About 363 days ago, I clicked “send” on The Reporting Project’s first-ever email newsletter, delivered to 162 people. When that newsletter arrived in (some of) your inboxes, TRP had a staff of four reporters, in addition to stalwarts and founders Jack Shuler, Doug Swift, Alan Miller and Beth Lossing.
I was the most recent edition to the team, joining TRP on Oct. 9, 2023 — my 27th birthday.
That Nov. 30 newsletter was my first big undertaking at my new job, and a lot of work went into it. We had meetings about which font would work best, about how many photos to include, about how to grow our audience, about how to fill in the gaps when we don’t publish enough stories for a weekly newsletter, about what kind of content should fill the first one. At one point, we even had a meeting about meetings.
Then, we just clicked send one day. And the rest is history.
In our original newsletter, I promised you that TRP would not be the “he-said-she-said, THIS alligator broke into THIS Florida shop and you won’t believe what happened next, or the latest on Elon Musk,” type of news.
Instead, I promised you that you would learn about your neighbors, find a cool event to bring your family and friends to next weekend, and understand our shared community.
That’s based on TRP’s original mission statement, which has guided every decision we’ve made as an organization since 2020: Facts, Empathy, Place. I’m proud to say that has been our commitment to you in the past year — one that couldn’t have worked without the support of our community.
Since that Nov. 30, 2023 newsletter, we’ve clicked publish on 373 original stories. Those are stories we got to share because you helped us along the way, by sitting down for interviews, by attending public meetings, by welcoming us into your home, by opening your lives and your hearts to our growing staff of journalists.
And since that Nov. 30, 2023 newsletter, we’ve hired a bunch of staffers, putting our total reporting team at 14 — making us one of the larger newsrooms in the state of Ohio.
This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for our team of hardworking journalists, and I’m especially thankful to you: Our neighbors around Licking County who continue to trust us and work with us.
Thanks for being part of this adventure with us. We can’t say enough how much you, our readers, have helped us rebuild local news in our community, to fill in the gaps and to create a living history of Licking County — all right here on the pages of The Reporting Project.
Julia Lerner writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.