When will Cardinal News have a reporter to cover (fill in the blank)?
If I had a few dollars for every person who ended that question by asking for a Lynchburg reporter, we would be well on our way to supporting one. Unfortunately, that had yet to happen. Instead, we have occasionally hired freelancers. While their work is fine for the assignments they are given, it falls far short of having a reporter dedicated full time to covering a community.
Which is why it is my great pleasure to announce that Report for America is meeting us halfway and is helping this year to support corps member Emma Malinak’s placement in Lynchburg. She starts today.
Emma is from western Pennsylvania and is a recent journalism graduate from Washington and Lee University. You’ll be hearing more about Emma and what she’ll be covering Tuesday from executive editor Jeff Schwaner, and from Emma herself later this week.
We hope you will join the Cardinal team in welcoming Emma during a July 15 open house at The Flour District from 1 to 3 p.m.
With Emma, we now have 10 staff reporters. Five of them are place-based: Roanoke, Danville, Martinsville, Bristol and Lynchburg. And five are topic based: state government, business, education, health and technology.
We are doing something a little different with the Lynchburg position. With all the others, we had a clear funding path in place before filling them.
This time we are going to provide the coverage and ask for support to keep it.
Through a competitive process, Report for America selects newsrooms with critical coverage gaps and agrees to contribute half of the reporter’s salary the first year, 30% the second and 25% the third. Newsrooms are required to raise the balance the first three years, and to be able to fully support the position going forward.
Report for America is a national service program dedicated to strengthening communities and democracy through local journalism that is truthful, fearless, fair and smart. This year it is placing 107 journalists in newsrooms across the country.
Once Report for America selects the local newsrooms, it then seeks out talented reporters to apply for the program, learn about the positions, rank where they’d like to work, and then engage in a competitive hiring process. As a corps member, Emma will receive some mentoring from Report for America, but she is a full-time, regular employee of Cardinal News.
We are hoping that the Lynchburg community responds favorably to having full-time coverage, and that those who value local journalism will step up to support her work.
I may have indulged in a wee bit of hyperbole at the start of this by saying if we had a few dollars from everyone who asked for a Lynchburg reporter, we could fund the position. But that statement isn’t far off. Two hundred new Cardinal members agreeing to spend $20 a month would go a long way to sustaining a reporter.
Cardinal members — those who commit to monthly or yearly donations — receive a few benefits, including an exclusive weekly newsletter written by one of our reporters. For more information, about becoming a member, please visit our membership page https://cardinalnews.org/membership/ or send us an email: members@cardinalnews.org.
Hope to see you on July 15.
Let Emma know what you want her to cover in Lynchburg! Fill out this brief survey.
