A Reciprocal Relationship
I recently visited an exhibit at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore about how Black media played a role in the Civil Rights Movement. It highlighted publications like the Baltimore AFRO American newspaper and journalists like Moses Newson, who risked their lives to shed light on the horrors Black people faced during that time.
I left the exhibit feeling grateful to my predecessors for their valiant reporting but I felt like I could be doing more. The exhibit also reminded me why I fell in love with local journalism over a decade ago: to give neighborhoods from my youth a platform to amplify their concerns and hold people in power accountable. When I joined The 51st team in August, it reinforced the importance of community-led journalism. I feel like The 51st is a place where I can extend the paths paved by journalists before me.
This is only possible with your help. As a worker-led nonprofit newsroom, I see the relationship between The 51st and our readers as reciprocal. We work to provide news and information that matters most to you — reporting that helps you become more knowledgeable about your community and more civically engaged. In turn, you invest in this work by becoming a paying member — for about the cost of one sandwich or two tacos a month.
Currently, we are 416 people away from achieving our goal of 2,000 members by the end of the year. (If you’re curious why we need to get to 2,000, we broke down the numbers for you last week.) We can get to that number of 29 readers join every day. Reaching that level of recurring support will sustain us through mid-2025 at our current pace, which means publishing weekly, allowing our founders to work on this project at least part-time, and keeping the same number of freelance contributors as in recent newsletters. It also gives us the breathing room to finalize ongoing conversations with foundations and major donors to diversify our sources of income.
As a local journalist, I’ve learned so much about community, connection, humanity, and how the world works. D.C. and its people have given so much to me, I just want to give back. Will you join me in growing The 51st?
Thanks so much for your support,
Christina Sturdivant Sani
