This month, East Cobb News turns six years old!
On July 8, 2017, we published our very first post, about a motorcycle ride to honor a fallen East Cobb high school graduate who was shot to death in a domestic terrorist act while serving his country.
Truth be told, I had declared my independence as a journalist well before that, as I was laying the groundwork for East Cobb News.
A quarter-century at newspapers and a few more for various online outlets helped prepare me to take on the task of building a news resource to last for this community, where our family settled exactly 50 years ago this year.
I chose this particular time to make it official and finally push the button, and the journey has been an interesting, challenging and very gratifying one.
As we have recently celebrated our nation’s independence, I’m asking East Cobb News readers to help us celebrate ours, as we have reached an important milestone.
For the first time, I’m asking readers to help support the work we do in serving you with news and useful community information.
We’re suggesting that you contribute a minimum of $6 a month, or $60 a year, in honor of the 6th anniversary of East Cobb News.
We’re calling it the “6 for 6” campaign, and for the rest of the year we will be encouraging all of you to help us out. We’ll have special promotions, swag and other goodies and giveaways for readers and supporters.
Donate today!
While those details are being worked out, let me be clear about a few things:
This is a totally voluntary campaign. You are not required to pay to read and use East Cobb News. You can click on to any link on our site, get our newsletter and follow our social media platforms as you have been without interruption, at no cost to you.
We appreciate our growing readership as we have built up an essential community resource.
A few numbers as we approach the end of 6 years:
- Averaging 150K page views/month
- Averaging 70K unique visitors/month
- More than 8.3K newsletter subscribers and growing
Unlike other local media outlets, we don’t lock down our content behind a pay wall or require you to register to read stories. We don’t bombard visitors to our site with noisy pop-up videos. We don’t clutter our pages with out-of-town clickbait.
But because we’re committed to keeping East Cobb News free and accessible to all, we’re asking for your financial support today, as we continue to build a sustainable local news business that puts community first.
In order for us to do that, we need you to do two things:
- Support our advertisers!
- Becoming a paying supporter!
Well, three things actually:
- Tell your friends, families and neighbors about us too!
Donate today!
Read more here about our recommended contribution options, and how to pay online or by other methods.
You can also donate an amount of your choosing.
Regardless of what you give, you can do so easily by clicking here.
Our payment platform is hosted by Press Patron, which makes it easy to support the journalism you love via one-time or monthly contributions.
The Press Patron platform is safe and secure, and is connected with the prominent Stripe online payment system. When you sign up to contribute, you can control your account and payment preferences.
We’re suggesting at the very least that you contribute $6 a month—in honor of our 6th anniversary!
Six bucks a month. Think about it. That’s a couple of cups of drive-through coffee. Or a lunch entreé. Or an after-dinner dessert.
(Is any of this making you hungry?)
That’s about what some of the most notable independent journalists in the country charge for their newsletters.
Unlike them, however, we don’t have tens and hundreds of thousands of subscribers and readers.
Local news doesn’t scale, but at its best it is deeply devoted to serving its readership.
That’s where you come in.
“6 for 6” is very similar to a public radio campaign, but for your hometown news site, lovingly started from scratch by a journalist who grew up here and calls East Cobb home.
The Power of Local
Over the last three-plus years, as the COVID-19 pandemic and the response to it affected every aspect of daily life, readers came to depend on East Cobb News for all the details about how this affected our community.
We know this not only because our audience numbers skyrocketed during that time, but also because of more direct feedback we got. Such as this reader who gets our newsletter, and who sent us this message:
“This is a fabulous publication. Thank you so much!”
You have no idea what a shot in the arm that has been as we navigated these unusual times with all of you. We never stopped working to catch you up with all the vital updates about the reopenings of businesses and schools, how to follow your local elected bodies online and how to help out those in need.
Here are a few other reader testimonials we’d like to share:
“You have a great sense of the community and what makes it tick.”
“Appreciate your deep and objective coverage. Thank you.”
