Good morning!
We want all our readers to be the first in Santa Cruz County to get the great news that Lookout is expanding. As Lookout looks forward to its fifth year here, we’ve named Eugene-Springfield, the second-largest metro area in Oregon, as our second community to serve. We’ll launch there early in 2025, and hire another 20 people to staff it.
We could not have done any of this without you, our members, civic and marketing partners and our incredibly supportive community. We celebrated our Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News together, just four short months ago, and now we are able to bring the Lookout model to other communities, wanting a new trustworthy and community-engaged source of local news. From all of us at Lookout: Thank you.
As part of our growth, we have recognized the work of Ashley Harmon, who has been our senior director of audience and partnerships. Ashley becomes even more central to our growth as she becomes Lookout’s chief of staff. Please congratulate on her outstanding work in the community and impact.
Joining her on our national team is Jed Williams, who becomes Lookout chief operating office/chief revenue officer. Jed helped me found Lookout Santa Cruz four years ago and now returns as we begin to grow, both nationally and in our impact in Santa Cruz County. In addition, Kirsten Carroll, who brings eight years experience working with the New York Times subscription operation, joins us as director of member and audience and growth. Both Jed and Kirsten will work remotely, but visit Santa Cruz often.
Please see, and share this announcement, below. And do let us know any questions.
Ken Doctor, CEO & Founder
Today, Lookout Local introduces our national expansion. We will be launching Lookout Eugene-Springfield early in 2025 and have established our national leadership team to advance both our community news organizations and plan for further expansion in 2025-2026, with the establishment of the Lookout Local network in at least five markets.
“We’re now approaching our fifth year of publishing in Santa Cruz, and we have put our original plan into fast motion – carefully taking the Lookout model into other communities, multiplying the amount of well-vetted, trustworthy local news,” said Ken Doctor, founder and CEO of Lookout Local. “The people of the Eugene-Springfield metro area, the second-largest in Oregon, have been incredibly welcoming. They’ve taken a close look at what our team has been able to do in four years in Santa Cruz, including our 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, and have been incredibly supportive.”
More than 20 individuals or couples and four family foundations have come forward, along with national support, including both national foundations and the Google News Initiative, to provide the sufficient capital to build the largest local news company in the region. Lookout Eugene-Springfield, with an open-to-the-community, in-office daily operation, will launch in early 2025. We are now hiring for the newsroom of more than a dozen and a partnering business/community team as well. We encourage those highly skilled, ambitious and enthused to build the next generation of local news with us to apply. Lookout pays competitive salaries and benefits, investing in our people who build on our model.
Lookout’s model includes numerous partnerships and collaborations of many kinds. In Oregon, we will partner with Oregon Public Broadcasting as we work together to maximize the combined value of local and regional reporting. Education partnerships have been a foundation of Lookout as well, and the process has begun to bring our highly engaging Lookout in the Classroom programs to Lane County. We will launch our college-based internship programs there as well. While Lookout is digital-only, the in-person events and forums we have hosted in Santa Cruz reinforce community touch and connectedness, and push toward better and faster community problem-solving. We plan to bring the same zeal of connecting with the community in person to Eugene-Springfield.
While the Lookout model places emphasis on local operation, with a publisher and executive editor driving the path forward, based on Lookout-tested journalism, business, community engagement and schools models, the company now puts a national leadership team into place to accelerate and optimize our growth and excellence.
Jed Williams joins Lookout as its chief operating officer/chief revenue officer. Williams has been a strategic digital media revenue and growth leader for more than two decades. He brings that experience and his passion for building mission-driven local media to his new position at Lookout. He will focus on elevating Lookout’s earned revenue streams – our Marketing Partners advertising programs and membership – and will lead business operations. Williams was a key player in the founding of Lookout and has been a board member.
“The need for local news and information that informs, enlightens and empowers has never been greater,” said Williams. “Lookout’s promise is to vigorously meet this moment with modern, first-class products that are built to serve, and a diverse business model – blending unique marketing partnerships and strong reader support – that’s built to last. I’m honored to help shepherd Lookout’s expansion as we bring the brand to more communities, and the many stakeholders that comprise them.”
