Well, how about that, something went according to plan!
About a year ago, I quit my job to start a then-unnamed, unstaffed, un-anythinged local news site funded by some folks who'd had a great deal of success in online news nationally and internationally. The idea was to quickly hire a bunch of hungry journalists and get right into the thrilling, block-by-block street fight that is local news.
Our mission: Do good work, find our people (that’s you -- hello!) and find our site's identity. We introduced ourselves and tried to let our work do the talking. We spent our earliest months pulling on threads we found interesting -- and asking those of you who were our early adopters what you wanted to know more about. We were, and are, delighted when your thoughtful questions lead us to more questions, and thrilled to hear from you when you reply to our email newsletters.
We tested the waters with a big event and drew more than twice as many people as we'd hoped to. That was our election night watch party, of course, and in many ways, it kicked off the next chapter of Denverite's life. We're planning on putting on more events -- we're hiring, by the way -- and building on the momentum, engagement and connections that we saw that night.
On the business side, that momentum has brought us to today, and yes, I’ve buried the lede: We're joining forces with news sites like ours in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. They've been doing journalism the way we have -- picking their battles and being honest and straightforward, nimble and personable.
Because we believe in the importance and power of local news, we hope to take our joint expertise and experience in building local news organizations to more cities. But I don't think you'll notice any major change around here outside of the events we've been wanting to add and a few technological upgrades we've been coveting.
One thing the deal does mean? We're going to be sticking around a while.
Thank you so much for your support so far. We'll keep trying to live up to it.
We now return to stuff that matters.
