Talk about a strong close
The first ever fundraiser for the Chicago Independent Media Alliance came to a thunderous close on Friday. Our Growing Community Media is part of CIMA and we’re one of 43 independent newsrooms around the city that took part in this valiant effort.
With a $50,000 rush in the final days, more than 1,000 readers pushed the total raised for CIMA to $100,149. Add in the $60,000 already banked as matching funds from an array of Chicago foundations and that is $160,000 and a lot of love/respect that will be divvied up among these worthy newsrooms this week.
Thanks to the Growing Community Media partners who joined this effort to nourish independent community journalism in Chicago.
One million page views
There has been a lot of news to cover in our seven neighborhoods this past month. And our small hard-working newsroom has been hard at it from the West Side to Forest Park to Brookfield.
How do you measure impact? There are a lot of ways from talking to appreciative marchers along protest routes to that call from a local village president with a heads up on what might happen next.
For the data-driven here’s another measure: In the trailing 30 days the combined flags of Growing Community Media – Austin Weekly News, Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest, Forest Park Review and Riverside-Brookfield Landmark – posted just over 1 million page views. That’s more than double our average.
Thanks for your trust in our coverage. Thanks to our reporters, our photographer, our freelancers for being on the street doing this work.
Google has affection for us
It’s not a donation. It’s not a grant. Google is clear about that. But happily it is $7,000 in U.S. currency we can use toward our coverage of COVID-19 in our seven neighborhoods. Growing Community Media was chosen for a first wave of funding from among 12,000 applicants across the globe for Google’s Emergency Newsroom Fund.
We’re grateful. And whatever Google wants to call it is fine by us.
