We have many COVID-19 stories to tell. Your support will fund new health care reporting
Last month, the Bradenton Herald launched a new fundraising campaign to bolster our coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and larger healthcare-related issues facing our community. Since the start of the pandemic in March, you have repeatedly shown us -- namely with your readership and your subscriptions — that you find our coverage of this unprecedented story to be essential. We remain committed to bringing it to you — with your help.
This is the second time I have asked you to contribute financially to our efforts to cover the COVID-19 story. Back in the spring, as COVID-19 became the story of our lifetimes, and the local economy — including much of our advertising base — slammed to a halt, I pleaded with you to help us with whatever you could give.
Back then, we were in an emergency situation. I shared with only a few how dire our circumstances were, but your donations helped us avoid layoffs and other cutbacks in the Bradenton Herald newsroom as the effects of the pandemic radiated throughout every part of our community.
I was awe-struck as the donations and words of support flooded my office. We usually only hear from our critics, but I quickly realized they are only a loud minority. I asked you to invest in YOUR newspaper, and you responded, to the tune of more than $20,000.
Additionally, the Knight Foundation, through a COVID-19 relief fund at the Manatee Community Foundation, awarded us a $50,000 grant that underwrote the work of one of our reporters and kept our COVID-19 coverage in front of our online paywall through the summer.
The money we raised helped sustain us through a difficult economic time and allowed us to not only cover pandemic but other tumultuous moments in 2020, including local reaction to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.
The answer to my pleas was clear: Through your donations, subscriptions and advertising, you demonstrated that you believe we are essential, to you and to our community.
Thank you for your help and for your faith in our work.
So what’s next?
Well, for one, COVID-19 does not appear to be just going away. As I write this, the case count in Manatee County is surpassed 14,000, including 340 people who have died because of the disease. We plan to continue updating those numbers, but we also want to expand and deepen our coverage.
In early March, Manatee had one of Florida’s first confirmed COVID-19 cases, and within days we were all wrestling with the health, economic, political and other issues that now define the pandemic. The Herald did not have a reporter even partially dedicated to covering health care. So we reorganized beats to report what was happening and to hold accountable public health and other officials, an approach that we believe has produced outstanding coverage, like our stories about how the local medical examiner was responding to the pandemic, what one family learned after a loved one died in a nursing home and how small towns in Florida were responding to the crisis.
Our goal for the new fundraising campaign is $30,000, which would go toward hiring a reporter to cover COVID-19 and other healthcare issues full time. This reporter would examine, among other issues, the impact COVID-19 has had on life in Manatee, the future ramifications on our overall physical and mental health and the shortcomings the pandemic has revealed in the local healthcare delivery system.
The pandemic has highlighted that healthcare is a topic that affects everyone, and we want the coverage in YOUR newspaper to reflect that.
To contribute, go givebutter.com/TheBradentonHerald. (And if you are more comfortable writing a check, you can send it to Bradenton Herald Give Butter, 1111 Third Ave. W., #100, Bradenton, FL 34205. Make out the check to Local Media Foundation and write “Bradenton Herald” on the memo line.)
While I am grateful for your support, we continue to explore other creative ways to fund our COVID-19/healthcare coverage and other journalism. If you have any ideas, I’d be happy to talk about it with you.
Again, all I am asking is for you to again invest in YOUR newspaper and in YOUR community. I promise you the payoff will be well worth it.
In advance, thank you!
Marc R. Masferrer is president and editor of the Bradenton Herald. You can reach him at mmasferrer@bradenton.com
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 10:42 AM.
