Thank you, Winchester!

Today we offi­cial­ly launch our new web­site, WinCity Voices! We are excit­ed and thrilled to begin the sec­ond year of an incred­i­ble jour­ney to bring inde­pen­dent, non­prof­it jour­nal­ism to Winchester and Clark County. There are many things to cel­e­brate as we begin our sec­ond year of operation. 

First and fore­most, we have built — and con­tin­ue to build — an impres­sive sta­ble of tal­ent­ed writ­ers and artists! We’re able to pub­lish insight­ful com­men­tary, col­or­ful and infor­ma­tive fea­tures about peo­ple, places, and events in our com­mu­ni­ty, his­tor­i­cal sketch­es, works of art, pho­tog­ra­phy, short fic­tion­al sto­ries, and more. We can only do this because we have near­ly twen­ty reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tors who sac­ri­fice their time and ener­gy to cre­ate for WinCity Voices with no com­pen­sa­tion except the sat­is­fac­tion of con­tribut­ing to our mis­sion, vision, and core val­ues!

Second, we are for­tu­nate to be able to con­tin­ue to oper­ate on a non­prof­it basis, with­out installing a pay­wall or intru­sive adver­tis­ing, because of the gen­eros­i­ty of a hand­ful of local peo­ple who have shown their com­mit­ment to our cause by mak­ing cash con­tri­bu­tions to WinCity Media, our par­ent company. 

Would you like to join these folks by becom­ing a con­tribut­ing writer or artist or by sup­port­ing us finan­cial­ly? If so, we would love to wel­come you to the WinCity Voices fam­i­ly! Here’s how you can do that.

Finally, we must thank you, our read­ers. Our audi­ence has grown by leaps and bounds, and our growth has accel­er­at­ed in recent weeks in antic­i­pa­tion of the event we spon­sored to cel­e­brate our big mile­stone, The Voices of Winchester: A Night of Storytelling.

We are advo­cates for change. We want to build a bet­ter Winchester and Clark County. We want to edu­cate, inform, and enter­tain. We want to build up and for­ti­fy the things that make us stronger as a com­mu­ni­ty and tear down the things that hold us back. 

The turnout Friday evening was amaz­ing — and we have got­ten so much pos­i­tive feed­back that we are hop­ing and plan­ning to make this an annu­al event! 

Where we’ve been

Some peo­ple have asked me, why change the name of the site? And why WinCity Voices? 

When we start­ed this ven­ture last October, it was just Chuck and me. As for­mer news­pa­per colum­nists who missed our past gigs, we decid­ed to start “a lit­tle blog” to give us an out­let for our writ­ing. Before we launched it, I put some­thing out on Facebook about the project — and was imme­di­ate­ly over­whelmed by friends who want­ed to be a part of it. When we launched the site, we had about a half-dozen or so contributors. 

As the site grew, we real­ized we would­n’t be able to meet the expec­ta­tions of hav­ing “news” in the name. So we refo­cused on doing what we do best — cre­ative writ­ing: com­men­tary, fic­tion, and the like, as well as art and pho­tog­ra­phy. But we still had that pesky word “news” in our name, and it caused much con­fu­sion among our fol­low­ers. Some of them expect­ed to turn to us for sports scores and police reports and oth­er things you find in a newspaper. 

So we decid­ed in the spring of this year to take a step back and fig­ure out just what kind of an orga­ni­za­tion we want­ed to be and re-brand our­selves to fit that descrip­tion. We held a series of work­shops attend­ed by many of our lead­ers and con­trib­u­tors and worked out a whole new identity. 

We are advo­cates for change. We want to build a bet­ter Winchester and Clark County. We want to edu­cate, inform, and enter­tain. We want to build up and for­ti­fy the things that make us stronger as a com­mu­ni­ty and tear down the things that hold us back. 

Where we’re headed

There is much work ahead. We’re look­ing at attain­ing IRS non­prof­it sta­tus so we can seek broad­er and more sta­ble finan­cial sup­port. We want to be more vis­i­ble in the com­mu­ni­ty, show­ing up at events and host­ing our own events. We want to show­case not just our voic­es but your voice as well. To that end, we’ll be doing more fea­tures about the peo­ple of our com­mu­ni­ty — not just the lead­ers and famil­iar faces, but espe­cial­ly those whose voic­es don’t get heard enough. 

In review­ing our new mis­sion, vision, and core val­ues, I’m struck by the fact that we have a lot to live up to. Even our new name implies a lot about who we are — we have to reflect every voice, not just our own. Because we’re not Pete’s voice or Chuck’s voice or Erin’s voice or Randy’s voice — we’re WinCity Voices.

That’s us. You and me and all of us. We are Win City.