“I read it religiously. I have lived in East Cobb for 43 years. It is my community of people and places. Keeping up with things tightens the feelingsI have for East Cobb. Basically, I love your publication!”
As we have returned to normal, we’ve resumed chronicling the things you’ve come to expect from East Cobb News:
- Local government, schools, public safety, getting around, development
- Business openings, especially retail and restaurants
- Events, quality of life issues and community service
- Elections, candidate profiles and how to cast your vote
- Human-interest features and the activities of our community’s youth
What we’ve seen in the last three years is how vital local news has become to a community, and people in East Cobb have been generous with their compliments and with their eyeballs.
We greatly appreciate the many reader contributions we get, letting us know about an event or fundraiser, honoring people for their good works and accomplishments, and sending along feel-good stories in a time of great stress and anxiety.
Now East Cobb News needs something else from you to continue doing the work we’ve done not just for the last three years, but for the last six.
To say launching East Cobb News was a labor of love is an understatement.
What was truly behind the idea was the sense of opportunity it presented to create something just for this community.
Journalism has been my profession for 40 years, but East Cobb is the place I’ve called home, and that nurtured my aspirations for my career and life.
But local news has taken a very deep hit as my profession and the news industry have been transformed over the last two decades.
There’s been so much destruction and job loss, and communities have been deprived of vital information they need.
As I wrote here last Labor Day, this is a time to build, and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished thus far with East Cobb News.
There’s so much more I want to do.
Donate today!
The Power of Now
You depend on us to get you the news. We depend on you to help us financially. Now is not time to sit on the sidelines waiting for someone else to support local journalism.
We offer some affordable and dynamic ways to promote local businesses, and we’ve got enticing readership numbers to help those running small businesses to reach new customers.
Our “Six for Six” campaign also includes some advertising specials, so please visit this link for more.
Business owners and marketing professionals can also check out our other advertising information. We have a variety of products and price points and most importantly, the flexibility to work with you to craft a package that fits your needs and your budget.
If you really want to stand out with your message, East Cobb News can give you something no other local outlet can provide—dozens of dynamic online display and newsletter formats, including video, slideshow gallery and rotating cube features that dazzle readers and convert into sales.
To me, The Power of Local also extends to local business, and East Cobb News is the ideal marketing partner for local businesses that are trying to thrive in the post-pandemic world.
We approach advertising the same way we do the news—as a fellow business owner and citizen, fully invested in our community. We want you to grow and thrive, because we understand how local businesses form the backbone of our community.
Now more than ever.
As we have recently celebrated the birthday of our nation’s founding ideals, we’d like to ask our readers to help us as we continue the work of providing independent, online local news and useful community information.
That’s our one and only mission, and it’s unlike anything else in East Cobb.
Please consider giving the suggested amounts with the options below, or whatever you like. While we greatly appreciate recurring annual monthly or annual contributions, we also accept one-time donations that can be renewed as you like:
- $6/month or $60/year
- $12/month or $125/year
- $30/month or $300/year
- $50/month or $500/year
- Custom amount
- One-time donation
Donate today!
Here’s the link to contribute, and to create an account with the Press Patron platform. It was formed with local news publishers in mind to help them grow and become sustainable.
I’ve set some substantial, but reachable goals for the “6 for 6” campaign: We’d like to have 500 subscribers by the end of September, and another 500 by the end of the year.
Frankly, I think we can achieve much more than that, and I’ll update those numbers and encourage more readers to take part as we go along in the coming months.
Please keep in mind that East Cobb News is a for-profit business. While your donations are not tax deductible, they will go a long way to help us keep giving you the local news that you love!
As always, please feel free to reach out with questions, news tips and advertising queries: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
Enjoy your summer, stay safe and be well East Cobb!
Related:
- Editor’s Note: Thanks, East Cobb, for all your support
- Editor’s Note: Reflections on Cobb and COVID, three years after
- Editor’s Note: Giving thanks to East Cobb News readers
- Editor’s Note: The joys of labor in building for the future
- Editor’s Note: Why we’re keeping reader comments—for now
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