com).
To give you a peek behind the curtain, one of my major financial targets to launch two newsletters a week was $1,200/month. This allows the NoCo Optimist to pay freelancers for the work they do, file records requests, and maintain things like our website and the newsletter itself. Well, thanks to financial support from our Patreon supporters and our sponsors, we made it! We’re now at about $1,400/month.
The next milestone is $2,000/month.
Why? This will allow for more robust reporting and coverage of our community. Once we hit this mark, my goal will be to partner with someone locally to translate this newsletter and all its coverage into Spanish.
This is a huge missing piece in the local news landscape, especially in Greeley. I want to do a better job making information accessible. I want to be able to pay someone for this service.
I can’t make this work without your help.
As always, if you like this newsletter and would like to see it continue to grow and serve this community, I invite you to consider supporting the NoCo Optimist on Patreon. If you’re a business owner and you’d like to support the NoCo Optimist mission through sponsorship, you can do that too. (If you’ve changed credit cards for whatever reason, this is also an invitation for you to resubscribe to support local news!)
-Kelly