WinCity Voices enters a new era of growth and local news

About a year after launch­ing in late 2021, what was then known as WinCity News and Views need­ed a refresh. Our direc­tion had changed; we quick­ly real­ized that we lacked the capac­i­ty to pro­duce qual­i­ty news reporting.

So we shift­ed our focus and began doing what we did best: com­men­tary, pho­tog­ra­phy, and cre­ative writ­ing about arts, music, cul­ture, hap­pen­ings, and peo­ple. To empha­size our com­mit­ment to giv­ing space to pre­vi­ous­ly unheard voic­es in our com­mu­ni­ty, we changed our name to WinCity Voices.

That approach worked well for more than three years. We grew our audi­ence — albeit mod­est­ly — through­out most of that time.

But a few months into 2025, I began to sense we were reach­ing a plateau. Through dis­cus­sions with our advi­so­ry board, we made sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant changes. We opened an office down­town. We joined the Chamber of Commerce. We put out a call for more writ­ers to diver­si­fy our audi­ence. We stepped up fundrais­ing. And we expand­ed our advi­so­ry board.

All of that got the ball rolling.

From July 2025 through February 2026, we expe­ri­enced rapid and unprece­dent­ed growth in audi­ence size. Despite a slow start, we end­ed 2025 with a healthy 27 per­cent increase in page views over the pre­vi­ous year. Through the first quar­ter of this year, we’re on pace for anoth­er record-break­ing year.

But some­thing else hap­pened, almost by accident.

Randy Patrick retired from his job in local gov­ern­ment and was eager to return to his first love: jour­nal­ism. With decades of expe­ri­ence writ­ing and man­ag­ing news­rooms in Kentucky, Randy spurred us to con­sid­er some­thing we’d nev­er done before.

We hired an expe­ri­enced free­lance pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist to expand our news coverage.

And although Randy has most­ly been busy with polit­i­cal writ­ing this cam­paign sea­son, he will soon return to what he loves most: inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, analy­sis, and features.

As we strength­en our emerg­ing news­room, we are — in a way — com­ing full cir­cle. We aim to be a com­pre­hen­sive source of local news, com­men­tary, fea­ture sto­ries, and arts and cul­ture coverage.

It’s an ambi­tious step for an orga­ni­za­tion that relies almost entire­ly on vol­un­teer con­tent cre­ators and finan­cial sup­port from donors. But we have been so encour­aged by the results over the past few months that we’re ready to dive in.

You may have noticed a refresh of our web­site. All of our con­tent is now cat­e­go­rized as either news, opin­ion, arts and enter­tain­ment, or fea­tures. Beginning next week­end, even our newslet­ter will be divid­ed into those four categories.

One thing we have heard from read­ers as we’ve dipped our toes into seri­ous news is con­fu­sion about our objec­tiv­i­ty. Let me be clear: unless a piece is labeled as “opin­ion,” we will always strive for jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty and unbi­ased report­ing, to the extent that remov­ing all bias is possible.

As for our opin­ion sec­tion, it’s no secret that most of our com­men­ta­tors are left of cen­ter — some far­ther left than oth­ers. We’re nei­ther ashamed nor apolo­getic about that. Historically, print media have empha­sized a spe­cif­ic ide­ol­o­gy on their edi­to­r­i­al pages. The best out­lets suc­cess­ful­ly kept that sep­a­rate from their reg­u­lar news reporting.

And while we are a dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion, that’s exact­ly what we aim to do.

Don’t care for our opin­ion pieces? That’s fine. Check out the oth­er sec­tions for sto­ries about what’s hap­pen­ing around town — what’s going on at city hall and the cour­t­house. Enjoy the film and music reviews. Read about some of the great peo­ple, busi­ness­es, and orga­ni­za­tions that make Winchester and Clark County such a great place to live.

We’re not get­ting rid of any­thing; we’re sim­ply adding to it.

And by the way, if any con­ser­v­a­tive writ­ers would like to take a crack at thought­ful, qual­i­ty com­men­tary, we would wel­come the chance to work with you.

Finally, any­one can sub­mit an item for our Your Voice fea­ture with­out com­mit­ting to becom­ing a reg­u­lar correspondent.

And lest any­one think we are com­pet­ing with oth­er local media out­lets, let me assure you we are not. We do not sell adver­tis­ing, so there is no threat there. Nor do we charge for sub­scrip­tions. So please patron­ize busi­ness­es that adver­tise in the Sun and, by all means, be a sub­scriber. The same goes for our great local radio sta­tion, WWKY.

Winchester and Clark County need all these organizations.

We have a strong work­ing part­ner­ship with The Winchester Sun, shar­ing con­tent both ways and engag­ing in reg­u­lar phone calls with its edi­tor. Between the two of us, we hope to fill in the cov­er­age gaps.

This is yet anoth­er way local jour­nal­ism is chang­ing and adapt­ing. Without local media, the com­mu­ni­ty suffers.

WinCity Voices will con­tin­ue to evolve in response to the needs and desires of Clark Countians.

Thanks for being a reader.