Among other local news this week, we’d like to announce that the Healdsburg Tribune has new owners — more than two dozen in fact. Our new owners are community members and readers just like you. They are individuals and couples who have invested $1,000 to $20,000 with our Direct Public Offer that is funding Sonoma West Publishers’ new vision for quality community journalism.
Hopefully, all of our regular readers are aware of our plans to reinvent our four small town newspapers into the first community-owned newspaper group in the country. We are inviting our readers and others to invest in our small company by purchasing shares of preferred class stock. (Full details can be found at www.invest.sonomawest.com)
Since we launched our Direct Public Offer in late March just over 30 investors have joined us. We hope to welcome as many as 200 investors this year to meet our goal of raising $400,000 in new working capital.
We will strengthen our newsroom resources, add innovative journalism tools and technology, expand our sales staff to sell more advertising and launch an ongoing series of new live events and community forums.
Thanks to our new investors we will be able to report more news, publish bigger newspapers and continue our mission of providing reliable information that is essential for livable communities and our democracy.
Sonoma West Publishers isn’t going anywhere. The corporation owned by husband and wife, Sarah Bradbury and Rollie Atkinson, are retaining 100 percent ownership of the corporation’s common stock. Our new community investors will own non-voting preferred class stock. Their investment will earn them a three percent annual dividend.
Our new investors include several of our columnists who have a first-person understanding of the value of our journalism. Our investors include both longtime and newer residents in Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Windsor, Sebastopol and Guerneville.
One of our very earliest investors brought tears to our eyes with her testimonial. She said she recalled how we dedicated long and late night hours at local school board meetings during a period of labor disputes between teachers and school board members. She thanked us for “telling both sides of the story.” We never thought our late-night journalism would win us an investor almost 15 years later.
At this point, we are not sharing investor names because we have not asked for their permission. But very soon, we will host our very first investor meeting and we will all get to know who we are. Obviously, we encourage many more of our readers to consider an investment. We are available for questions at any time.
Sonoma West Publishers is not just looking for survival in these historically challenging times for newspapers in our country. We have bold and innovative plans to create a reader-powered newsroom and to collaborate with our local advertisers on new and inventive marketing promotions.
Our four newspapers (Cloverdale Reveille, Healdsburg Tribune, Windsor Times and Sonoma West Times & News) currently provide more local news to more readers than ever before, thanks to our large website audience. Our aim is to strengthen our business revenues to support more printing and cover increased operating and payroll expenses.
We seek to strengthen other locally-owned businesses and nonprofits, too. The same forces (Amazon, Facebook, etc.) that are threatening newspapers are also disrupting or destroying local retail, civil communication and trust in the truth and our own government.
Our newest newspaper investors understand this. Some have told us they want “to save democracy.” Others just want to be sure there’s a newsprint version of the local newspaper they can continue to hold in their hands.
For anyone complaining about the intrusiveness of social media outlets like Facebook or the unwelcome phenomenon of fake news, we have a suggestion: invest in some real news for a change.
