First of all, a reminder — all donations in support of our nonprofit community journalism will be matched, dollar for dollar, by the Knight Foundation until the end of the year. I’ll explain why that’s important toward the end of this note.




The first question is: why do we need donations at all?

Well, think about it. All you hear about journalism these days is that it’s dying. Newsroom layoffs, cutbacks, less coverage, more ads. Big corporations buying up local newspapers. Subscriptions dropping off a cliff.

Traditional, for-profit, mainstream media is in trouble, no doubt about it. We, on the other hand, don’t exist to make money for a corporation. We exist to carry your voice, to lift up our community stories, to inform you about the issues that matter — without making you pay for it.

Sometimes those stories make the establishment uncomfortable.

We’ve been hacked. We’ve lost sponsors.

It’s not easy out here.

And even though we are committed to breaking through all this noise and bringing you all the news you need for free, the journalists who produce that content for you are professionals. Most of them are people of color, bringing you a perspective that literally no other media outlets in Wisconsin can offer.

We are not going to flinch when it comes to good journalism. We’ve always known our work would make some people uncomfortable, but we’re not going to back off.

That means we need you more than ever. You support us because we do that hard-hitting journalism and expose those uncomfortable truths. Hackers might try to take us offline, advertisers might get scared of a little too much truth. But you’ll stick with us and encourage us to do more and better journalism.

Now, back to that donation match — the Knight Foundation will match every community donation we get, up to $1,000 per donation, up to $28,000 total. Obviously, we want to make the most of their generous offer, so we need to raise the full $28,000 by the end of the year. As of today, we’ve raised almost $10,000. Now is the time to invest in community journalism!

Click the button below or mail a check to Madison365, PO Box 842, Madison WI 53701.




Thank you for your continued support!