Dear readers: The Observer needs your help

Dear readers,

We all began March in a starkly different place than we began April.

Like nearly all of you, our business — and the work and personal lives of our Observer team — has been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic and the fallout from it.

But our journalists are continuing to work night and day to report the information you want and need in uncertain times: urgent updates on the spread of the virus and response to it, information to help you and your family stay safe, news about resources available as our community eventually begins recovery and much more.

Our team has worked to answer questions, investigate news tips and help people manage their lives as so many residents have increasingly isolated themselves and their families.

Readers — many of them new to us — have responded powerfully. Readership of our journalism has grown tremendously throughout March, and our combined print and digital reach is larger than ever. We’re grateful that readers have told us, in large numbers, that our journalism is helping them manage through this crisis and is valuable in their lives.

But as this pandemic delivered an economic shock to our economy, many local businesses have pulled back their marketing and advertising while they shut down temporarily or scale back service. As a result, advertising revenue for local newspapers across the country has fallen dramatically. That business impact has put many newsrooms in dire circumstances, and is likewise impacting ours.

We need your help.

In recent weeks, we’ve made our coronavirus coverage available to all readers, regardless of whether they’re Observer subscribers. That journalism is expensive to produce, but we’ve offered it to subscribers and non-subscribers alike because it was the right thing to do and because Observer journalists are deeply committed to public service reporting for our community and neighbors.

Going forward, we’ll continue to make some of our coronavirus coverage accessible to everyone — articles that are focused on urgent and daily news updates and those that provide critical information for your health and safety.

This doesn’t change anything for our subscribers who are reading this and who always have access to all of our journalism with their subscription.

But if you aren’t a subscriber, I’m asking you to please consider supporting this journalism by becoming one. You can subscribe here and provide our journalists with vital support to continue their work.

If you’re already a subscriber, here’s another way you can help: Thanks to a partnership with Report for America, we’re adding a journalist to cover minority communities in Charlotte, and extending another RFA position to cover affordable housing issues. Both of these reporters’ work will focus heavily on community recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

But we need our readers’ support to raise matching funding for these positions. Individuals, organizations and businesses can make a tax-deductible contribution directly to Report for America using the form at bit.ly/RFAObserver. Contributions will directly pay the salaries of these two reporters.

Yet one more way you can help — let us know about stories we should be reporting or questions you have about coronavirus. You can reach our editors via email at corona@charlotteobserver.com.

We’re painfully aware that many people, organizations and businesses in our community are hurting now. I know they’re also asking for your support, and that many readers are simply not in a position now to subscribe or make a donation. I understand, and we’ll continue to make vital coverage available to you.

But if you are able to support our journalism, I hope you’ll consider doing so. We can’t survive and thrive without the backing of our community.

Sherry Chisenhall is executive editor of The Charlotte Observer.

This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 6:20 PM.