Dear reader,

I’m writing to share some exciting news: Door County Knock has recently been the recipient of some major investments from national funders that, taken together, represent a huge opportunity for our growth and for the future of local news in Door County.

Chief among these is a $100,000 grant we’ve been awarded from Press Forward, a new coalition of national funders dedicated to bolstering local news. The grant, which will be allocated over the next two years, is part of a $20 million investment by Press Forward in 205 newsrooms across the country. 

In addition, Door County Knock has received $20,000 from the Google News Initiative to invest in technology and services that can help us grow our audience and our membership. These tools will give us a needed boost in our ability to connect with you as readers, and to get our name and our work out to more of the community.

Finally, our newsroom this year received the support of Report for America in hiring our first full-time reporter, a huge growth step in our work for Door County. Report for America is a national program that helps place reporters in communities in need. It supports part of a reporter’s salary, at decreasing percentages over a two- to three-year period as the newsroom grows local support.

Together, these investments are a monumental opportunity to build a fully resourced, independent local newsroom for Door County—a catalyst for our growth.

They are a vote of confidence in Door County Knock’s work and in the quality and professionalism of our organization. They’re also a vote of confidence in the Door County community—a recognition of residents’ needs and a belief in what our community can do together.

In order to fully realize the growth we can achieve, and to sustain it into the future, we need local support—and that includes the support of readers like you.

All of these funds gradually decrease, or disappear completely, over the next two and a half years. In addition, they are designed primarily to build up Door County Knock’s business operations and development capacity. In order to take advantage of the opportunity that this added capacity represents, we need to build a dynamic editorial operation supported by local revenue. Reader donations are a huge part of that.

Looking ahead to 2025, we’ve been able to fund 45 percent of our staffing needs; we need to raise the other 55 percent from local sources, including reader donations.

With your support, we’ll be able to hire a second full-time reporter next year. That would allow us to report on more economic and health-related issues simultaneously, and to cover, with more depth, Door County’s 25+ units of local government. A second reporter position represents a huge step in our growth potential as an organization.

As we continue to grow, we’ll be working toward our vision of a newsroom with multiple reporters, covering and representing the entire community and supported by fully staffed editorial and business teams. We want to build an organization that is a true go-to source of information for Door County residents on the events, issues and decisions that affect our lives—and a central hub for productive, solutions-oriented conversations.

Door County has clear information needs, and there are so many issues affecting residents—housing, poverty, child care, addiction, senior care—that can seem insurmountable. I firmly believe that a robust, reader-powered, independent local newsroom can make a decisive difference in bringing our community to a healthier place and finding paths forward that work for all of us.

We now have an opportunity to build that resource for Door County. If you share in this belief, I ask you to consider donating during our NewsMatch campaign to help build up this work and make our vision a reality.

Your support, of any amount that’s meaningful to you, isn’t just helpful—it’s essential.

Let’s build the future of Door County journalism together.

Sincerely,

Andrew Phillips
Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief
Door County Knock