Usually, the Redmond Spokesman is mailed out to a couple thousand subscribers who keep local journalism alive in Redmond.

But this week is different. More than 20,000 local addresses received this paper for the first time. That’s because — thanks to the generosity of local advertisers — we were able to send our work to people who don’t regularly subscribe to the paper.

We did this for a couple of reasons, the simplest of which is that we’d like to reintroduce you to our product. We also know there are plenty of new residents in fast-growing Redmond who don’t know about us, and are looking for a way to get clued in to their new community.

So let us introduce (or re-introduce) ourselves.

The Spokesman is the oldest business in Redmond. But when our previous owners went through bankruptcy a few years ago, the newspaper struggled. We lost our downtown newsroom, all of our local editors and reporters, and our connection to the community. We lost a lot of our subscribers, too.

But we’re back at the top of our game now, doing high-quality work that is focused on everything between Terrebonne and Tumalo.

Here’s some recent upgrades we’ve made to make us stronger:

In 2022 we opened a new downtown newsroom at 361 SW 6th., right next to the Odem Theater at the corner of 6th and Deschutes. We did that so we could be more responsive to readers and advertisers. Stop by and see us! We’re great listeners. And we’re always interested in the things you care about and want to know more about.

We’ve added staff. I was hired in 2022 and bring nearly two decades of experience as a reporter and editor to the job. We recently added Kim Yancey to our advertising team and reporter Joe Siess, most recently of The Bulletin in Bend, to the news side. We also have Redmond High graduate and COCC student Fabian Ruiz working as an intern covering the local sports scene, and will welcome Oregon State University graduate Hannah Lull next month as our prestigious Snowden intern.

These are folks are out in your community attending meetings, writing features, digging into thorny issues, celebrating a new restaurant or business, compiling an events calendar and more.

It’s pretty rare for there to be more reporters covering a town than there was the year prior. The nationwide state of journalism is in pretty rough shape. In 2023, an average of 2.5 newspapers closed every week.

In each of those places, a community connector was lost. Data has shown that municipalities that lack local journalism have higher tax rates, lower rates of civic participation, and higher rates of political polarization. That’s not the future we want to see for Redmond.

But in order to buck the national trends in journalism, we need a wide base of community support from subscribers.

That’s why we’re sending out this free copy. We hope you read the paper closely and consider subscribing — either to our weekly print edition that gets mailed to you every week, or for digital access.

Many people get their news online, so we strive to be first and accurate and have constantly updated information on our website, www.redmondspokesman.com. All our stories appear there first. And with a digital subscription you can read them all, including subscriber-exclusive content.

Our city keeps growing and The Spokesman is trying to keep up. As the city’s only local, independent media we know that helping citizens keep tabs on all the changes in their is an important job — and a job we’re committed to doing well.

Consider subscribing and staying informed with affordable, accurate, timely, fun, important, critical information about your community. All the funds we raise from subscribers gets funneled right back into our newsroom — so we can continue to improve, better serve our readers, and tell the story of Redmond for another 100 years.