Half a decade. Yes, only half with 2026-2030, yawning, threatening, welcoming us ahead?
The half decade that’s been, 2020-2025 matches up with Lookout Santa Cruz’s life, and we got to celebrate those five years with 200 or so of our members and partners at our Fifth Anniversary party last Wednesday at the Museum of Art and History.
It was quite an evening, of celebration, reflection and a future forward one, with our theme: Five Years and Just Getting Started.
We got toasted, debuted our new Killer Acid-infused merch, ate, drank and mingled. We appreciated the kind words of community leaders State Sen. John Laird, Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley, County Office of Education superintendent Faris Sabbah and United Way CEO Yvette Brooks, in their serial toasts.
The evening sticks with us, a community celebration both of what everyone at Lookout has been able to do in those sixty months and of the community support and recognition that has made our success (and now expansion with Lookout Eugene-Springfield) possible and acknowledged nationally.
What stands out for me most from the evening – and which endures – is the timeline our Jamie Garfield and intern Galicia Stack Lozano created, each placard displaying a single year in the life of Santa Cruz County, and of Lookout. What a birth year 2020 was for Lookout, as we launched on Nov. 20, following a year of such great pain and tumult: fearsome Covid, terrifying fires and massive BLM protests. Each year challenged our team of correspondents and editors, and has brought, almost in the blink of eye, to the brink of 2026.
That’s what we want to focus on increasingly with you. Lookout is fundamentally about community betterment, and we have now outlined an ambitious expansion of our reach and impact in our home county. And that’s why we created a new category of membership – Changemaker – to help us grow Lookout Santa Cruz even faster.
The new Changemaker membership, at $250 a year supports three initiatives as we go into 2026:
- Lookout for Teachers: We’ve built a well-used Lookout in the Classroom program throughout the county since our beginning. Almost 200 teachers now teach media literacy (and civics) using Lookout’s trustworthy, nonpartisan local news with their students. Now we intend to extend that program, as we are able to fund it, to all high school and middle school teachers in the county. The new Lookout for Teachers initiative does that. Lookout for Teachers does two things: (1) Rolls out Lookout in the Classroom as quickly as possible beginning fall 2025 all across Santa Cruz County’s 10 school districts, giving students the local knowledge they need at this critical time; (2) Provides free, philanthropically paid access for all of Santa Cruz County’s 800 high school and middle school teachers. It’s a two-fer: Students benefit greatly, and overworked, underpaid teachers get full membership access to Lookout’s trustworthy local news – and a thank-you from all of us for their dedicated work.
- The Changemaker Fund: The impact of our accountability reporting in Santa Cruz County grows each month, and we’ve captured it here. Help us dedicate more staff and time to our watchdog role in covering power and decision-making at every level in the county, as we plan to add new impact reporting resources in 2026. You can help speed it along.
- Lookout en Español: Since early 2025, we’ve begun publishing an increasing number of near-real-time stories in Spanish, as the times demand that everyone gets the news of the day they need and deserve. Now we plan to make as much of Lookout bilingual as soon as we can, as 2026 takes flight.
If you’re not yet a member, please join us for the year ahead. If you’re already a member – thanks! – please consider upgrading to Changemaker.
And we’ve now made it easier to gift Lookout. Click here to learn more.
We’ve still got a month to go in 2025, and let’s all make the most of it. And as the second half of the ‘20s begins, come make a better future for Santa Cruz County with us.
Ken Doctor, Founder and CEO