It's been one year since DCist was shut down

A year ago, I was mid-sentence in a planning meeting for a grant-funded project at WAMU when the other editors on the call became noticeably distracted. It was towards the end of the day on a Thursday: “Guys, I just saw this all-staff email, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go and figure out what this is,” said one. Another hurried to follow suit. 

I opened the message – these directives stick in my memory: Everyone across the station must report to an all-staff meeting the next morning. We would not broadcast local content that day. We should cancel all other meetings. We should join remotely, not try to come in.

It didn’t look good. A parade of consultants had assessed different pieces of our operations for months, but we never knew what the next steps would be. Goal posts constantly moved, and our organization felt directionless. As partnerships editor, I hadn’t been able to secure authorization for any collaborative work that would require monetary investment on our part in almost a year. 

In the coming hours, we lost access to our Slack and Google Drive. The next morning, we sat as audience members in a Zoom room, as we listened to a scripted announcement: layoffs, DCist.com would be shutdown, “effective immediately.” The meeting was over in less than 10 minutes. (Meanwhile, Axios broke the story while we were in that short meeting; so some of us read the news of the layoffs from a different outlet before hearing it from their general manager.)

This is what can happen when a newsroom isn’t controlled by workers and the community. 

Something funded by community members can survive corporate upheavals and weather political winds no matter which way they blow. A newsroom run by workers, like The 51st — built from the ashes of DCist
— can be nimble and adapt quickly to best meet readers’ needs at the moment. To keep our fundraising on track, we need 142 new paying members to join this week to bring us to a total of 2,500 sustaining members. Join today.

In the days and weeks that followed the layoffs — and the attempt to wipe decades of D.C. history from the internet by taking DCist offline — the outpouring of support for my and my colleagues’ work, and testimonials about DCist’s impact, were the rocket fuel that kept me going. That’s why a year later, I’m writing to you from The 51st. 

It's hard to believe that 12 months after that horrible day, this small but mighty team is fundraising to hire a full-time reporter (and ourselves!). 

As we approach the end of our fifth month, The 51st has published more than 100 stories, reached nearly 9,000 subscribers, and hired one Community Connector. But at this moment, we need to scale. There's so much news, and it uniquely affects D.C. residents.

As we cover the impacts of Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn efforts to gut the federal workforce — hearing directly from anxious and fearful federal workers — I can’t help but think of those cryptic email notices on my last day at DCist, being locked out of our tech platforms, the sadness over losing colleagues, and the anxiety of looming unemployment. It all feels so familiar. 

So, that's where I'm coming from when I sign off emails "in solidarity" or when I tell someone else looking for work that I know how it goes. And that's where we're coming from this week as we offer a free membership for affected federal employees. (Click here if that's you!)

But we are still building. Our team is all part-time. We're only funded through the end of June. And our news (which is free for everyone) still has a long way to go to reach all of D.C. If you can, please become a paying member today. Be one of the 25%(!) of readers who make that service available for everyone. 

Meeting our goal of 2,500 members will fund our freelance budget through the summer. If you can't commit to monthly, you can still help with a one-time donation. And if you can't do that, extending our reach is still our biggest hurdle for the year: Forward this email to a friend, text them a link to a story you appreciated, or encourage them to sign up for our newsletter (it's free!)

In solidarity,

Eric Falquero