It’s been a year, and what a year it’s been!
Fifty-two weeks ago, we announced and then quickly celebrated with many of you, our members, the earth-shaking news that Lookout Santa Cruz had won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, for our coverage of our county’s cataclysmic January 2023 flooding. That was a pinnacle, especially for a then-3-year-old news organization.
But we set out to build on that honor, and we can report to you that we have.
You, as readers, have built a stronger, growing, more impactful Lookout in Santa Cruz and helped us birth a sister, as Lookout Eugene-Springfield launched just a month ago, to incredible reception. If you’d like to do more, become a member and/or add to our Impact fund here, and share our link to free newsletters for friends and neighbors you want to stay better informed.
So just a few highlights as we chart the year ahead together:
- Impactful, accountability reporting is the cornerstone of all good local journalism. Over the past year, our whole crew has acted as your watchdogs, keeping an eye on government, education, business and more. Check out the diverse Impact reporting we’ve done. Become a member to help support our journalists.
- Our wall-to-wall local elections coverage: If anyone ever had any doubt, elections are consequential. And local elections are the ones in which we can make the most difference in our communities’ life, especially in times of uncertainty. Our team published hundreds of stories, hosted robust Community Voices opinion pages, organized talk-to-the-politicians forums and then tallied the results meticulously and quickly. We’ll do the same next year. Your membership propels local democracy.
- We made a commitment to robust South County coverage, hiring correspondent Tania Ortiz last fall. Tania hit the ground running, providing fresh reporting and introducing us all to many new faces and voices, as she digs deeper into the issues.
- We made Trump 2.0 local impacts understandable, with our ongoing series now counting dozens of stories chronicling unprecedented change and community crisis. And we’ve begun publishing these stories in Spanish, with free access for all.
- Our Changing Santa Cruz series continues to confront the local affordability and development issues of our time and place.
Plus, we’ve added an app, an interactive story map and Neighborhood Newsletters in the last year as well.
Whew! That’s a lot, and we’ve got lots more planned in the year ahead as we expand our newsroom team and impact.
So, thanks for your support and let’s see what we can do together in the year ahead!