The Rundown

Thanks to supporters like you. At a time when most cities have no coverage of their civic affairs, Hamilton enjoys full coverage and high-quality livestreaming of all meetings at City Hall.

For the past year, this experiment has successfully improved our community running on pure passion and meagre resources. 

The challenge now is to build the resources to not only continue with the current coverage, but to do much more.

With your continued support, we're going to do more and continue the momentum we've built that is making our City better as we enter the important 2014 municipal election campaign.

Thank you!

In 2012, we decided to launch an experiment in Hamilton. Could we use crowdfunding to provide our own local coverage of public affairs in a way that was innovative, informative, and helped improve our City's civic discussion?

The answer - after thousands of hours of coverage - is a resounding Yes!

Because of you, we've been able to provide public access to City Hall meetings, the Police Services Board, the School Board, Town Halls, and the news that matters to all of us 24/7.

Now, we're going to answer the question:

Can high-quality local journalism that focuses on in-depth discussion of the issues have a positive impact during a Municipal Election?

This crowdfunding campaign is to support continuing coverage of civic affairs,

2014 and Beyond!

I'm committed to continuing to cover Hamilton in the coming years, and to building a sustainable public-interest media outlet that is reader support and accountable.

Your support of this crowdfunding campaign will achieve the following:

• Continuing coverage of every meeting at City Hall, including the review of agendas cover-to-cover, and monitoring to ensure the information you need is known.
  
• Coverage of every candidate and campaign during the 2014 Municipal Election, including interviews with every candidate, and livestreamed debates in every Ward across our City.
  
• The tools you need to make an informed choice for the future of our City on election day in October.
  
• The funds to start a "40 issues" event series to bring subject matter experts together for in-depth discussions of the issues facing our City and municipalities such as our own.
  
• Continuing operating costs of Hamilton's more comprehensive civic affairs coverage.
• Support the growth of our own outlet to hire more Hamiltonians to cover Hamilton.
  

What's Next

The challenge for local journalism is sustainability and the problem is paying for journalist. The solution is not a paywall. The solution is creating high-quality journalism that people value and are willing to voluntarily support.

We're doing that in Hamilton right now. This campaign will support:

• Renting space in The Seedworks to allow Joey to work more efficiently and to have a studio setup to provide informative livestream conversations with newsmakers;
• Funding monthly costs of providing livestreaming;
• The start-up costs of holding monthly panel discussions on major issues - across the City - as part of a plan to improvement engagement and voter turnout; and
  
• the foundation towards improvements and a business plan supporting the growth of local journalism in 2014.
  

The Benefits to All

Your support enables everyone to:

• Benefit from a more informed community conversation;
  
• Accurate, Responsible real-time reporting;
• Access to public information that no other media outlet releases.

Other Ways You Can Help

Please help spread the word about the campaign: .

• Share on your Facebook, Twitter, Blog, and other sites

• Watch the livestreams;
• Join the Twitter conversation;
• Become engaged during the 2014 and Have An Impact on the Future of Our City!

And that’s all there is to it.

Thank You!