Hello, readers.
As the Monitor arrives at its four-month anniversary, we are pleased to note that our last 14 stories have been scoops—stories we reported first. The Duluth News Tribune has followed our lead on two of them: They reported on the Launch Apartment project rezoning one day after we did, and they published the school district’s Request for Proposals for the superintendent search 21 days after we did. The remaining 12 scoops—the big city/county land deal which is underway, Spirit Mountain’s latest subsidy, the re-emergence of the front yard parking issue, the zoo’s peculiar lobbyist, etc.—were Monitor exclusives. Sometimes, reading news in the Monitor can make you feel like you’re living in a completely different town.
Not that the other media in town don’t get their own scoops. The News Tribune and the TV stations have reported on stories that the Monitor hasn’t. We have also noticed signs that other media outlets are digging deeper and asking more questions than they used to. We feel this is a direct result of the Monitor moving into town. Thus, the Duluth media landscape as a whole has been improved by the Monitor—people are getting more news, of higher quality, than they did before.
Readers may notice that there are no ads popping up on the Monitor site at this time. We were using AdSense, the Google program that targets ads at people based on their interests, but we recently received a notice from AdSense saying that “potentially invalid traffic [is] being used to generate ad revenue on your account.” We’re not even sure what that means. Is somebody out there madly clicking Monitor ads in a misguided effort to help us? Is somebody doing it to hurt us? Is a bot or a glitch somewhere screwing things up? We do not have answers to these questions, because we are not hackers. Thus, we have parted ways with AdSense.
Many thanks to our 17 Patreon subscribers, and thanks, as well, to the growing number of people who have opted to write us checks directly. There are plenty of people willing to read the Monitor when it’s free; it’s heartening to know that some people are also willing to pay for it. Our promise, as always, is that the more money we receive, the more stories we will publish. We have earned enough to start assigning stories to people on a freelance basis. We hope to hire another reporter when revenue allows.
On the publicity side, the Monitor was recently featured in a story published on Perfect Duluth Day. For those who wish to know some of the history behind our “edgy journalism,” it’s a good read.
Onward!
Featured image credit: Walter Ramos
Please report on the lack of snow removal on Third, Second And First Streets, especially around St. Luke’s hospital. Need to report more information on difficult parking around the hospital. People are not happy at all about this. Hopefully more people passing this information on to others about your parking loss and medical district reporting. Very informative.