Readers may be dimly aware that I’m releasing this note (and our accompanying BINJ.News weekly newsletter) later on Friday than I do most weeks. That’s because most of the BINJ staff and I were pleased to have been invited to table at an important event: IndieFest, a launch party and fundraiser for our colleagues at the Cambridge Somerville Independent!
Established this year by fellow journalist and longtime friend Marc Levy, well known around Cambridge and Somerville as the founder of the long-running Cambridge Day, the “CS Indie” continues to cover both cities after the Day’s new leadership decided to focus mainly on Cambridge.
Last night’s do was certainly a propitious start for the publication, with well over 100 Cambridge and Somerville denizens in attendance. Held in the commodious and tastefully appointed function room of Bow Market in Union Square, the strong local support for the publication was evident as I chatted with attendees at the BINJ table and periodically wended my way through throngs of well-wishers buzzing with excitement to the cash bar or adjacent pleasant balcony.
Kudos to JJ Gonson, Nina Berg, Mike Guttierez, an array of fine entertainers and other volunteers, and Levy himself for an excellent party. All of us here at BINJ hope the CS Indie raised a bunch of money and we wish the feisty and clearly already popular news organization every success.
To help ensure that outcome, I will just conclude by encouraging BINJ supporters to also back the Cambridge Somerville Independent with a donation of whatever you can spare. Every little bit helps. Cambridge and Somerville still need more professionally produced news, not less, and the CS Indie is an excellent addition to the surviving local news ecology.
Full disclosure: In addition to running the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, I am the volunteer executive director of the Somerville Media Fund, a very small IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation spun off from BINJ as part of our now-shuttered Somerville News Garden project. SMF is taking tax-deductible donations via our Cambridge Somerville Independent Project and giving that money dollar for dollar (minus Stripe processing fees) as general support grants to the Cambridge Somerville Independent in keeping with the Somerville Media Fund’s primary mission “to support the production of useful media and artistic works relating to Somerville, Massachusetts and environs in the public interest.” The CS Indie has started its run as a nominal commercial outlet, but is still working out what its final business model will be.
