This month the Northeast News celebrated its first year at Historic NorthEast Media (HNE Media), a step toward our goal of becoming a nonprofit news organization.
As a free, weekly paper providing hyperlocal news to Northeast Kansas City, Mo., we work hard to keep our neighbors informed, connect our community and be a voice for Historic Northeast.
We wouldn’t be here without our dedicated board and committees, who have generously given their time to help us grow.
Throughout the past year, nonprofit community partners have stepped up to help us build capacity, inform our neighbors, celebrate arts and culture and support our mission. We’d like to give a special thank you to Revolución Educativa, Mattie Rhodes, Jerusalem Farm, Kansas City University, the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and the Kansas City Museum.
For many years, small business advertisements have kept the Northeast News in print, and we’re very grateful to our longtime advertisers.
Local news isn’t dying, it’s being revitalized.
We’re working with the KC Media Collective as they provide free, in-depth news coverage throughout the city. Nonprofit media is the ever-expanding future of local news, coming from journalists who are embedded in our community and share our experiences.
This past year, the Northeast News has focused on growing capacity. Our staff of four has expanded to include Political Reporter EllieAna Hale, who is focused on the upcoming City Council Race on June 20, 2023. This summer, we’re joined by Editorial Assistants Erin William and Grace Kertz, both sponsored by the Missouri Press Foundation.
I joined the Northeast News in 2020 with many ideas and goals, one being to find a way to expand language access. Thanks to a generous sponsorship from RevEd, we’re thrilled to be working with Education Reporter Daisy Garcia Montoya to provide education news in Spanish.
This year, we’re working with our first Spanish-speaking reporter in nearly a decade, who grew up in the Northeast. In an effort to cover the culturally diverse Northeast neighborhoods in a responsible way, we hope to build trust with marginalized communities and hire from within the community.
In January, we hosted Potter Digital Fellow Sofi Zeman from the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. Among many other tasks and digital upgrades, she installed a Google Translate plug-in that allows our website, northeastnews.net, to be translated into 25 languages.
The Northeast News continues to win awards in statewide advertising and journalism contests. We’re focused on the next generation of young journalists. Our mission includes hands-on journalism education for interns. The 2022 William E. James Outstanding Young Journalist award from the Missouri Press Association for daily papers was awarded to 2019 Northeast News Intern Layne Stracener and to myself for weeklies. I started as an intern for the Northeast News in 2018 and it set me up for success when working in future newsrooms.
This year, we hope to gain our 501(c)(3) status from the IRS after a painstaking application process. We’ll work on fundraising for further expansion, especially with the help of our volunteer Grant and Marketing committees. As we transition to nonprofit, I’m excited to gather a group of diverse and passionate community members to give input on the future of the Northeast News and how we can better serve our community.
Our staff lives in Historic Northeast, and we find it very important to be part of this creative, thriving community. We don’t take our job lightly, and the Northeast News is proud to be the voice of the Historic Northeast community.
If you are interested in supporting our mission, email us at northeastnewskc@gmail.com or visit northeast-news.fundjournalism.org/donate/.
