The Lookout launches paid subscriptions

The time has come.

On November 15th, 2024, I filed my very first column at The Lookout. Today, after more than a year of publishing neighborhood news and views from Richmond’s East End, I’m launching paid subscriptions. If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, I hope you’ll consider chipping in:

To best serve the neighborhood, The Lookout’s regular coverage will always be free to read, but paying subscribers will get bonus items, invites, and other goodies to be determined. If you can afford to pay $5 a month to keep The Lookout sustainable, please do. If you’re a local business owner or independently wealthy journalism junky who’d like to underwrite The Lookout’s coverage with a larger contribution, a) fantastic and b) please get in touch by emailing [email protected].

If you can’t afford to upgrade, don’t sweat it. Think of this like the Wikipedia model, or the honor system. Pay what you can, if you can. Subscription fees from each according to his ability, neighborhood newsletters to each according to his need. Or something like that.

For the past year, I’ve been publishing The Lookout “on spec,” which is a little bit of media trade jargon for “not making money.” It doesn’t cost very much to operate a media property when your labor costs are nil; I think I’m into this project for something like $250 out of pocket, when accounting for hosting and platform fees, and a couple runs of stickers. Not bad!

Unfortunately, as a working journalist with 15 years of experience and many of the financial responsibilities typical for a person in their late thirties, my labor costs are not actually nil. In effect, I’ve been donating my time to The Lookout, because I believe in the importance of independent media, and I care about Richmond’s East End. In that time, I’ve published a variety of stories with a neighborhood-specific lens you won’t find anywhere else, including:

• Like Google Street View, but for Richmond history

• In Union Hill, city's rezoning pitch draws praise, dismay

• Newbille silent on feds accessing RPD data for "immigration enforcement"

• At this historic church, Juneteenth is for everyone

• Fix your stuff and find your people at Repair Cafe RVA

• East End schools need $500,000, pronto

• The controversial, high-tech recording devices all over Church Hill

I’d like to keep publishing this kind of work because I believe the East End deserves it. If you do too, smash this button to fund The Lookout:

With the exception of litter critter-at-large Penelope Poubelle, who pens Possum Poetry each week in exchange for tasty trash, The Lookout is a one-man band. Operating as I do out of my home office on East Broad Street with the equipment and resources I already have for my other, non-Richmond-related journalism, its overhead is low. Virtually all of your subscription fee directly funds journalism about your neighborhood, produced by a journalist who lives here. This revenue will first go towards covering the critical line items that keep The Lookout running, such as:

• Fixed publishing costs like hosting and platform fees

• Variable reporting costs like must-have public-records request fees

• A stipend for my labor and experience as a journalist

With additional revenue, I can begin to focus on some “nice-to-have” items that will improve and broaden The Lookout’s coverage, such as:

• A podcast about East End history

• Freelance reporting contributions

• Neighborhood-centric guides and directories

• More ambitious/aggressive public-records requests

The basic dynamic, as you’ve likely sussed out, is that the more readers step up to fund The Lookout, the more The Lookout will be able to do. If you’re willing to throw in $5 a month, here’s how:

And again, if your business, family trust, etc. would like to underwrite this newsletter with a larger contribution, please inquire by sending me an email at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks again for your readership, comments, tips, etc. over the past year. I’m grateful to everybody who has welcomed The Lookout into their inboxes in that time, and look forward to another year of publishing essential stories about Richmond’s East End with your support.—Dave.