I have been on an “unsubscribe from this list” spree of late, telling Richmond and DC Democrats what they can do with their press releases about stuff going on in my backyard highlighting reporting from news sources in Richmond, Roanoke and Lynchburg.
Here we go again.
I get it, that we’re not The Times-Dispatch, Virginia Mercury, Cardinal News, WWBT, WSET.
We don’t win journalism contests – in part because we haven’t entered any in forever.
Dirty little secret there: journalists enter contests because they’re looking for things to pad their resumes for the inevitable, which is, when whoever they’re working for now is the latest to lay folks off, because the media business is dying.
The people running the contests are all too willing to oblige.
None of us here at AFP are looking for jobs, so, no, we don’t have any awards from the last how-many-ever years to brag about.
We’re not a TV station with interns rewriting wire-service copy, we’re not legacy media hanging on until the inkwell runs dry, we’re not a nonprofit subsisting on the graciousness of donors.
We’re just the plucky local-news website with a small, but well-paid staff that has been doing interweb-only news since before there was such a thing.
When we launched way back in 2002, internet news was the sidepiece to the print business, which was where the money was made, until it suddenly wasn’t.
Full disclosure: I don’t know how we made it as long as we did as a “leans left” news outlet in the reddest part of Virginia, one of the redder parts of America.
ICYMI
No idea how we outlasted the Great Recession, found a way through the pandemic.
Anyway, we’re still here.
I could understand the MAGAs not wanting to acknowledge us, but the Democratic Party of Virginia, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – both of which sent out press releases to their lists today to highlight the impact of the Big Ugly Bill Medicaid cuts on our local hospital, Augusta Health, with links to stories from outlets in Richmond, man, you talk about something that’ll hit you the wrong way, when you’ve been writing about the issue for months, yeah.
ICYMI
- Big Ugly Bill fallout | Augusta Medical Group closing three primary care facilities
- Protestors gather across the street from Augusta Health to protest Medicaid cuts
- Augusta Health on the brink? Hospital makes plea to save Medicaid
Guess we’re too local-yokel for the Richmond and DC Dems to acknowledge.
We’re not legacy media, we don’t have a nonprofit board of people in suits with fancy-sounding titles.
Don’t have a lofty-sounding mission statement that we workshopped at a weekend mountain retreat.
We are on track to hit 10 million readers this year, per Google Analytics, which ain’t bad for an outlet with a staff of three.
Our three kick ass and take names on a daily basis.
I’ll put my three up against any number of yours, and take my chances.
That’s how we roll out here in the sticks.
I speak here for a few people who live and work outside the Richmond and DC bubbles who are goddam sick and tired of being looked down upon because we don’t live in the big city.
We don’t need to be told by people 100 miles away what’s going on in our backyard and how it’s impacting us.
We’ve known for a while what the hell is going on here, thank you very much.
And we’d appreciate some help trying to address it – and, no, sending out a press release that is entirely about scoring political points for the campaign season isn’t actual help.
Actual help would be actually helping Democrats running for office out our way, which the folks in Richmond and DC aren’t at all interested in doing.
ICYMI
We’re going to continue doing what we’ve been doing to advocate for our folks out this way, and I think I’m making it clear here, a big part of what we’re going to continue doing is going to be reading the riot act to the suits who don’t think folks out our way are worth the time and trouble.
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Chris Graham
