Continuing though Dec. 31, the NewsMatch campaign matches contributions up to $1,000 to participating nonprofit media organizations, including The DC Line.

Chris Kain: As The DC Line marks its 18-month anniversary, here’s how you can help

By Chris Kain On Dec 18, 2019 Last updated Jan 9, 2020

As an editor or reporter working at a newspaper, you can easily see the work you’ve done pile up. My old desk at The Current surely demonstrated that. With an online outlet, it takes a bit more reflection to see the results of the time and energy I’ve expended over the past 18 months since The DC Line debuted. When we first launched back in June 2018, we had only a few initial stories, and no Twitter followers or Facebook fans — but we had a serious goal of expanding local public affairs coverage in DC.

Chris Kain is founder and editor of The DC Line

As we at The DC Line mark this 18-month anniversary and take note of how far we’ve come, another key date is fast approaching: the District’s June 2 primary election, now just under six months away. The confluence of these two dates is no coincidence given that we rushed back in 2018 so we could launch in time to provide voters with information before they headed to the polls.

Thankfully, we’ll have more time in 2020 to provide early election coverage and a robust voters guide in the weeks and months leading up to the start of voting. But we need your help in order to do just that. And we need your help to continue to grow.

Through Dec. 31, the NewsMatch campaign — organized and backed by national groups such as the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Democracy Fund and the Knight Foundation — is matching contributions up to $1,000. That means your donation will have twice the impact.

Like other nonprofit news organizations participating in this campaign, The DC Line is eligible to receive up to $20,000 in matching funds. With your help, we can max out on the available funds from NewsMatch. That means we can publish more stories and expand our coverage of the election and other public affairs subjects.

Over the past 18 months, we’ve seen subscriptions to our weekday newsletter, District Links, almost triple from the number who had signed up for the original iteration of Cuneyt Dil’s invaluable roundup of local DC political news. We’ve also grown to around 4,200 followers on Twitter, where we share not only our own stories but also links to news coverage from other sources — plus information and commentary from government agencies, appointed and elected officials, nonprofit groups, community leaders and others. Someone recently told me he looks to the feed to catch up on what’s happening locally when he’s been away — and that’s what we’re aiming for. A new Twitter user wrote that our account helps her follow hyperlocal news in DC.

We’ve also published articles about local Washingtonians and political happenings you might not otherwise have heard about like the careless employee who flooded DC’s crime lab, backing up a critical wastewater system; the first report on the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability’s investigation in a complaint over whether Ward 2 DC Council member Jack Evans should be voting on his own punishment; the State Board of Education races (before coverage was available elsewhere); and the Ward 7 teenager introduced to chess at the age of 3 who went on to hold a national ranking. We’ve also proudly co-published articles with local nonprofit Street Sense Media on homelessness, affordable housing and related issues.

Our opinion section is robust, thanks in part to a weekly column from longtime local journalist jonetta rose barras and the frequent submissions from local transportation journalist Gordon Chaffin. But also central are the commentaries from a wide range of voices — on topics from teacher retention to the DC Council’s “second look” sentencing efforts.

Though we are still a fledgling operation, we are part of a growing nonprofit news sector that includes national newsrooms — ProPublica, Chalkbeat and The Marshall Project are probably familiar names — as well as organizations prominent in their own cities and regions. Voice of San Diego, VTDigger and MinnPost are among those that have flourished over the past 10 to 15 years, but The Texas Tribune may be the best-known outside its own state.

Just last week, New York Times op-ed columnist David Leonhardt headlined his Dec. 10 newsletter “Save local journalism!” After laying out some of the challenges facing the industry amid mergers and layoffs, he highlighted the American Journalism Project’s call for $500 million in national philanthropic support for local news. “If your area has a new nonprofit publication you like, support it — by reading it, engaging with it through both praise and criticism and, yes, sending it some money,” he wrote.

Please do.

Nationally, a lot of the focus is understandably on news deserts that aren’t being served regularly by any commercial outlets. We in DC are fortunate in that regard, but our oasis is not large enough when it comes to public affairs journalism. It can feel like saturation coverage if all the TV stations and national outlets fixate on a story here — the white supremacist march downtown last year comes to mind — but former Mayor Anthony Williams has noted that there just aren’t as many journalists covering Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Wilson Building as there were writing about him when he was in office. For a while now, The Washington Post local desk and the Washington City Paper newsroom haven’t been as large as they once were, and in just the past year we’ve lost Curbed DC, the Washington Post Express and The Current (which, after I left, had filed for bankruptcy reorganization and later liquidation). We’re fortunate to have WAMU covering the District and reviving DCist, but there are still gaps to fill: When it comes to local news, more is better as long as it’s quality journalism.

For years, Tom Sherwood, often called the dean of the local DC press corps, has likened the local news industry to broken glass. The stories that one might have found years ago in the daily newspaper or on the evening news are now split among multiple media outlets — and the large newsrooms are considerably reduced in size. At the risk of mixing metaphors, we would use another image — a jigsaw puzzle, with pieces spread across the floor — to describe DC’s current ecosystem of local news and our niche in public affairs journalism. Our aim is to help make the image clear by making it easier to consume and access the disparate sources of news, while also tracking down the missing pieces — the many stories that aren’t being told.

Whatever you can pitch in will help The DC Line stand on solid financial ground. As we noted, contributions this month are doubled thanks to NewsMatch. But we will also need continuing support in 2020 and beyond. For those who can afford to become a member of our Benefactors’ or Founders’ circles, with $500 or $1,000 contributions, we hope you will help us establish a firm foundation. But we also welcome donations of whatever size, which will not only help us pay our freelancers and copy editors but also demonstrate the community’s support. You can also help by spreading awareness through community listservs, on social media and via word of mouth — making sure that friends, neighbors and colleagues know about The DC Line. Share our stories, and encourage folks to sign up for our newsletter. Let us know of stories you’d like to see, and submit commentaries on issues of local concern.

Meanwhile, we’ve got plenty of story ideas for our writers to pursue.

Chris Kain, a Glover Park resident, is founder and editor of The DC Line, which launched in June 2018. He was managing editor of The Current Newspapers from 1991 to 2017; he moved to DC in 1987 to attend American University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science and worked on the student newspaper in various capacities, including editor-in-chief.