Help keep this effort going

Almost three months ago, we set out to try to fill in some of the gaps in journalism in town when our old paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, laid off virtually the entire staff and ceased print publication.

Thanks to everyone who’s donated, we’ve been able to keep going. And we should be able to keep going for at least three more weeks.But until we receive grants, our work is entirely dependent on your help. And really that was the idea. You were never asked if you wanted the P-I to close, any more than were the people in Denver when the Rocky Mountain News shut down or the people in communities around the nation watching their newspapers shrink – and with it, the coverage of the important issues in their communities.  

So we’re asking you if you want us to keep doing the work we’ve been doing.If so, please consider continuing to donate. Nearly all of our contributions have been one-time donations. Please think about giving again, or better yet, selecting the option of making recurring donations so we know that we’ll be able to survive from month to month. If 1,000 people in a city of 600,000 choose to donate $10 a month, we’ll be able to hit our minimum goal. It’s not enough for us to live on for the countless hours involved in putting out this site, but it helps immensely.

And please help spread the work. Check out our Causes page on Facebook.

Eventually, we’d like to have more than myself as the site’s full-time staff. But more on that a little later.We’ve had our ups and downs, but I’m proud of the work we’ve done. When you start an effort such as this, you’re asked constantly what’s your niche. As a journalist who cares enough to try to do this, it’s a hard question to answer because the need is so great.I’m glad we’ve been able to add to the dialogue around some of the issues that aren’t receiving adequate coverage.

The Seattle Times and the online P-I are doing an admirable job. So are blogs such as Publicola and the neighborhood blogs. Both are go-to places for short, quick pieces of information on politics or the goings-on in neighborhoods such as West Seattle, Capitol Hill or Ballard.

InvestigateWest, an investigative site focusing on the West Coast, will be launching on Wednesday, I’m told.

But for all the great work those sites have and will be doing, we’ve still lost coverage in Seattle, and there’s an important gap we’d like to fill.

Today, we’re asking what you value. We would love to be able to hire five full-time staffers.

• One focusing on the upcoming elections. The reporter will focus less on the usual dueling news releases and insider gossip. Instead, we’ll dig into the issues, whether it be the major transportation projects being debated in Seattle’s mayoral race, or issues such as the looming bus, social services, law enforcement and public health cuts that will come to the forefront in the King County executive race. The reporter will delve into money matters to inform you of the connections between the candidates and those bankrolling their campaigns. We’ll "truth-squad" the statements being made on the campaign trail.

• We’ll dig deeply into major issues in City Hall and county government, particularly the need to make “radical” cuts, as King County Executive Kurt Triplett told us in an interview. Haven’t heard much about these cuts? There’s a reason for that, as the number of working journalists in town shrink. You might not have heard of them, but you’ll be feeling them soon.

• The stories of the people and the issues going on around Seattle – told not from the perspective of the political insiders or in short blog blurbs, but really told in the some of the ways we’ve been trying to continue to tell on our site.

• The environment – whether it’s the bag tax, a push by the city to get more of us in electric cars, the effect global warming is going to have on our water and electricity, or our city’s ability to make the transition to the global economy, we need to know.

• We would like to have a fulltime photographer and copy editor. Or at least have enough to pay our volunteer photographers and copy editor.

Our immediate goal is to raise $3,500/month for each of these positions. That might seem like a lot, until you consider that’s only 350 people in the city willing to support election coverage by signing up for monthly $10 donations. If you’re thinking of donating $700 to a candidate, perhaps you’ll consider donating to us the same amount to inform the public of the candidates.

Or, consider that only 350 people donating $10/month would support adding another reporter digging into what’s going on in city and county governments.

Please donate and specify if you’d like to see your donations spent on Elections, Local government coverage, Telling the telling stories about Seattle, the Environment, Photography or Copy Editing.

Or consider letting us use your donations for whatever is needed, whether it be paying our phone or Internet bill.

Or please aid our fundraising with a $2,000 donation, which we’d use to buy a list of frequent voters and send out a mailing.

If you are an organization, a business or an individual, please consider sponsoring us by e-mailing  seattlepostglobe@yahoo.com.

And please, spread the word:

• E-mail your friends about our site.

• Join our Causes page on Facebook to make donations and let others know.

I think Seattle deserves the kind of coverage it had a few months ago before the layoffs. I hope you’ll agree and that you’ll be willing to support it. We want to do more. But there’s much that I’m proud of.

We’ve been joined by journalists who did not work at the P-I. Sara Keisler was a reporter at The Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal. Her story on Joe Mallahan is probably the most complete story that’s been done so far on the mayoral candidate. The story of the closing of Olsen’s Scandinavian Foods in Ballard appeared in blogs, but not with the same skill or depth as the piece written by Hugo Kugiya, a former reporter for The Seattle Times, Newsday and The Associated Press.

I’m proud we’ve told stories that largely went unreported everywhere else about an immigrant facing deportation,  the uninsured, the challenges facing the Tenants Union,  the latest from "Nickelsville” and the troubles facing social-service agencies, and the undercovered bus cuts  looming in Seattle.

The list is too long. See some of our best work here,  http://seattlepostglobe.org/community, both in words and photographs. And  we’ve given a platform to our old film critics. Many of you have written to say you’re happy to be able to read the theater reviews of Gianni Truzzi and John  Hickey’s reporting on the Mariners.

Another story that comes to mind is the piece from former Seattle Times reporter Himanee Gupta and her husband, Jim Gupta-Carlson, who documented 24 hours on Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

Please also go to our forum to tell us how we’re doing and how we can get better. This is a nonprofit community effort. I hope we’ll have a community conversation on the board.