In its first three months, VOICES: River City has played host to some challenging and important arguments from folks in the Sacramento region.
From scientists affirming the inextricable link between science and politics, to Bill Burg celebrating a downtown block attacked days before by Bee columnist Marcos Breton, to Sac Snark infuriating just about all of us with his take on ArtStreet–I’m proud of the conversations we’ve started.
We’ve done other things, too. We’ve broken some news, covered some arts and allowed a comedian to lift the wool from our eyes over Smash Mouth’s 1999 hit single, “All Star.” And if you haven’t caught Kenna Cook’s sex and love column yet, you’re missing out.
Things are good. The community response has been great. And now it’s time for VOICES: to grow up. I’m going full tilt into this site, which means pursuing seed funding to help turn it into a self-sustaining operation.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been researching and applying for grants. On Monday, we launched our Patreon account. If you support independent journalism and a public forum that exalts our less privileged voices, I hope you consider donating at least $3 each month. With these early donations, I’ve already been able to increase payments to contributors. I am so excited to keep that going.
A $3 donation will grant you access to our forthcoming podcast, hosted by one of the region’s favorite curmudgeons. We won’t give many details yet, but it is scheduled to launch in the last week of August. The first couple of episodes will be free to the public, but after a while we will make every other episode subscription-based.
We are ecstatic about the work coming up on our site. You can expect a sea of voices starting conversations on Sacramento’s housing crisis, healthcare, black lives, murals, Mayor Steinberg, homelessness and more.
We have a number of public record requests pending with the city of Sacramento and the Sacramento Police Department. This week we’re sending more in to the Sacramento County Sheriff.
We’re also hatching plans to increase arts coverage. More on that as it comes.
Thank you again to everyone who continues to support this little experiment. Let’s get weird and see where it goes next.
