Here's What's Coming from Southwest Voices

Posted Friday, October 15, 2021 2:59 pm

HEADS UP: We’re kicking off our textline, which we’ll use to send you the latest news directly to your phone + ask you to share what you’re seeing and hearing. Text us at 612-204-2887.

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We're so excited to get to know you.

This isn't going to be a typical publication where a few people decide the Most Important Stories every day. It’s going to be a conversation. We’re going to ask you questions. We're going to listen closely to understand what the community needs, what’s going on, and who we should be talking to.

That all sounds great, but can you be more specific? Yes! Here you go:

First things first: On October 4th, we’ll kick this all off by launching our first daily email newsletter. You can read a few details below the bullet points on what that email will look like.

In the coming weeks, we're going to be launching a listening tour, which means that we'll be coming to your neighborhood (at a local business, library, on a bus route, to your place of worship, a park, and more) to hear from you about what you need from us, and to tell you what we need from you. Do you know a community group that might be interested in chatting? Shoot us a note at info@southwestvoices.news. Our first stop? You can see us at Mueller Park for the LHENA Community Festival and Drawing Contest this Saturday, October 2nd, from 12-4.

In early October, we'll be launching our membership program. We'll save the details for then, but the membership program is designed to help us keep ALL of our content free and available for every member of this community. The math on it is pretty simple – the more members we have, the more money we’ll be able to spend on original reporting, neighborhood journalism, and helping you solve whatever problems you might have.

We've worked with a great group of people representing a couple Neighborhood Associations that have been hugely helpful so far, and we'll be building this alongside them. As a result, we'll be directing a percentage of every membership back to your Neighborhood Association. We're very excited to work with the folks that have really deep roots in neighborhoods across the whole city, and can't wait to see what our partnership can produce.

So, what will this daily email look like? It'll be broken out into a couple sections (details below). The sections up top will be for original reporting and unique stories. The sections at the bottom will be filled with links to stories about your neighborhood that have been published elsewhere, what’s new, ways for you to get involved, and events for you to attend.

THE ESSENTIALS

The first section of the newsletter will be full of stories about things that are going on, original reporting, business openings/closings, local restaurants doing something fun or interesting, or important links to government resources you need to be aware of.

For starters, if you or someone you know owns a small business that lost revenue as a result of COVID, did you know that you have until Wednesday night to apply for a Main Street COVID Relief Grant through the state?

LINK ROUND-UP

This section will include a round-up of links to stories about Southwest Minneapolis from other local news outlets, or even Facebook, Nextdoor, or Twitter posts that we think can make your life better.

One of the best things about our revenue model is that we don’t make a dime off of clicks. Whether you click on an article 10, 100, or 10,000 times, it doesn’t matter to us. What matters to us is that you can trust us and that we’re adding value to your daily life. What this means in practice – we’ll send traffic to other publications that do make money off of clicks, and we’ll get the best journalism from around the metro in front of you.

GET INVOLVED

This section will include links for you to get involved, with neighborhood associations, community groups, and helpful government resources we can connect you with.

STUFF TO DO

We'll use this section to feature great upcoming events, like a movie in a park, a big group bike ride down Hennepin, or a great neighborhood party.

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See you on October 4th!

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