It has been a while since the Carver County Local News (CCLN) Board last shared an update and what an incredible four months it has been! Since our last update at the beginning of September, we’ve been incredibly busy ramping up our online news source for the southwest metro.
We launched our website on Oct. 8. That was also the night we conducted a volunteer meeting and invited people to join us on our journey to make a difference by creating a nonprofit news outlet for Carver County.
The CCLN site launched auspiciously with our first publication—our own Carver County Voters Guide. We sent out requests to candidates running for city and county offices in Carver County as well as for state representatives to answer a handful of questions to help residents decide who to vote for. To our pleasant surprise, we received 27 out of 30 questionnaires we sent out.
With limited publicity, our site received more than 1,600 visits in the first month and we received almost $1,000 in organic donations.
In the months that followed, we’ve grown our talented pool of community writers, published more than 140 articles and had almost 64,000 site visits from more than 15,000 active users. We even have over 1,000 subscribers to our email list.
Some of our amazing columnists have been busy creating excellent content. Our coverage includes Neil Wingert’s series, “Birds of Carver County,” Steve Larson’s excellent prep sports pieces, Kirk Walton’s “Captain Corner” which profiles student athletes and our long-time favorite, Bob Roepke with his thoughts on community.
Through all the success we’ve had so far, we are just getting started. There is much work ahead as we work hard to grow into our next phase of operations, including building sustainable revenue sources and raising the funds to hire our first full-time staff member to run the newsroom on a day-to-day basis. Keep your eyes peeled as we branch out and try some new ways to reach you, our readers … or should we say, listeners?
Our mission remains the same as when we decided to start Carver County Local News on July 2, 2024:
- Develop a new local news service for Chanhassen, Chaska, Carver and Victoria.
- Adhere to established journalism standards like objectivity, truthfulness, fairness, respect for others and public accountability.
These principles are essential to maintaining a strong sense of community, civil public discourse and accountability for local leaders and public institutions.
If you would like to advertise or donate to support us, or if you would like to join the team, reach out to us through our “Contact Us” page: https://cclocalnews.org/contact-us/
We’re looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you around town.
