Cardinal’s editor Dwayne Yancey sent a message the other evening, “I’ve sent you a draft of our annual year-end report that we’ve traditionally (we’re now old enough to use that word!) used right after Christmas.”
Aah, three years a tradition makes.
Dwayne, as is his tradition, has weaved in a wide variety of telling numbers regarding our readership and staff growth, and then some. You are already aware of our top-notch journalism and the impactful stories we produce day after day, and that we rely on readers just like you to pay our staff.
I thought you might also enjoy a peek into the future. But as with most stories, I need to step back a minute and set the stage.
By this time last year, with one full year and a few months of operations behind us, Cardinal News had blown past every expectation for revenue and audience growth that we had set in the summer of 2021. Not only that, but we were already doing more than our initial modest ambition to tell the impactful stories of our region that legacy newspapers were no longer doing. As the newspapers continued to contract, we stepped up to do more.
At the same time, we had to ensure that our growth and the journalistic urgency we felt would not result in mission creep that overshadowed our foundational principle to deliver independent journalism to the people of Southwest and Southside Virginia.
We needed a more ambitious plan.
As Cardinal readers you’ve watched during 2023 as we continued to grow our staff and our product line – which Dwayne details in his column. Behind the scenes, and less visible, the board of directors and I have been plotting our new course.
Early in 2023 we engaged the services of Blue Engine Collaborative, a global team of coaches and consultants led by Tim Griggs (a Hokie) as a strategic planning partner. Our board – President Caroline Glickman, Treasurer Chris Turnbull and Secretary Debbie Meade – wanted our planning partner to understand not only the challenges of the news industry, but those of our region.
Here’s what we learned.
By January 2023, Cardinal News was already in the top 10% of start-up local news organizations by revenue and staffing in the country. Think about this. We are medium to largish for the 425 emerging nonprofit newsrooms that are reporting on communities around the country. We’ve done this quickly without a deep-pocketed investor or a million-dollar national grant and with the great majority of our funding coming from Virginians in the part of the commonwealth that is the least wealthy.
We’ve won awards for this: In 2023, The Institute of Nonprofit News named us Startup of the Year, and LION Publishers gave us its Financial Health Award.
Hubris me would like to brag about the strength of this organization that we are building. But more humble me knows that our success is due to our readers not only understanding the role of journalism in a healthy society, but demonstrating this with financial support.
While Cardinal’s place in the entrepreneurial news world is amazing, the flip side is sobering. Gone are the days of large daily newsrooms. In fact, six more Virginia dailies stopped publishing daily in 2023 and have one, maybe two reporters. And the larger dailies’ newsrooms are shrinking to similar size as ours with eight reporters and a ninth soon to join us. We could spill a lot of ink lamenting the devastation and yearning for what was.
But that isn’t the Cardinal Way. Instead, we recognize our obligation, celebrate the possible and then make it happen.
Through strategic planning we explored possibilities for Cardinal’s next phase. Here’s where we landed: We’re not spreading our wings to cover all of Virginia. We will remain focused on our communities in Southwest and Southside Virginia. These are the places and people we know and deeply care about. We can’t fix all that is wrong with Virginia’s news landscape. We can step into the void and become the predominant news leader for our communities.
We will work to cover the biggest stories that impact our communities, and we will deliver news on the platforms and in the places that readers want. We will do better at listening to our audiences as we continue to build them. We will contribute to statewide and regional conversations through our journalism.
We will explore ways to use newly emerging technology and old-school coffee shop meetups to develop deeper and broader sources and relationships. We’ve been fortunate in deepening our relationships with policy and business leaders, but we need not lose sight of whose stories we are telling and work to develop and expand relationships with the people in all of our communities.
In the coming year, we hope you will see Cardinal News in more places and find our stories waiting for you on the devices and platforms that you enjoy using. We plan in January to roll out an app. This is something many of you have asked for, and we are excited to play around with the possibilities.
We continue to enter partnerships that make sense. On Jan. 3, thanks to a grant from the American Press Institute and a partnership with the Roanoke Collaboration Project, we will bring two top opposing party leaders from the Virginia Senate to Roanoke for a civil conversation. And we’ll do more of this.
We will soon begin regular smaller meetups across our large footprint. We also look forward in 2024 to hosting more Cardinal News Speaker Series events and welcome partners because we take seriously our responsibility to lead the conversation on issues important to the people of our region.
We’re grateful to WVTF and Blue Ridge Public TV for sharing our stories on their platforms. We made a new friendship with the communications department at Virginia Tech and can’t wait to take them up on their offer to use their studio.
We enjoy working with students. We just finished up a survey project with University of Missouri students that taught as much about how young people consume news as it gave us insights into our readers. We’re looking forward to working this summer with journalism students at Syracuse University who promise to bring new storytelling methods and designs for our Cardinal 250 project.
We are among the newsrooms selected to participate in Google Trusted Testers in the development of tools to use technology to aid reporters in gathering and scanning online documents and websites. As part of this project, we expect to be able to bring readers something else they’ve asked for – more local news about their communities. Though I don’t want to make any promises, we just might be able to find an economical way to report high school sports – another big ask by readers.
And speaking of reader requests, we will be rolling out surveys (I do hope you’ll contribute) to better know you and your concerns and ideas. We will also be boosting our social media presence – developing more videos and reels – telling our stories in new ways and engaging more with social audiences.
As 2023 comes to a close, we are fortunate to have three new talented people join Cardinal’s flock. Quinn Graeff has joined our board of directors. Dutchie Mirolli is director of development, and Sherry Quinley is our sponsorship manager.
They are brimming with energy and ideas. This is a big turning point for Cardinal. Until now, our inestimable volunteer accountant Tonya Hart and I have been it on the business side. It’s amazing to me how much we have accomplished in such a short time, and how far we have yet to fly.
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