The Davis Vanguard has been soaring to new heights in readership and content. We have a number of regular writers covering the school, the courts, UC Davis, and the entire community.
Every month however, there is this little thing called the bills that come due. And once again, we are in need of about $2000 so that we can pay those bills and keep going. We were able to get there last month, hopefully you can help us get there this month.
To help, click on the link below to donate or to share with your social network.
I would normally donate to this (and have in the past). But I have been really appalled at the way you have handled UC Davis various news events. It is not about getting at the truth, it is about lynching someone. Your coverage has hurt UC Davis as a campus and encouraged a gang mentality. You are ostensibly running an objective news venue, yet it serves more like Murdock paper where the owner dictates the tone.
If you are going to ask for funds, you should come clean on how it is all being spent. There are no printing costs; there are advertising revenues; the site is up and working on its own. Site hosting is no longer that expensive.
I don’t want to get into it again on the university – I don’t agree with your take on our coverage, but that’s fine.
Our costs – we have rent of our office, we have the site hosting which is small ($100 per month), we have a monthly site maintenance and upgrade. We have insurance. We have software and web service subscriptions. We have equipment – camera, computers, etc. But of course the biggest expenditure is that we have four paid staff members, including myself. I’m certainly not getting rich off this, but this is my full time job. That all adds up to $4000 to $5000 per month.
Anyone who has raised small children will understand the challenges of working at home. I get it.
I really appreciate the work you do. You are probably the only news site that covers Yolo County court trials.
I contribute whenever I have extra funds, after all my bills are paid!
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Thank you very much for exposing our criminal injustice system. Keep up the fine work you & staff are doing.
I guess I’m just curious here – why do you need an office to run a website? The pictures I see are minimal and you could easily take those “on the road”. I’ve never contributed money because I know of many that run sites much more complex than this one and never ask for a dime. Seems like every time I log in, you are asking for more money. Not sure how much you’re charging your advertisers, but seems like that alone should pay your bills if you run this site from your home – as I said, just curious.
The cost of the office is small compared the overall costs, but it’s easier to work in an office, away from the kids, where I can meet with people, work the phones, get the information. It’s not running a website, it’s running a news site.
if you really consider it a news site, then you and your editors/staff should not be interjecting opinions in the comments. Only facts. The commentaries – say whatever you want.
I am starting to go through other issues and I see the same pattern. Either you are a news site or you are web outlet, and sometimes echo chamber, for opinions.
If you don’t like it, read something else.
If only Sisterhood would listen to her own advice.
ContextMatters
“I am starting to go through other issues and I see the same pattern. Either you are a news site or you are web outlet, and sometimes echo chamber, for opinions.”
The either or approach that you have stated is far too binary a way of thinking for me. The Vanguard is different things to different people. Some use it to follow the local news and regard it for factual information. Others enjoy the interchange of ideas. It is fascinating to me how individuals I know to be intelligent and thoughtful can see an issue so completely differently from my view. Some people only read the articles, some people only read the comments. Some read primarily financially based articles, other prefer articles on social or judicial issues.
Personally, I see the Vanguard as primarily a community conversation space with Vanguard articles as a departure point for discussion.
As Tia knows as well as anyone, I am always looking for better ways to do something and tweaking and re-thinking our approach. It’s interesting I gave a lecture on this on Wednesday for a course at UCD. The Vanguard started off as a purely opinion blog and we have progressed and changed over the years. At one point we were simply responding to externally generated material, now we are almost exclusively original content or submitted publication. The issues brought here have been subjected to hours of discussion and careful consideration.
We need more resources so we can higher more staff and cover more stuff. We have four paid employees and that’s with me taking an extremely meager salary for my 100-plus hours a week of work. And I do mean extremely meager. I’m not complaining but asking for donations is part of how we pay the bills and hopefully expand.