Leveraging the diverse strength of our community

Ask any Austinite what the most frustrating thing about living here is, and you likely get a wide gamut of rapid-fire thoughtful, personal and fiery responses. There is no shortage of complex issues that inspire impassioned reactions from us locals. But, rather than write off the grousing as a symptom of a city riddled with problems and filled with disgruntled residents, our Austin Monitor team views this in a positive light for one simple, powerful reason: It shows that people care.

Residents’ connection to where they live and active involvement in their cities are essential to building a strong community that provides widespread prosperity. Research has even shown a correlation between community attachment and economic growth. 

I could point to any number of stats, but we all know – and more importantly, feel – how Austin has grown over this past decade. The city recently released a nearly $6 billion draft budget, and both our shared infrastructure and decision-making systems continue to strain under the weight of the pace and size of our growth. 

Guided by a mission to inform and engage the community, the Austin Monitor team also finds ourselves in a pressure-cooker moment. There are long-simmering local issues and broader headwinds (most notably in the media and local news industry) that are threatening the future of the city we’re all so attached to. Simply put: We’re on the clock, and the stakes are high. 

We planted the seeds for a bigger and bolder vision nearly three years ago when we removed our paywall and made all our news and articles free and fully accessible to the whole community. This was a radical change and, between you and me, we weren’t 100 percent sure how it would work out. But we did know that, with the decline in original and in-depth local news, it’s what the community needed. We knew Austin was headed into a period where we’d finally have to face some big questions. We knew people were starting to tune out and become disengaged. And we knew that we wanted to help foster and preserve the strong community attachment that courses through Austin and has fueled our unique city throughout the years. 

Over the past three years, we listened, worked hard and doubled down on our unique reporting abilities. You can read more about this in our special email series this week. This year, thanks to your support, we’ve finally found our footing with this new business model that makes our work free and fully accessible to the community.

Time to sit back, rest up and call it a win, right? No way.

The commitment to serve the community and the urgency of this moment continues to call out for more. We need to cover more, reach more people, go deeper on key issues and market our work in more engaging formats. And we need to do this now.

The only way we can meet this moment is through the power of the community around us. In practice, this means supercharging our community-building efforts and proactively seeking out partnerships that propel us forward in mission-aligned areas. 

This is what the city deserves and what our mission demands. This means expanding on our current initiatives like the launch of our fourth cohort of our Strategic Advisory Council of local leaders and also widening our lens to identify other organizations that help take our work to the next level. 

Today, at the start of a short and impactful summer membership campaign, we want to lay out the stakes, share our early vision and strategy and turn the focus back to you. A community news organization is both embedded in and supported by the community. This is not a one-time feature. It’s an all-the-time feature, and this week we’re letting our work do the talking and inviting you to support this vision. No frills, just a reminder of the work we do, why it matters and how you can help.

Will you be someone who supports the work and mission of the Austin Monitor?

Like the many, many community members we’ve spoken with, we all share a deep connection with the community – and even some gripes. We’re not aiming to keep the status quo. We’re aiming higher, much higher: Can we make this the most connected, informed and engaged city in the country? To go for anything less would be a disservice to you and the city.

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.