The Oxford Free Press Announcement
Hey Folks!
My name’s Sean, and I’m the founding editor of the Oxford Free Press! You may have seen our website go live in the past few weeks, as well as our Facebook page.
I’m writing to you all to give you some more information on our publication and how you can support our mission of bringing local journalism back to Oxford. Apologies if you’re getting this through multiple listservs, but I appreciate your time!
Our primary mission with the Oxford Free Press is to bring back robust, independent local coverage of Oxford, the surrounding townships and the Talawanda School District. Other publications like the Journal-News only come to Oxford when the most major stories break, and student publications like The Miami Student and the Oxford Observer rarely touch on township news and are dependent on Miami’s academic calendar. With the Free Press, we’re covering local government, businesses, events and more, both online and in print.
Our first print edition will be released on Friday, July 12. We’re hoping to become an important resource for local news, a unified physical events calendar, obituaries and print advertising.
As a nonprofit organization, though, we can’t do that without the support of the community.
Financially, we anticipate getting most of our funding through small donations. Your donations (either through our website or by check to P.O. Box 857, Oxford OH 45056), go toward three main expenses. First, they support our staff, which currently includes myself, our full-time reporter Taylor Stumbaugh, and our part-time designer Macey Chamberlin. Second, they offset the costs associated with digital publishing, including website hosting, technology fees, accounting services and more.
Third and most importantly for Oxford, they make a print edition possible. We’ve heard repeatedly that Oxford is a print town, and we want to make sure our stories are accessible throughout the Talawanda School District geographical area regardless of whether residents have access to the internet. Right now we have funding from the Menard Center for Democracy which will cover several print editions, but it is not indefinitely sustainable.
If you’re able to make a financial contribution, it would help us immensely. Everyone who donates $100 or more gets access to a members-only newsletter which will include a digital edition of the paper each Friday. For those of you who opt to donate by check, make sure to include your email address so that I can include you on that newsletter.
If you aren’t able to make a donation right now, there are other ways you can help, too! First, you can sign up for our free weekly newsletter which goes out on Mondays and stay up-to-date with our coverage. Second, engaging with our social media accounts, sharing our newsletter with friends and talking about what you’re reading is the best way to help us reach a larger audience.
Finally, you can get in touch with me at editor@oxfreepress.com any time to discuss our coverage, suggest story ideas, offer feedback on our print and online editions or just introduce yourself. So far we’ve covered personnel tensions at Talawanda and College Corner, a new restaurant opening in town, how the Coalition for a Healthy Community is making resources available to low-income residents and more, but we don’t know what we don’t know. If there’s something we’re missing, reach out and let me know, or reach out anyway just to say hi!
Thank you all for your time, and I hope you’ll consider supporting us!
- Sean
