Dear Readers,

The Mission of The Mountain-Ear is to help our community and help build and sustain our local economy. Our newspaper does this by promoting the people, politics and culture that surround our peaks: illustrating to readers that these local businesses, specifically the members of our mountain communities, are sources of expert services and products, and by giving readers honest and up to date information they need to make informed buying decisions. In addition to ads, there are articles in every issue written specifically to promote our community in a positive and informed manner. 

The Mountain-Ear is the only local, independently owned weekly community news source and is an established part of our mountain community. It has been in operation since 1977.  Our staff consists of a variety of local community members that provide a well rounded range of content. We distribute our paper in a wide variety of locations throughout the Peak to Peak region.

The Mountain-Ear is a trusted source of local news for our community. And right now, that is more important than ever. We have an opportunity I hope you will consider.

The Colorado Media Project has pledged a $5,000 challenge grant to us to help us inspire individuals in our community to support The Mountain-Ear with philanthropic donations. For every dollar we raise from the community, up to $5,000, the challenge fund will match it!

On top of the above pledge, a local donor has agreed to match the challenge grant, also up to $5,000. Which means, for every dollar you donate, $2 is coming back to us.

We would like to add to that challenge fund, grow it beyond $10,000, and inspire more of our community to support local news coverage. Would you consider making a donation to our challenge fund? Support from you, our community, makes the work we do possible.

This year we will dedicate our fundraising to saturations (sharing the paper for free a couple times each year to reach specific communities), low or no cost subscriptions to seniors and people who can't afford them, and growing our high school and college intern program. Our interns are part of our community engagement initiative. We have up to 40 contributors per month, of which 22 to 25 are paid (all interns are paid). We work with these student interns as well as community members to make sure we are covering all of the news of the region, with our extremely limited budget. We will continue to make sure we are getting the youth of our community excited about journalism (they are the future of news). As well as keeping our aging population employed or contributing what we find important in our community based organization. We are planning a collaboration with the schools in a new capacity that will begin next year, if funding comes through. We continue our print, online and podcast efforts to make sure we reach all audiences. We do this because we love it! 

We are not alone. As part of #newsCOneeds, we’re one of 33 Colorado newsrooms joining forces to amplify the impact of local journalism — not just in our newsroom, but in communities across our state. Collectively, our work is essential to a better-informed community and a healthy democracy. However, it would not be possible without the support of people like you. 

I would be happy to have a conversation to share details of this plan and how you might play a role in making sure our community has trustworthy, factual, local reporting on issues that matter. Please share a few dates/times that would work for you.

We launched our year end fundraising campaign #newsCOneeds on November 29, 2022. It would be great to count you among the supporters in our community. 

You can donate online at peak-perspectives-llc.fundjournalism.org/the-mountain-ear between November 29 and December 31. 

Or by check to:

The Mountain-Ear
PO Box 99
Nederland, CO 80466.

Warm regards,

Barbara Hardt
Publisher
The Mountain-Ear
info@themountainear.com
(303) 810-5409