Photo: Personnel working in ther newsroom at radio station CBC (Radio-Canada) in Montreal, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons with the gracious permission and cooperation of Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and Wikimedia Canada.
A friend of mine has a wooden sign hanging in her entryway, lettered with a single word in all caps.
“SIMPLIFY”
A Daily Post reader wrote to us recently, asking how she could receive regular email notifications from the Daily Post.
“Is there some way to subscribe?”
Not the first reader to ask us that question.
Most news websites these days provide an option to allow readers to receive a daily or weekly ‘newsletter’ summarizing freshly published content, with links to the full stories.
After all, it’s one of the primary functions of news websites… to keep readers posted when interesting events are taking place! Readers want to be ‘in the loop’. And news websites need readers to justify advertising income.
The Pagosa Daily Post does not provide such an option. Readers cannot ‘subscribe’ … nor sign up for a daily newsletter.
I responded to my reader, suggesting that she ‘bookmark’ the website in her browser, and visit whenever she felt like it.
A bit of history, and an explanation.
The Pagosa Daily Post was established in 2004 by a group of eight friends, with a particular goal in mind. We were in agreement that our local elected leaders were not being fully held to account by the existing news media — the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN and the local radio station — and we recognized that the Internet provided an instant and inexpensive pathway to inform our community about important events and decisions.
Most of this friendly volunteer staff had no experience with publishing news, although all were experienced writers.
The project would be financed by the sale of advertising, but we would allow only local advertisers. This would be a ‘Pagosa-centric’ effort, meant to serve our local community.
And the community would no longer need to wait until Thursday, when the local newspaper came out. The news could be posted daily. Thus, the name. Pagosa Daily Post.
None of us were expert web designers, and we were also volunteers, so we kept the interface as simple as possible. No subscription feature. No ‘comments’ section. Simple ads. No paywall. Just honest daily news and opinions, free to everyone in the community.
All eight of us worked for several months, until nearly the entire staff had quit. They had realized how uncomfortable it felt, to expose stupidity and corruption among our local leaders — and then run into those same leaders in the grocery store.
Additionally, they quickly learned that certain Pagosa business leaders — especially those involved in real estate and tourism — did not want honest stories told about the community, for obvious reasons.
All these years later, the Daily Post continues, still free to everyone, thanks to our volunteer contributors.
Just honest daily news and opinions.
No subscription feature or email newsletter.
No ‘comments’ section in need of moderation.
Simple local ads.
As we all know, the Internet is not the same as it was in 2004. Social media has become a prime source of news and opinions for many — maybe most — Americans. Increasingly, that news, and those opinions, are being crafted by “artificially intelligent” computer systems owned by billionaires.
But some news sources continue to be generated by real people in real communities.
Can it get any simpler than that?