We Turned 5. We’re Aiming For 10!

You made it happen. Let’s keep it happening.

Five years ago today, the New Haven Independent hit the net with a new idea: completely local multimedia online-only professional news reporting focused on city news and issues, with reporting used as a springboard for wide-ranging community discussion. Not a ​“newspaper.” Not a radio or TV news program. A journalism-driven online urban community.

We had no idea that we’d still be in business five years later. Or that we’d be a main source of daily news for New Haven and break major stories about the schools, the neighborhoods, City Hall, immigration, local business, and statewide elections. Or that we’d have six full-time reporters and as many part-timers covering New Haven, Branford, the Naugatuck Valley, and the state Capitol. Or that our example would be followed around the country, with similar not-for-profit news sites springing up from coast to coast.

Take a bow! It all happened because a city of passionate, interesting, committed people of all backgrounds wanted it to happen.

Let’s raise a glass together. Please join us for a celebratory toast in the office suite we share with La Voz Hispana at 51 Elm St., 3rd floor, on Wednesday, Sept. 15, from 5 to 7 p.m. The wine’s on us.

Now we’re looking ahead to our next half-decade birthday. We’re asking your help in a new way to get there.

Our budget has grown from $85,000 to around $500,000 a year. We operate like public radio: Charitable donations from individuals and institutions pay the freight. As a not-for-profit, we don’t answer to faceless bean-counting bureaucrats in distant corporate towers. They don’t own us. You own us.

Most of our financial support has come from charitable foundations. They’ve stuck with us longer than they originally promised. They’ve continued to stick with us. But their intent was to seed our project, to develop a model for the new journalism. They’ve made it clear we can’t count on their support indefinitely to cover the majority of our budget.

So to adopt a buzzword of the day, we’ve been thinking a lot about ​“sustainability,” about how the Independent can become an ongoing proposition for the indefinite future.

We concluded — as did our peers in other cities, coincidentally — that we need to lower the percentage of our budget that comes from foundations, and dramatically raise the amount of support we receive from our readers here at home who value the Independent, who care about the quality of public schools, about immigration raids, about zoning decisions and economic development, about foreclosures and the toll that violence takes on neighborhoods, about city budget hearings, political campaigns and West Hills or Fair Haven gardeners, about community health centers and safe streets, about ​“cops of the week” who protect us.

So today we’re launching our first annual reader fund drive. It’s similar to the the fund drives that public radio and public TV conduct each year.

We’re asking readers to become ​“Friends of The New Haven Independent” by donating a minimum $10 or $18 a month for the coming year. All contributions are tax-deductible. Click on these buttons to make the donations by PayPal:

You can also become a ​“Friend of the New Haven Independent” by check: $120 or $216 for a full year of support, made out to ​“Online Journalism Project” PO BOX 3288, Westville Station, New Haven CT 06515.

If you can spare more, we invite you to find your wings — and become a New Haven Independent ​“angel.” Mail us a check for $250, and you’ll be listed on our site as a ​“basic angel.” Contribute $500, we’ll dub you a ​“super angel.” The title of ​“ultra angel” will be conferred on donors of $1,000 or more.

And please email the donation link along with a personal appeal to 10 or more of your friends.

In the meantime, we will suspend regular programming and cram the site full of non-stop pledge-drive appeals.

(Just kidding.)

This is the most exciting time I’ve known to be a reporter. Thanks to the internet, new ways of delivering information and sparking civic conversation are springing up by the day. From Vermont to California, from Texas to Minnesota, not-for-profit sites like ours are proving durable additions to the media landscapes. An intriguing local for-profit model may be developing through AOL’s Patch sites, which are about to blanket towns through Connecticut. And established old-media newsrooms like WTNH and the New Haven Register are putting their own spin on web-based multimedia reporting. A lot more news is being covered in New Haven, and a lot more people are discussing the news, than when we began five years ago.

Professional reporting is needed more than ever — no longer for the opinions of the reporters, but for our fact-gathering and analytical expertise and our moderation of reader comments and insight, keeping the civic dialogue civil.

Cities like New Haven are returning to the ​“good old days” of multiple local media outlets where readers can find news, weigh in, and obtain different takes on what’s happening at home. No longer can a corporate monopoly control and choke off the flow of news and debate in one community.

It’s an honor to be part of the revolution. It’s an honor to take part of it in our wonderful city. Thanks for getting us this far! Here’s to many shared birthdays to come.