FAQS: LOOKOUT LOCAL EUGENE-SPRINGFIELD
THE BASICS
What is Lookout?
Lookout is a community newspaper that is wholly digital, delivered to its audiences in many ways – on our site, by more than a half dozen newsletters, by email and text alerts, by social media and soon by app. We believe in meeting all audiences wherever they are, from the youngest readers to dyed-in-the-wool, longtime newspaper subscribers.
Our journalism is completely local, nonpartisan and factual. We believe all communities need robust, trustworthy news sources – covering all the “beats” that the best daily newspapers used to. We carefully hire and fairly compensate experienced, professional staff to earn and win community confidence.
Lookout was founded by Ken Doctor, a veteran journalism and newspaper executive who believes a community must be served by new news sources as purely financial interests have bought up, and decimated, local daily newspapers.
Is this a brand-new local news model?
Lookout Eugene-Springfield will follow the successful model of Lookout Santa Cruz. That site launched in November 2020, in Santa Cruz on California’s Central Coast, an hour and a half south of San Francisco.
Lookout Santa Cruz continues to grow in audience, in revenue and community authority. It’s the biggest local news company in Santa Cruz County, which has a population of 267,000. Its newsroom of 11 covers the major areas that dailies have covered – government, education, health, arts, entertainment, environment, crime and justice, food and sports.
Lookout Local, its parent company, will now use the same technology to power both sites and apply its model locally in Lane County.
Will Lookout cover only Eugene and Springfield?
We’ll focus much coverage on Eugene and Springfield, but we will also reach into all parts of Lane County. We will also work with established news outlets in greater Lane County, looking for mutual opportunities.
Are you only digital?
We like to say we are both digital and terrestrial. In addition to our multiple digital means of reaching readers, we believe that part of our role is convening. We’ve organized and moderated (and then streamed) a number of in-person community forums in Santa Cruz and plan to make that a key part of what we do in Lane County. We don’t believe it is our role to prescribe solutions to community issues, but to push the community to solve its problems, based on good, factual, able-to-be-civilly debated information.
We don’t publish any regular print products.
Will you have opinion pages?
Yes, our Community Voices section will feature op-eds from community writers and letters to the editor. We believe the opinion function, separate from our news reporting, is a key part of what any local news medium needs to offer. Community Voices is a fixture of Lookout Santa Cruz.
What difference has Lookout’s arrival in Santa Cruz in 2020 made?
We can offer evidence of our impact in many ways – investigative journalism, growing audiences, a new source of customers for local businesses – but we think the words of Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley tell the story pretty well in a couple of minutes. Here’s the video.
Keeley, a longtime Santa Cruz County politician who once served as speaker of the California Assembly, offered an impromptu take on our impact at a recent networking event held at Lookout’s downtown Santa Cruz offices. He isupports Lookout even though he’s among the elected officials that our coverage has held accountable.
FUNDING
How will Lookout be funded?
We believe that local news needs to be built on a robust, efficient model, and it needs to be able to grow over time. That means that we increasingly rely on the two kinds of income that publishers have long taken in: reader payment through subscriptions, and advertising. Those two sources form the majority of our income and are both increasing at Lookout Santa Cruz. Along with declining-over-time philanthropic support, subscriptions and advertising have made Lookout thrive, and we will use the same model to stand up and grow Lookout Eugene-Springfield.
It takes investment to start up such a large venture, an organization able to replace the function of a good daily newspaper. And we have gotten philanthropy to do that. Philanthropy – both individual and foundation, local and national – funded Lookout Santa Cruz.
For Lookout Eugene-Springfield, we have also gained substantial philanthropic support to provide the capital needed for a staff of 20.
We are more than halfway to our goal to enable launch. We’ve received a $1 million challenge grant from the Tykeson Family Foundation, and that has already been matched with more than $500,000 in support from local individuals and families.
They include:
- Dave & Ann Fidanque
- Joan Gray & Harris Hoffman
- Hugh & Sue Prichard
- Eric Forrest
- Dan and Peggy Neal
- Don Mack & Ann Baker
- Vern Katz & Deb Dotters
- Tim Gleason & Jenny Ulum
- Kitty & David Piercy
- Tom & Patti Barkin
- David & Marcia Hilton
- The Yarg Foundation
- In addition, we are receiving national support from foundations and other institutions.
How can I support the Lookout Eugene-Springfield launch?
There are currently three ways to financially support our launch:
- General launch support
- Support of our Lookout in the Classroom program (see below for more details)
- Underwriting coverage of specific topical areas. With this funding, Lookout is able to expand its mission in reporting on needed topics. Donors are assured of coverage in such an area, i.e., environmental reporting, and understand they cannot direct any specific coverage. For more information on this program, please contact us.
Can I get a tax deduction if I support Lookout financially?
