In our digital world, change seems to be a constant, right?
As a wholly digital news company, we use the latest in publishing tech to get you the news of Santa Cruz County every day and through the day. And we are constantly on the lookout for ways to do that better and faster.
We’re making one more change this week, a new system for managing memberships and user accounts. This change will make it easier for you to manage your membership account and your newsletter choices.
With the new system, we have to ask all of our members and newsletter recipients to sign in again. The directions are easy – it takes less than a minute. They are outlined below and in a separate email you’ll be receiving.
Thanks for taking the time to do it. Let me just give you a bit of context.
We all benefit from digital publishing. In the old, disappearing newsprint-and-ink days, the newspaper companies I worked for spent only 12.5% of their total expense budgets on their newsrooms. Lookout spends about 70% of our budget on the newsroom. Which is the way it should be. You want local news and information from people you know and can come to trust. And you’ve told us in our 40 months of publishing how much you value that. Thank you.
So this change helps us keep the tech costs down – and makes it easier for you to access Lookout and keep your newsletter preferences up to date.
As you sign in, it’s a good time to check which newsletters you are receiving — and add to them. We’ve now got seven each week, including: Morning Lookout by Will McCahill, Lookout PM by Max Chun, two food newsletters from Lily Belli, and Christopher Neely’s politics-focused In the Public Interest. Wallace Baine brings you two newsletters every week: Weekender for all your arts and culture events, and his thoughtful dive into the issues of the day is the centerpiece of our Sunday Reads newsletter. Plus, subscribe to our news alerts to stay updated on the latest breaking news as it happens, along with stories you may have missed. Make sure you are taking full advantage of what our team creates for you every week.
We’ll have more news for you on Lookout additions, coming soon. Enjoy Santa Cruz spring,
Ken Doctor, Founder and CEO
Below are the steps to help you log into our new system. Should you have ANY trouble, email us at membership@lookoutlocal.com and we can help you.
For paying members
There are three sign-in methods available to you:
- Get a one-time passcode sent to your email address, or
- Set a permanent password you can reuse every time, or
- Sign in with a Google account (like a gmail.com address or an address linked to a Google account).
Signing in is required to gain the full benefits of your membership — including unlimited access to Lookout content.
The steps to access your account are simple:
1. At the top right of the website, click the “Sign In” button.
Sign in with Google
2. In the pop-up window, if you have a Google-linked email address and click “Sign in with Google,” you won’t need any other passwords or codes.
If you are using a non-Google email address
For other types of email addresses, enter the email address that is associated with your Lookout member account.
Then click “Send authorization code.” That will send a six-digit code to your email used to verify your identity.
3. Next, check your email inbox for the six-digit code. Type or paste that code into the form and click “Sign in.”
You should now be signed in to your account. You should remain signed in on that device for up to 30 days, after which you will be asked to sign in again.
To set a permanent password to use for future logins, visit your account settings by clicking the My Account link at the top right of any page. That page also includes your membership details, payment methods and newsletter settings.
It’s a good time to sign up for any of our seven newsletters you are not already receiving.
For registered users
The steps to re-create your account are simple:
1. At the top right of the website, click the “Sign In” button.
2. Click the link that says “I don’t have an account.” (We know you do! But not in this new system yet.)
3. Enter your email address and click “Sign up.”
If you have a gmail.com address or an email address linked to a Google account, you can click “Sign in with Google” to seamlessly sign in with that address.
4. If you didn’t sign in with Google, enter your email address and then check your email inbox for a six-digit code to verify your identity. Type or paste that code into the form and click “Sign in.”
You should now be signed in to your account. You should remain signed in on that device for up to 30 days, after which you will be asked to sign in again. To set a permanent password to use for future logins, visit your account settings by clicking the My Account link at the top right of any page. That page also includes your newsletter settings. Make sure you check out all seven of our newsletters and sign up for the ones you might be missing.