Kirsten Carroll joins Lookout as its director of member and audience growth. Carroll’s command of the reader-to-member funnel is well-known by her former colleagues, many of whom worked with her at The New York Times as the Times built its leading reader revenue system. Membership – and its community connectedness – is central to Lookout’s success.
“I am thrilled to join Lookout at such a pivotal time, as we expand our award-winning local journalism into new, underserved markets,” said Carroll. “I look forward to introducing new audiences to Lookout’s high-quality reporting and contributing to the growth of reader revenue that sustains this important work.”
Ashley Harmon, who has been instrumental to each step of Lookout’s growth, including revenue and community partnerships, becomes our chief of staff. In that role, she’ll work with all members of the teams in Santa Cruz and Eugene-Springfield, advancing the company’s impact in mission, audience engagement and revenue. “Show up” has been the mantra she’s instilled in Santa Cruz, and she will help ensure that attitude and all the successes we’ve found in Santa Cruz carry over to our future markets.
The Lookout Local model differentiates itself by aiming to replace the role of traditional community print newspapers, ones that have now failed their communities. The model centers itself around community betterment, and puts into the community a robust team of experienced, fairly paid professionals who produce a set of news and information products, ones that wide swaths of the community use and trust. All built on bedrock journalism values and practices.
“We are a community newspaper which just happens to be digital,” Ken Doctor explains. “It is that traditional role, now executed at a high-performance, lower-cost level, that maintains its meaning to readers older and younger. We reach many of those youngest readers through our Lookout in the Classroom, built by Jamie Garfield, Lookout’s director of student and community engagement.
“Lookout further differentiates itself through its business-forward approach to sustainability, built on a diverse model that emphasizes earned revenue, buoyed by philanthropy and other giving. Lookout aims to meet audiences wherever they are, and will launch two new products in the fall, one of them its first app, partnered with Pugpig.
“Further, we have now harnessed the digital tech of the day, anchored by Newspack, used by those who have disrupted the industry, to support and quickly revive strong, trustworthy local news. We are ready to grow, as fast as prudently possible. We are fiercely mission-oriented, fiercely business-centric and fiercely fair.
“We believe we are the beginning of a new golden age in local news and seek collegial, aggressive, talented team members to join us.”
For more information, please contact Ken Doctor (ken@lookoutlocal.com, 408-605-0609), Ashley Harmon (ashley@lookoutlocal.com, 925-784-5518) or Jed Williams (jed@lookoutlocal.com, 919-265-8899).
For more information on our hiring: lookouteugene-springfield.com/welcome/
UPCOMING ELECTION FORUMS: RSVP TODAY
Sept. 18: Lookout Election Forum – District 5 County Supervisor
Hear from the two candidates, Christopher Bradford and Monica Martinez, in a panel discussion at the Felton Community Hall on Wednesday, Sept. 18, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., hosted and moderated by Lookout Politics and Policy Correspondent Chris Neely. This forum offers a unique opportunity to hear directly from the candidates as they present their platforms and answer your questions. This event is free and open to the public, but has limited in-person capacity, so RSVP to save your seat now. If you cannot make this event or it fills up, know that we will livestream the event and provide video after the event as well. District 5 includes the San Lorenzo Valley, Scotts Valley, Felton and parts of Santa Cruz.
Sept. 23: Lookout Election Forum – District 2 County Supervisor
Hear from the two candidates, Kim De Serpa and Kristen Brown, in a panel discussion at Cabrillo College’s Horticulture Building on Monday, Sept. 23, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., hosted and moderated by Lookout Politics and Policy Correspondent Chris Neely. This event is free and open to the public, but has limited in-person capacity, so RSVP to save your seat now. If you cannot make this event or it fills up, know that we will livestream the event and provide video after the event as well. District 2 stretches down the Monterey Bay coastline from Capitola to Pajaro Dunes, encompassing the more suburban Aptos along with the rural tracts of Corralitos, Freedom and Amesti.
