Without your help, we can’t serve democracy by reporting the news

Running a newspaper was hard enough before the pandemic. Now it’s a real struggle to be sure.

With the help of our loyal audience, we are building a subscriber base to help offset the advertising losses that the entire news industry has been suffering since the coronavirus crisis made it impossible for many advertisers to keep their businesses going. Which is great.

But we need to do better than barely breaking even to keep providing independent news and views on issues of vital interest to the people of Boston and environs. We need working capital to grow our operation.

Talent, as we like to say, is littering the streets. Large numbers of fantastic reporters, photographers, videographers, audio specialists, artists, and designers are pounding the pavement daily desperately looking for work. And we have much for them to do.

Democracy is under threat. At the very moment at which the journalists who people have relied upon to give them the news they need to be informed actors on the political stage are in the most dire straits. We want to do our part to keep area journalists in the field, doing what they do best in the public interest. We want to make sure that everyone in our corner of the world has the news they need, week in and week out, to make the decisions that will keep us a free people in a free country.

Yet we’re on the ropes. Working long hours for short pay—including the three of us who own this little media circus. As the Trump administration and allied billionaires pay propagandists to spread lies about the news industry. To tell people that we’re the enemy. That we are the threat to democracy. And that we should be arrested, jailed… and worse.

If a strong Fourth Estate is absolutely necessary for the defense and maintenance of democracy, then it is up to the people of Boston, Massachusetts, and the United States to support local newspapers like this one. Which is a (small but feisty) pillar of that democracy.

So we’re asking you to join the hundreds of people who have already donated and subscribed to DigBoston and kick in whatever you can today. Now. Without delay. Go to trypico.com/digboston. Or send us a check made out to Dig Media Group Corporation, 377 Willard St #394, Quincy, MA 02169.

If you’d rather give your money to a nonprofit, then donate as much as you can to our sister organization, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism at tiny.cc/donatetoBINJ. Or send BINJ a check made out to Massachusetts Media Fund, Inc., PO Box 51583, Boston, MA 02205. Which will help pay for journalism that DigBoston and other area news outlets can use for free through BINJ’s Pandemic Democracy Project.

And there’s another way you can help. If you have some serious money on hand, and you really want DigBoston to not just survive but to thrive, then consider investing in our company. We’re happy to talk to anyone who wants to have a conversation about buying a piece of Dig Media Group Corp at [email protected]. Anytime.

If you need reasons to consider supporting us in any of the ways above, think about the rock-solid journalism we’ve produced just in the six months since the pandemic officially started. Through the three-month period in which we were forced to become an online-only publication. And beyond to the following three months when we’ve been able to print a newspaper again.

Hard-hitting stories like:

*Nicole Aschoff’s investigation of the huge number of coronavirus deaths in Bay State nursing homes, “How Could This Happen? Searching for Answers in a COVID-19 Long-Term Care Crisis.”  

*Dan Atkinson’s look at corruption-as-usual during the pandemic in “Since Mask Donation, Krafts Have Sold More Than $7M of PPE to MA.”

Fun stories like:

*Gary Zabel’s essay on the cute little robot that shows that AI doesn’t have to lead humanity to a Terminator-like apocalypse in “Robot Resurrection: Vector Gets a New Lease on Life.”

And Haley Hamilton’s and Marc Hurwitz’s many wildly popular pieces on the fate of Boston’s restaurant industry from inside and out.

These and literally hundreds of other articles on an incredibly broad range of topics have been produced by our dedicated crew of dozens of freelance journalists. All paid by a combination of advertising revenue and donations.

Now that ad revenues are short, donations have to take their place.

So give whatever you can, however you can, as soon as you can.

And we promise to redouble our already considerable efforts to cover all the many stories that don’t see the light of day in any other Boston area news outlet.

Deal? We sincerely hope so.

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Chris Faraone, John Loftus, and he have co-owned the newspaper since 2017.