Pasadena Now Turns 10 Years Old

Ten years ago this month, Candice Merrill and I decided to launch Pasadena Now. It’s been quite a trip; the site is now one of the oldest continuously-published community news sites in North America. We’ve changed in some ways, and Pasadena has changed in some ways. On almost every one of those 3,650 days, there’s no city we’d rather be living and working in than this one.

When we launched Pasadena Now the internet seemed much more like long odds than a hands down favorite to media industry experts.

Regardless, we decided early to go the online route, 100 per cent, all in. We believed then and now that community news and information should be available to all members of the community, and for that to happen it must be free of charge and easy to get. The internet just made sense.

We never doubted, even back then, that the internet was the most efficient, fastest and ubiquitous means of communication ever invented and that it would surely prevail over centuries old paper-bound methods.

The internet also promotes transparency and fosters communication, two things we favor.

Our first efforts centered on publishing local events information and focusing on Pasadena arts organizations and the city’s amazing, worthy nonprofits. The first event we covered was the 2004 Gold Crown Awards ceremony.

As time passed, we steadily added coverage of a widening range of hyperlocal subjects with the aim of becoming the most inclusive single-site-source of information about Pasadena on the internet. We stayed away from hard news until recently, because news reporting is extremely difficult and costly to produce properly.

The more events we covered, the more people we met, the more organizations we befriended, the more deeply we fell in love with Pasadena. I’ve lived here all my life, but only after I began to publish Pasadena Now did I come to know how much about this city I didn’t know.

Pasadena really is what we all at one time or another say it is: absolutely extraordinary. Biggest little city in America. The perfect storm of a city.

(The people here also happen to be a tough audience, which is actually a good thing.)

In January of this year, we launched a completely redesigned “responsive” website, created so that our site can be ready on any device or smartphone and therefore be more accessible to more people.

In March, we ramped up our news coverage, and are committed to expanding that coverage. We strive to be as fair and objective as possible in our reporting, to resist taking sides, to avoid editorializing, and to let facts do the talking. When we make a mistake, we will do our very best to correct it, for the record.

We are currently in a growth mode, and as Candice likes to say, “we’re not going anywhere” (but up, I add).

A few other points are in order.

In keeping with our belief that democracies can only function well if the people are informed (not just some of the people, who can pay for subscriptions, but all of the people), we are opposed to selling subscriptions for readers to use our site. We will never erect “paywalls” and charge for our content.

Also: we hold the belief we should be a servant to the community and consequently we respect the community’s diversity of opinions and viewpoints. We decided we will not publish our own editorials or endorse candidates, but instead open our Opinion section to all responsible writers and publish their opinions.

For those who love numbers, here are some: Pasadena Now attracts 90,000 different readers in the average month (many return frequently). We typically list 1,000 local events on our calendar at all times. We publish over 100 articles per week. We have a staff of 14. And we’re 10 years old.

Over the next decade, we hope to become the undisputed leading source for trusted local news and information about Pasadena.

More than that, we hope what we do will have a positive impact on our community.

To our readers and advertisers and supporters, we say, with heartfelt emotion, “Thank you! Our best is yet to come.”