With Thanksgiving approaching, I’m grateful for a new lifeline for sustainability of my independent local news outlet.
A new charitable arm of The San Diego Sun, called Skylight, has been created and approved for fiscal sponsorship through San Diego-based Mission Edge.
Donations made to Skylight will support The Sun’s efforts to keep downtown San Diego residents, the workforce and visitors informed on issues that impact the area, especially homelessness.
Bonus: Contributions are now tax-deductible.
Nonprofit news organizations are not new but definitely trending. I got good advice about fiscal sponsorship at the LION (Local Independent Online News) trade association during its annual summit earlier this year in Chicago.
Realize that journalists are hard-wired for skepticism. Think Han Solo, or Wednesday Addams. But staying on the job during a media industry tailspin calls for the optimism of SpongeBob Squarepants, or the residents of Whoville. You definitely need to fight through adversity like Inigo Montoya or Rocky Balboa.
Fiscal sponsorship is how we’ll fight the good fight in 2025.
A boost in reader donations will allow The Sun to publish more in depth stories. How? Time is money. It can take weeks to research and write good investigative stories. Building up a budget for freelance writers to tackle tough topics is also a top goal.
BTW, There’s another upside to fiscal sponsorship. It makes The Sun eligible to apply for a wide array of grants, offered by a growing number of nationl organizations with the goal of bolstering local news efforts.
How’d we get to this point? Quick recap. I’m older than all social media and have been a local writer/editor for three decades. My name has been atop the masthead of San Diego Magazine and San Diego CityBeat. My byline has been in three dozen local, regional and national outlets.
The Sun is just three years old. Its first two years of existence were subsidized by Facebook/Meta’s “Bulletin Project” for local journalists all over the country. Alas, Meta’s interest in funding news programming evaporated. Bulletin was sunsetted (a fancy word for canceled).
I decided to keep going. Earlier this year, I did a TEDx San Diego talk entitled “Your local newspaper is dying — why you should care” (based on national statistics and personal experience, and enlivened by two Ron Burgundy references).
Regular readers know The Sun has run award-winning stories about homelessness, politics and downtown businesses and residents. The goal is to mix lifestyle news with serious topics.
Lifestyle news coverage is not time consuming. It’s the deep dives that require extra hours and financial support. To maintain the ability to do hard news, a news site needs funding, i.e., tax-deductible donations.
With help from readers who trust The Sun’s mission, I’ll fight to keep one less corner of the world from becoming a news desert. The struggle is real, but as Rocky Balboa opined: “Going in one more round when you don’t think you can. That’s what makes all the difference.”
The link to make donations: Skylight. It’s live.
Questions? Email me at rondonoho@gmail.com.
Note: Current Sun supporters will need to re-sign up on the Skylight link. The old account will be closed on December 1, 2024, and existing monthly donations will be cut off. SDSun