Yes, tax deductions are available for support of $5,000, whether made as a one-time gift or over two or three years.
How do I make a tax-deductible gift?
Lookout works with the Lenfest Institute, the nonprofit owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which acts as our fiscal sponsor. Lenfest receives funds in support of Lookout Eugene-Springfield and provides the paperwork needed for taxes. Charles Jun is our primary contact at Lenfest and can provide more information and the requisite forms.
If I don’t want a tax deduction, can I make a direct gift?
Yes. Please contact Ken Doctor directly to make a direct gift.
Can I make a gift of less than $5,000?
Yes, we are glad to take in gifts of $1,000 or more at this point, though, if less than $5,000, they will not be tax-deductible. If you are interested in making a donation, please send a note to membership@lookoutlocal.com. Thank you!
Is Lookout a nonprofit organization?
Lookout Local, Inc. is a public-benefit, for-profit company. As such, we are part of the local business community, believing that community is an engine for economic and community development. We won the “Small Business of the Year” award from the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce in our second year of publishing.
As a public-benefit company, our mission – serving the news and information needs of the communities in which we are based – is written into our bylaws. That enables the company’s board to choose any buyer in the future, based on its commitment to those values.
LOOKOUT AND PUBLIC MEDIA
Are you working with KLCC?
We look forward to working with KLCC. We’ve talked with the station’s leadership and both see potential around project work and community engagement. As two mission-driven local news sources, we aim for a relationship that is both complementary and cooperative. With our large newsroom of 15, we’ll be able to cover the community deeply and widely, and we look forward to magnifying that impact as much as we can. In Lookout’s first community, Santa Cruz, California, we are working with KAZU, the local NPR affiliate.
What’s Lookout’s relationship with Oregon Public Broadcasting? What is OPB’s relationship with KLCC?
OPB is a strategic partner of Lookout. While we will cover Lane County deeply, we’ll rely on OPB for non-local coverage – statewide coverage overall, and Capitol happenings in Salem. We’ll also work with OPB on regional/local stories and on maximizing the audiences for trustworthy news content overall.
OPB and KLCC have a long-standing partnership where their newsrooms share stories cooperatively and extensively.
In all, we believe it will become a good three-party relationship.
MEMBERSHIP AND STUDENT MEMBERSHIP
How does membership work?
We use membership revenue, along with advertising income, to pay our journalists.
While the wider community enjoys some access to Lookout, through more than a half-dozen free newsletters and the ability to read two complimentary articles per month on our site, it is paying members who make a big difference.
Members can pay on an annual, two-year or monthly basis, and they receive access to all content. In addition, members receive invitations to our free member events and first call on our forums and other gatherings. They also receive access to special-event ticket opportunities as they arise.
Can students access Lookout for free?
From our founding, we have committed to providing as much free access to students as we could.
Today, in Santa Cruz, 6,000 high school students enjoy free access to Lookout, paid for by philanthropy, both local and national, individual and foundation.
In fact, our Lookout in the Classroom initiative offers far more than access — guides, quizzes and weekly educator alerts — to encourage students and teachers to use the local content. Jamie Garfield, our director of student and community engagement, ably leads that program.
We are already in discussion with local school district leaders to bring that program to Lane County at launch. If you are interested in learning more about the program and/or supporting it as a donor, please contact us.
Want to know more about Lookout Santa Cruz’s membership program?
Check us out here and with these additional FAQs.
TIMING AND MORE
When will Lookout Eugene-Springfield launch?
We are completing funding and will announce a launch date soon. We are committed to launching with a dedicated team of experienced journalists and business/community staff, ready to hit the ground running, and we have begun recruiting.
Will Lookout Eugene-Springfield be run locally?
Yes. We’re hiring a local publisher and a local editor to direct the organization. In our Lookout Local model, we use centralized technology — the value of being wholly digital — and apply the journalistic, community-betterment and business models successfully applied by Lookout Santa Cruz.
Will this be a remote operation?
No! We are an in-office environment, believing that a local team of people need to be rubbing elbows most days when they are not out in the community.
In addition, we are looking for office space that allows us to invite the reading public for receptions and discussions, as we have done in Santa Cruz.
Why aren’t you doing a print version?
We believe people want as much local news as they can get. For us, that means creating and delivering that news using the best — and most efficient — way that technology now makes possible.
In the old print days, the average daily newspaper spent only 12.5% of its expenses on journalists. The rest went to newsprint, ink, huge buildings, trucks and the like.
For Lookout today, 75% or more of our total expenses are in payroll. About three-quarters of our team are journalists — reporters, editors and visual journalists — and the rest are community- and business-oriented people intent on making Lookout engaged and successful.
Our publishing technology is relatively inexpensive, and it lets us put funding where it is needed: in getting lots of news to you every day and every week.