Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of articles that will describe plans for the future of the Chronicle and how we hope to achieve them.
On Sunday, the Chronicle officially launched a fundraising campaign to raise money to help us continue to develop as the news source Homewood and Flossmoor residents want and need.
The Chronicle was created in June 2014 in response to what seemed like a widening gap in local news coverage. In recent years, area newspapers have tried to cover more ground with fewer reporters, an understandable business move in tough times, but not one that improves the product. Coverage of the H-F community became sporadic at best. One local official said it had gotten to the point that the area between Interstate 57 and the Indiana border was “a no-man’s land” for local news coverage.
Until the Chronicle was created.
What we bring to the community is really local coverage. It’s news and features by, for and about our community. We focus on H-F. We live here. We attend village government and school district board meetings. We cover local events. We interview interesting local people. We write about local businesses. We pay close attention to what’s going on in the community and strive to report on everything we can.
We think that’s the kind of local coverage our community needs and deserves, and we hope you’ll agree to support the effort.
In the past year, the Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle has published nearly 1,000 stories online about local government, schools, businesses, special events and interesting people. More than 1,500 people read us on our website and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and 450 have an email subscription.
Now we’re ready for a print edition to expand our community reach.
Our goal is to raise $3,500 or more by Oct. 16. That will enable us to publish our first print edition before the end of the year. If all goes well, we’ll continue publishing print editions in 2016. As of Wednesday, the campaign had raised more than $3,000 or 86 percent of the goal. The more we exceed the goal, the more print editions we’ll be able to publish as we begin to court advertisers to help sustain the effort further.
If you like what you’ve read over the past year and would like to see the Chronicle continue to grow and improve, we hope you’ll consider contributing to the campaign.
Related stories:
Community backs Chronicle in first fundraiser (HF Chronicle, Sept. 21, 2015)
Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle fundraiser launch party (Homewood 365, Sept. 21, 2015)
