Here’s how you can support expanded news coverage in southwestern Illinois
On behalf of the entire BND team, I’d like to start off today by thanking you for your support of the Belleville News-Democrat and for reading local news.
The BND team is committed to continuing to serve this region as we have for nearly 163 years. We know it would be impossible to do without you.
We are grateful for your trust, your loyalty and your belief in the importance of a strong local news organization.
We are turning to you today to ask for additional help.
We’re asking you to make a tax-deductible gift through the nonprofit Local Media Foundation to support expanded coverage of education in our region and community issues in the East St. Louis-Cahokia-Centreville area. Your donation will directly support this journalism. I’ll share more about how you can contribute to the new campaign in a moment.
You can already see the impact of the expanded education and community coverage provided by reporters DeAsia Paige and Megan Valley. Recent examples include Paige’s articles about spotty digital access and how the community is responding, and Valley’s coverage of the impact of COVID-19 on local education.
And people in southwestern Illinois have been showing their support for this expanded coverage, through their readership, feedback, story ideas and financial contributions, including a $15,000 grant from Ameren Cares and individual gifts earlier this year.
We appreciate those contributions; they are a good start to meeting the community support goals for the national service program that brought Valley and Paige to our news organization. The program, Report for America, partners with news organizations like the BND to place early-career journalists in local newsrooms to fill coverage gaps. RFA pays half the salary of the journalists, while local communities and their news organizations fund the rest.
And that’s where the new fall fund-raising campaign through the Local Media Foundation comes in. It’s no secret that the news industry has been fighting hard to find the right path forward to financially support local news coverage. And then came coronavirus and the corresponding economic impact to the local economy.
So we are asking our readers to please consider a tax deductible gift to the Local Media Foundation to help meet our community match to fund expanded coverage of education and the communities in the East St. Louis area.
You can contribute to the campaign at https://bit.ly/BNDfund. Just click on the link and follow the instructions.
If you prefer to donate by check, you can make the check payable to Local Media Foundation and write the Belleville News-Democrat in the notes field. Please mail the check to: Local Media Foundation, PO Box 85015, Chicago, IL 60689-5015.
You should also include your email address when you send the check so you can receive your tax donation letter in return.
Thank you for considering a contribution to help support this important coverage.
If you have any questions about the campaign, suggestions for news coverage or general feedback, please contact me at jcouch@bnd.com or 239-2551.
As always, we thank you for reading the BND.
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 10:47 AM.
