A nonprofit newsmagazine for the Berkshires

Hello everyone,

I’m thrilled to announce that The Berkshire Argus is now a fiscally sponsored project of the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has promoted and supported independent, watchdog journalism for more than two decades.

ANF serves as fiscal sponsor for more than thirty journalism ventures across the United States. They range from efforts to provide community news where newspapers have folded, multilingual reporting in underserved regions, investigative and in-depth reporting like that found in The Argus, to creative and compelling work that raises up voices that often go unheard.

Among other benefits, this new partnership will enable expanded funding opportunities: Beginning today, donations to The Argus—one-time, recurring, and in any amount—are fully tax-deductible.

This new philanthropic model allows The Argus to accept monthly and annual recurring donations as well as grants, contributions of stock, donations from donor-advised funds and employer-matching programs, and even gifts of cryptocurrency (whatever that is).

All to support work on those “important stories fully told” that put local and regional stories into a larger context—and often take months of full-time work.

Your support delivers in-depth stories our communities need.

Become a Contributing Member

According to the Medill School of Journalism’s Local News Initiative, The Argus is among 250 news startups that have emerged since 2019. They’re all working hard to serve their communities and find workable financial models during a period of media-industry flux.

In our case, that means a reader-supported nonprofit model that guarantees fierce independence, an ad-free experience, and—vitally—no paywall, so that our in-depth stories and other features are are available to all.

This new step forward is timely: For The Argus to continue its evolution from proof-of-concept experiment to sustainable venture, it needs substantially more resources: Funds to cover salaries, reporting expenses, technology tools, and wildly glamorous budget line items like “insurance” and “website development” and “printing costs for our popular line of ‘Ask Me About Our Wildly Glamorous Budget Line Items!’ mugs, T-Shirts, and baby onesies.”

As the previous sentence makes clear, I’m not a professional fundraiser. For some reason, I’d rather destroy my eyesight digging through public documents and scouring government databases than write emails like this. But after two years of full-time-and-mostly-unpaid work, financial support will now directly determine how many in-depth reporting projects The Argus can take on and how quickly we can launch elements of Argus 2.0.

Transparency is a core value at The Argus, and that includes its financing: Our baseline 2025 budget requires $75,000 on the “reader support” line, and the initial fundraising milestone is $25,000 by mid-winter. Modest by most accounts, but vital for next steps.

So as this First Official Fundraising Campaign™ kicks off, I hope you’ll consider a year-end contribution—especially those of you overwhelmed by too much cryptocurrency taking up space in your closet, in the freezer, or wherever it is that people store cryptocurrency.🤷🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

Choose a monthly or annual membership level like “Watchdog” or “Storyteller”—inspired by groundbreaking, reform-minded journalists like Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and Lincoln Steffens—or make a one-time contribution of any amount. Click here for all the ways to support The Argus.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll continue to share details of new developments and plans. And stay tuned for several significant reporting projects on important, under-reported topics that you’ll see later this winter and next spring.

I hope you’ve found The Argus’s in-depth storytelling over the last two years to be useful. With sufficient funding, we can do so much more.

Thanks very much,
Bill

Bill Shein, Founder & Editor
The Berkshire Argus
bshein@berkshireargus.com 

P.S. Earlier this month I was in Washington, D.C. working on a story you’ll see next spring. While there, I attended a White House news briefing and had big plans to ask if President Biden will retire to the Berkshires or if he has ideas for repurposing the soon-to-be-vacant Simon’s Rock College campus in Great Barrington. But, alas, the microphone went to other journalists who asked about Russia’s activities in the Arctic (one question), events in Syria (one question), and the Hunter Biden pardon (18,914 questions).

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