BY TERI FINNEMAN
We’ve made it to our second birthday at the Eudora Times.
Two years ago, we launched our first batch of stories on this website. We had no business plan or any idea where we were going, but we knew what we were doing was important.
Two years later, we still don’t have everything figured out. But what matters is that we’re still here – and that we’ve published 410 stories, the majority of which weren’t covered anywhere else.
Here are some of our other successes:
We hope that eudoratimes.com will be up and running within the next few weeks. It’s being built as we speak. We also have a great team of reporters working for us right now. We are doing better financially than at any point thus far.
Two of our alumni are doing exceptional in “the real world” thanks to their experience with The Eudora Times. Sydney Hoover recently landed an education reporting job in North Carolina. Riley Wilson continues to excel in law school in Texas.
I am also working with a team of researchers from Northeastern and Duquesne on a report about using college students to address the news desert problem. From that, we expect Eudora to again get national attention in the coming months.
Here are our challenges:
While we are doing better financially, we still have significant challenges. In two years, we have raised nearly $12,000 in donations to support our endeavor. This is terrific and amazing. But a business cannot survive on an average of $6,000 a year.
My team is comprised of college students, as you know, who go to school full time. This morning, I asked them how many hours they spend at their part-time jobs every week. Even I was surprised by the numbers.
One works 22 hours a week. Another 28. Another 20-28.
So, your Eudora Times reporters go to school full time, then work 22-28 hours a week at their part-time jobs to support their rent and schooling, and then they do reporting for Eudora in their free time after already putting in a 60-hour week.
It’s why we aren’t able to cover as much as we want. It’s why we’re sometimes slower to get stories up.
We need to work our way up so that we are the part-time job for students. So they can spend 20 hours a week working for The Eudora Times instead.
I am constantly looking into grant opportunities, but because of how unique we are, we don’t fit in many boxes. So, it always goes back to the community.
If every resident in town gave us even $5, there’s endless possibilities of what we could be. In an interview I did with Kansas Press Association Executive Director Emily Bradbury, she made a great point that no one has a problem paying for Netflix or other entertainment add-ons. Yet, people think they should be able to get news for free.
That model simply does not work for journalism. It’s why there is a plethora of “junk” on social media and the internet – because scammers know that people will go to what’s free rather than pay for what’s real.
This week, I published a large project on the impact of the pandemic on community journalism in multiple states that has been viewed by thousands of people. You can find it here.
Local news matters. It has to matter. And we need to all work together to make sure it’s there so that we can continue celebrating birthdays at The Eudora Times.
To donate to support our community journalism, please go to this link: tinyurl.com/y4u7stxj