Is Sierra County Citizen Going Broke?

The Sierra CountyCitizen has put a donation button on its website. You get to it by clicking on the three lines on the upper right corner of the opening page.

The Sierra County Public-Interest Journalism Project created the former Sierra County Sun with grants, donations, and subscriptions, but that project proved too costly to sustain because it could not raise the $70,000 or more needed to hire an editor. With the funds left over from the Sun, the Project created the Citizen as a self-editing group of unpaid, contributing writers. Like the Sun, the Citizen is dedicated to distributing information, opinions, and analyses that promote discussions of issues people in Sierra County rightly have concerns with, but it does not have the coverage the Sun had.

The cost of this effort of civic discourse is about $5,000 a year, at a minimum. This amount pays for maintenance of the website and a tiny stipend for expenses for one of the writers. At present, the Project has enough funds, perhaps, for five more months. How long it continues after that to provide a voice otherwise missing in this county depends on the readers’ support.

Those three lines in the corner are called “hamburger icon” or “slide drawer navigation.”

TAGS

Share This Post
Max Yeh
Max Yeh

Sierra County Public-Interest Journalism Project’s board president Max Yeh is a novelist and writes widely on language, interpretation, history, and culture. He has lived in Hillsboro, New Mexico, for more than 30 years after retiring from an academic career in literature, art history and critical theory.

Posts: 57

One comment

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment Fields

Please tell us where you live. *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.