We have a map.
Unlike the perplexing 10-1 gerrymandered congressional map coming out of Virginia Democrats’ playbook, ours is compact and groups communities of common interest.
Our map defines Cardinal News’ main coverage area. We define it loosely as Southwest and Southside Virginia but are often asked which places exactly, and can you stretch it some to include my county.
At Cardinal’s start in 2021, we carved out this large swath of Virginia because it was mostly rural, mostly left behind in the state’s political and economic conversations, mostly abandoned by legacy media, and mostly had interesting stories to tell about the people reinventing their economies and protecting and celebrating their culture.
But, wow, it is a large area. We continually ask ourselves how best we can serve our communities with the local news that is essential for people to have information that is presented in a nonpartisan way.
The answer is to hire more reporters. Through the generosity of foundations, corporate support and readers like you, we have been able to place local reporters in Roanoke, Bristol, Martinsville, Danville and in Lynchburg.
As we continued to look at the places that are bare of coverage, we created a map with six zones. We are often asked to expand into more places in Virginia — especially to provide news in all the rural places that have been abandoned by traditional newspapers. We truly would like nothing more than to do that.
First, we have to serve our core. Last year we looked at our bare spots, and planned how we could cover these zones with the resources unique to those communities.
Through Report for America, we were able to place a reporter in Lynchburg. Report for America pays only a portion of the costs for a limited time, so we are counting on individuals and businesses there to help sustain this position.
Thanks to the generosity of the Anne and Gene Worrell Foundation we will be able to add another reporter in Southwest who will be based in the Norton/Wise area. We soon will share more about the editor and reporters who will work together in this zone. The foundation also is generously funding a development position so that we can work on a way to fund this team long term.
This still leaves two of our six zones bare: the New River Valley and the Alleghany Highlands.
We are focusing first on the NRV, and were selected by the Google News Initiative to be one of 14 news organizations out of hundreds that applied to be accepted into its first Growth Catalyst Initiative.
This comes with coaching and support, and a $150,000 grant to build the framework for expansion. Unlike most of our other zones where we secured direct funding for a reporter, the Google grant cannot go toward a reporter’s salary.
Instead, we must use the grant to ensure a sustainable pathway to fund an NRV reporter.
Last month, we launched a weekly newsletter for the NRV that already has nearly 2,200 subscribers. If you would like to receive this, sign up here. In addition to news stories, we are trying new features to deepen our conversation with readers.
This grant allows us to try new things. We are building relationships with journalism students at Virginia Tech and Radford University. We want to find ways, outside of traditional internships that benefit just one student at a time, to help students gain work experience. And we seek for our audiences to benefit from the stories they produce.
These alliances should also allow us to explore new storytelling paths and platforms so that stories reach people in ways they like to consume news.
All of this does take money. Overall, about 30% of Cardinal’s budget comes from reader support. We are aiming to raise a third of the cost of placing a reporter — roughly $100,000 — from readers living in the New River Valley.
To kick this off, we are holding a one-week fund drive and are seeking 30 new members to join the Cardinal Club. This is our membership program that offers benefits such as our weekly Reporter’s Notebook to those who sign up for monthly or annual contributions.
Help us fill in the coverage gap in the NRV. Once we do that, we can move onto the Alleghany Highlands. Only then, can we start to answer the question we hear so often: Can you extend Cardinal’s coverage to my county?
