Publisher’s Note: Why your Monitor is a bit light this morning

How’s this for a morning duh: Diversity is nothing but good for a newsroom. Without it, we can’t well claim to cover every possible angle of a story.

Your Monitor has a bit of work to do on our cultural diversity efforts. We’re working on that. We are proud to report, however, that we do fairly well in terms of gender diversity. To wit:

It starts at the top with our editor-in-chief, Liz Pagano, and our politics editor, Jo Clifton. They understand our city better than just about anyone. They work long hours making sure that your steady diet of well-reported information doesn’t ebb.

Our copy editor, Nina Hernandez, and our proofreader, Tricia Olszewski, watch our backs. They make sure that our reporting is accurate, well-written and (mostly) free of spelling errors. They are up late Sunday through Thursday to be sure that what you read is just as good as we say it is.

Contributors Kara Nuzback and Cate Malek, as well as Audrey McGlinchy and Syeda Hasan (whom we share with KUT), all produce the content you need to stay informed. And nothing beats the work that they produce.

Our intern, Sunny Sone, has spent time on both sides of our firewall. She’s produced news as an editorial intern, and now she helps think about marketing and audience decisions that are critical to our understanding of our readership and will ensure that we can do the work central to our mission. She is also the future of our industry.

And there is, of course, Monica Williams, who is the boss over at GivingCity Austin, and a key member of your Capital of Texas Media Foundation team. Monica knows the world of Austin philanthropy better than anyone.

Put simply: Without these folks, we’d have no publications. And, though Liz did think about observing the national strike in honor of International Women’s Day yesterday, she decided that our role in providing reliable information was important enough to keep things running (though we did drop a story to drive home the point). I’m grateful for that. I’d argue a good many of you are, too.

That all said, I’ll ask two things: Send an email to Liz at editor@austinmonitor.com. Tell her that you read this, that you appreciate her work and that of our team, and that you are grateful that you’ve got a publication to read this morning. She’ll pass it along to the others.

Consider a donation. Your dollars keep these folks doing the good work that they do.

Thanks as always.

Onward!
mk

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.