Yes, I’ll sign up!
January is Melanie’s birthday month, and this year it’s a “milestone” birthday: She’s turning 55 years old.
Important milestones
In honor of Melanie’s 55-year milestone, we are looking for 55 people to help The Lansing Journal reach a milestone. We need 55 people to sign up as new monthly supporters. Will you be one of those 55?
Some background: Why monthly, and why 55?
This summer a newspaper consultant told us it was impressive for The Lansing Journal to have nearly 4,000 subscribers in a town of 12,000 households. This consultant has worked with many other newspapers who have much smaller lists though they serve much larger towns. “It’s clear you are providing a service that is valued by the community,” he said.
But another number was more concerning: our number of monthly supporters. A healthy newspaper typically sees at least 10 percent of its subscribers sign up to give monthly. We were at about 3.8 percent this summer. By the end of December we had reached 4.5%.
If we can add 55 monthly supporters in January, that will put us at 6.1% — more than halfway to healthy!
Here’s your chance to sign up:
Another incentive
When you sign up as a new monthly supporter of The Lansing Journal before the end of January, The Lansing Journal will give you two weeks of digital advertising for whatever event or organization you choose — a local business, your church, the garage sale you want to have this summer, your high school musical, anything that’s suitable for local newspaper publication.
When you make your gift, you’ll get a receipt via email with instructions about accepting the digital advertising.
Your giving makes a difference
Here’s what was accomplished when people supported The Lansing Journal in honor of Melanie’s birthday in previous years:
- January 2019: People gave enough money to The Lansing Journal to help cover the cost of an additional print issue. We published a special edition in mid-April that year to summarize Lansing’s election results. That print issue would not have been possible without those birthday gifts.
- January 2020: 54 new people signed up as supporters of The Lansing Journal, and 35 of those were monthly givers. We didn’t know it at the time, but those gifts helped us through what turned out to be a strange and difficult year.
- January 2021: Readers contributed $5,000 to The Lansing Journal, which allowed us to bring on additional reporters and increase coverage of our local schools.
So…
In honor of Melanie’s 55th birthday, would 55 of you sign up as monthly supporters of The Lansing Journal?
ABOUT THE LANSING JOURNAL: The Lansing Journal is a free newspaper, and it can be free only because of local organizations who choose to advertise with us, and readers who choose to support us. Thanks to those business investments and personal contributions, we are able to deliver quality community content to readers every single day.
