RANGE deserves our support
I am a big fan of the folks at RANGE Media and their local reporting. We have a golden opportunity to direct $10,000 to their support. All it requires is a few moment of time on line for each of us to cast a vote.
Background
RANGE Media is a local news startup founded in April 2020 by Luke Baumgarten and owned by the Spokane Workers Cooperative. (Click that link to check it out.) These are up-and-coming young people who are doing a terrific job of connecting local readers with local government—and they’re doing it on a shoestring. Click here for more about RANGE. If you don’t already receive RANGE’s emailed newsletter I highly recommend you click here to sign up for free (all centered on local issues!). If you appreciate the coverage I encourage you to become a paid subscriber.
RANGE has an opportunity to obtain a cash infusion of $10,000 if enough of its fans vote for RANGE in an internet-based Public Choice contest (one of a number of grants) by The Next Challenge for Media and Journalism. From RANGE:
Next Challenge is a national competition awarding big money to “groundbreaking for-profit and nonprofit startups that will reinvent media and journalism in the coming decade.”
That’s us. We’re groundbreaking. We’re also in the “Future of Local News” division, meaning we’re “pioneering a sustainable new business model for local journalism.” And while we’re not working with covered wagons and dying of dysentery, we are building something rare in local news — worker-owned community journalism — and that comes with its own set of trials. Namely: we need money, and this competition is one way we can get it — but only if we have your support!
Specifically, if you vote for us, we could win the Public Choice Award, which would bring us an extra $10,000 in this competition! This award would help us continue bringing you the deep analyses and investigations we’re known for, like our ongoing reports on tragic conditions in local homeless shelters, the policy and politics around sex labor and religious extremism in Eastern Washington.
Click here to watch a video of Luke making the case for worker-owned news and to vote for RANGE. (The platform will ask you to verify your phone number and we know it’s annoying, but we promise it’s like two steps!) Voting closes at 11:59 p.m. PT on Sunday, May 19!
I voted. (Start by clicking here.) It took only a few minutes and a little brow-furrowing as I fussed with the phone number verification steps (no doubt meant to screen out things like using an internet bot to mess up the voting). It does look like you have to have a phone that can receive text messages in order to get verified, but, hey, if I can do this so can you :-)!
For High Ground readers who don’t live in Spokane, you should vote, too. RANGE is digitally based, can be read anywhere with an internet connection, and it produces a lot of interesting articles.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry