Stepping Up for Daily Local Journalism

Local journalism helps you right where you live. It protects your safety. Your schools. Your hospitals. Your quality of life.

Local journalists tell you what’s happening in your neighborhood that affects you and your loved ones. That’s why community news really matters.

But local journalism is beleaguered. It’s next to impossible to operate a daily printed newspaper – or even website – at a profit these days.

The newspaper chain which owns the Pasadena Star-News is being sold, we are told, possibly to a hedge fund operation which is known for cost-cutting and staff-slashing. If true, this would be a terrible loss for the community.

Up in Altadena, Timothy Rutt’s popular “Altadena Point” website shut down April 10 because Rutt could not generate enough revenue to continue.

Pasadena and Altadena need more daily media to keep its residents and business owners informed on current fast-moving, vital developments – not less.

Therefore, as Pasadena Now starts its 12th year, we have decided to launch an important new initiative which will push us towards fulfilling the role of a daily newspaper by publishing first-rate daily news journalism for a community in need.

This additional effort won’t change our established sections or coverage; rather, it will involve an overhauling and upgrading of our news operations. We do not expect significant results overnight. News reporting is complex, costly and difficult to execute properly.

Among our foundational tenets: stories we publish must be accurate, and best efforts will be made to ensure articles are fair and balanced. We will not editorialize. We will not endorse.

Our new initiative’s first outcome will be the April 17 launch of a brand-new daily email publication called “Pasadena News Now.”

This premium email newsletter will bring subscribers 17 fresh new local articles at 7 a.m., seven days a week. Each morning our staff will update and curate the very latest stories across every Pasadena Now section, then publish them in an organized, convenient email delivered straight to subscribers’ inboxes.

Our objective is to create a “newspaper home delivery” experience, online.

This will be our first-ever paid subscription service. The fee will help us pay reporters and writers. We simply cannot raise our level of game without raising our level of revenue.

We have set the price at a very modest $19.95 per year – about $1.67 per month (5.5¢ per issue). Direct access to the “Pasadena Now” website will remain free of charge.

The truth is that back in 2004 we had a premonition that one day “Pasadena Now” could very well find itself compelled to step up to the plate and provide Pasadena with daily news reporting. It seems that time has come.