In 2020, I wrote about a group of local food writers reimagining their work and its role in local news. One of them was Javier Cabral of L.A. Taco.
That for-profit digital newsroom received an Emerging Voice Award in 2020 from the James Beard Foundation. L.A. Taco describes itself as “a platform for Los Angeles. We are a source of news and information covering food, culture, and community in the metropolitan area. We are independently owned and operated by L.A. and for L.A. In our mission, we aim to bring raw and street-level journalism from all corners of L.A. County to our loyal readers, supporters, members, and partners who share our passion for Los Angeles.”
And, when called, those readers were loyal.
This week, my colleague Amaris Castillo wrote about L.A. Taco’s call for help when faced with furloughs.
“I don’t think that we knew how much people cared about us,” said investigative reporter Lexis-Olivier Ray. “And it just felt like people weren’t going to let us fail, no matter how depressing things felt, or what we were thinking personally. It really felt like L.A. had our back …”
You can read the full story here.
L.A. Taco’s story offers a good reason to go back and revisit the work of The Membership Puzzle Project, which spent years devoted to helping newsrooms build robust membership platforms that go far beyond the “give money, get a tote bag” model. And from last year, here’s Medill’s Local News Initiative on the very real problem of subscriber churn and how to fight it.
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