Pausing, In Part to Say Thank You

Just a few words from me as Publisher and President of the Board of ELi before we go on Memorial Day break through Monday.

Before I get to that, please note, if you wish to participate, that Saturday morning at 9 a.m. marks the time our City honors military veterans. That is when the wreath-laying ceremony occurs at Hannah Community Center.

So, in January, many of you responded to our “sustainability or bust” campaign by deciding that the public service journalism ELi provides matters enough to pitch in financially. I can’t tell you how often I have looked back since then and breathed a sigh of relief that our readers came through for us.

Thank you.

As you know if you’re an ELi, reader, it has been a bit of a wild ride in East Lansing since January. And we’re looking at more intense local action right up through Election Day this coming November, when there will be two Council seats and probably an income tax referendum on the ballot.

Since January, the ELi team has been doggedly at the job for you, finding out and bringing you what we think you need to know about your City government, your public schools, your community, and your town. We have been attending meetings, going out into the field, talking to people on background, using the Freedom of Information Act, creating timelines and posting documents and calendar notices, working hard to bring you the news in a form you can trust and digest.

I am the person chiefly in charge of raising funds for this public service news organization. As that person, I’ll be honest: There are times when we report a big story (like Tuesday’s) when I really want to slap a notice on the bottom that says: Don’t you think this report is worth $5 to you? Donate now!

Why don’t I do that on big stories? Because, even though I earn no money from ELi, I worry that people think we are reporting for money. Sometimes I hear rumors to that effect. What a laugh, especially in my own case! I don’t earn any money from ELi and my spouse and I are the lead financial donors. And everyone who is paid at ELi is dramatically underpaid.

Just for the record, I’ll tell you what motivates us at ELi: the belief that, without a free press focused on the local, our community can’t function at its best. We believe, firmly, that we people of East Lansing deserve real, in-depth local news we can trust. We believe in the production of local, nonpartisan news as a critically important locus of public service in the current media environment.

I’ve been thinking lately we need a new t-shirt, to reflect the ethos of our beautiful reporting team, for our reporters to wear out in the world. On the back, it would have ELi’s logo and website address. And on the front? It would say:

Will work for information.

Oh, man, do we work for information.

And that’s why reaching sustainability matters. Because I no longer have to work to raise money, I can work for information. I don’t have to spend my time or our Managing Editor Ann Nichols’ time, our Board’s time, or our reporters’ time trying to raise money. Instead, we are all working on the mission: obtaining and providing high-quality, in-depth information to the people of East Lansing.

The fact is, investigative journalism is by its nature impolite. It asks hard questions about who knew what when, it asks what’s been hidden, it asks who is accountable. Investigative journalism is not all we do—for a sample of what else we bring you, read this report by Ann Kammerer that made me cry—but local investigative journalism is a lot of what the people of East Lansing come to us for and do for us. And especially in the Midwest, investigative journalism can get uncomfortable.

Sustainability means I don’t have to worry that what we report might mean we can’t fundraise this month, because we have had to report something uncomfortable.

This Memorial Day, I’m reminded through the sacrifices of the men and women who have been our military service members that professional armies are best for protecting a democracy.

Here at home, in East Lansing, a professional army of local journalists to protect democracy would be swell.

But we don’t have that. So, what we have built is the local news militia that is ELi. We defend what the Founding Fathers essentially put in the First Amendment—the right to know and to share information.

Thank you to all of you who have stepped up to make us sustainable. And if you haven’t stepped up, or you want to up your step, now’s a great time. The more funds we have, the more people we can pay a little something to the citizen-reporters we do pay, and the more we can focus on working for information.

Donate here.