When I was a kid, going to Mass on Sunday was not the highlight of my week. With all respect and affection for Pope Leo XIV, I was falling away before falling away was a thing.
It just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. And the sermons. Drowsy.
Except for one Sunday each year when Monsignor Fitzgerald — I suppose he had a first name — stood up in the pulpit of Oak Park’s Ascension Church and talked money. My head would snap to attention as he talked about how much money Ascension had, what it needed from the people crowded in the pews (“more money”), how the school, which I attended, needed a new roof.
He was very direct, stern but candid. “We need $35,000 and we need it by June 30 if God’s children are going to have warm milk in little waxy cartons come fall,” he would say, in so many words.
I sat quietly, as children did in those days, but I wanted to rise from my pew, stand on the kneeler, and exhort my fellow Ascensionites, “Come on, people. Let’s come through for the old guy. He needs $35K. And he needs it now!”
Well now I’m the old guy and twice a year, along with all of us at Growing Community Media, we turn to our readers and make the case for why we need your direct financial support and what we’ve done to earn that support.
Right now, we’re into our Spring Campaign. And GCM, the nonprofit publisher of Wednesday Journal, Austin Weekly News, Riverside-Brookfield Landmark and the Forest Park Review, is working to raise $150,000 by June 30. That’s what we need to invest in our newsroom in the fiscal year, starting July 1.
We’ve been around for 45 years but became a nonprofit newsroom just five years ago. Our business model had cratered just as it had for the entire print media world. To go forward, to keep publishing authentic, independent local news, we had to ask readers to start paying for our work.
And we’ve succeeded for five years. Tomorrow, though, is not promised.
The good news is that GCM has a new leader in Max Reinsdorf, our executive director. After all these years, I’ve happily stepped to the side. For the moment I’ve stepped into the role of interim managing editor and am excited by the work of our reporters and freelancers in crafting reporting that is fact-based, close to the ground in each community and connects our readers with these neighborhoods and villages.
Right now, Max and I and our colleagues are working to raise this money by June 30. While we are actively seeking larger gifts, our ask to you is simple and doable. If you value this work, especially in a moment when a free press is at risk in America, we ask that you become a monthly donor to GCM. Ten dollars a month, multiplied out, is of great and predictable value to this newsroom — $25 a month is more valuable, if you follow the math.
Our future is only secured by our readers. You. Right now. Go to rblandmark.com/donate and keep building the future with us.
With gratitude from each of us.
P.S. If you still read the Trib, look for a story coming up about nuns who love the new pope. Among those likely to be quoted is my sister, Sister Jeanne. Not all of the Haleys fell away.
