The news startup created from the ashes of shuttered DCist will start publishing investigative news stories and offering helpful resources to readers by Halloween. The venture is seeded with more than $250,000 in crowdfunded donations, including a sizable, last-minute contribution from a wealthy couple that pushed the fundraiser over the edge. But long-term sustainability remains an open question.
At 51stnews.com, some of the laid-off DCist journalists will take direct aim at misdeeds within Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration and provide readers with thoughtful coverage of crime, according to Eric Falquero and Colleen Grablick, two of the six co-founders.
“I’d say the big things that I heard trend-wise is there needs to be a lot more accountability for the mayor’s administration,” says Falquero, who, like other members of the 51st, has been holding listening sessions with potential readers across almost every ward in the District; a meeting with Ward 7 residents is happening this week, he says, and a meeting in Ward 3 is in the works.
And while Falquero and Grablick credit the Washington Post with “doing a good job” covering crime in D.C., they feel that TV news coverage of it distorts reality.
“People told us they wanted smarter and more nuanced coverage of crime … smart stories that cut through the noise,” Grablick says. “They just want more crime coverage that does not paint the city in this very inaccurate and frankly harmful way.”
The co-founders also want the 51st to serve as a hub of information for readers: explainers on how to testify before the D.C. Council, how to apply for government assistance, and how to get a WMATA transit subsidy, for example.
“A lot of folks were also hungry for stories that celebrate D.C., especially east of the river,” says Grablick, who is attending graduate school in New York but will still write for the startup.
The 51st began a fundraising campaign in July with an initial goal of reaching $250,000. The founders say the goal is the minimum amount they need to launch the site and weekly newsletter and pay six writers and managers to staff it. The campaign stands at more than $273,600 as of publication. A last-minute gift of $50,000 from Viyas Sundaram and Jaya Saxena pushed the campaign over the $250,000 goal.
Sundaram is the CEO of the construction software firm GoCanvas, which was recently acquired by a German company for $770 million, according to the Washington Business Journal. Saxena is the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion for Spencer Stuart consulting firm. Efforts to reach the couple were unsuccessful.
More than 3,000 people contributed during the monthlong campaign (the average donation was $64), though the founders say they don’t know how evenly donors were spread throughout the District.
In an interview on the City Cast DC podcast in July, Abigail Higgins, another co-founder, said they hoped that the initial $250,000 in crowdfunding would be matched by philanthropic donations. “So $500,000 is our initial fundraising goal,” Higgins said. “Which we believe will sustain us for about a year of operation.”
Grablick and Falquero say now that they have enough to launch the site and hope to continue fundraising to meet the initial goal.
Back in February, American University abruptly fired most of the DCist staff (Falquero and Teresa Frontado, another co-founder) and killed the local news website.
After a public outcry, the school agreed to keep an archive of the site online for 12 months, and DC Public Library Executive Director Richard Reyes–Gavilan has said he hopes to buy the archived site and maintain it as a historical record. He recently confirmed that talks are ongoing, but there is no deal in place.
“The WAMU team continues to work on potential long-term solutions for the DCist archive,” Matt Bennett, a spokesperson for American University, tells City Paper. “They will communicate when updates are available.”
The other founding members of 51st—Maddie Poore and Natalie Delgadillo—are all former DCist staffers. All six have been holding down side gigs to support themselves as they work to launch the new site.
“To start, it’s going to be all part-time, but we’re going from part-time volunteer to part-time paid,” Falquero says. “And we will be working with freelance writers, too.”
The donations will allow each of them to get paid a small hourly wage (though neither Falquero nor Grablick were willing to provide a specific rate). They also are planning to hire a seventh staffer to oversee the technical logistics of managing the website and weekly newsletter, and will eventually create the opportunity for subscribers to pay for their reporting.
At the outset, all donors will be automatically subscribed to receive a weekly newsletter, which will serve as the “primary product,” Grablick says, comparing it to Substack.
A similar version of the newsletter will be posted on the website, but the reporting will be free for everyone. The first newsletter will hit inboxes in mid-October at the same time the website will go live.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that all six 51st co-founders were laid off from DCist. Only Falquero and Frontado were laid off.