 to the backstory this morning, the backstory on the Compass experiment and the Longmont leader, which we'll explain here in just a few minutes. My name is Tim Waters as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media. I've enjoyed the opportunity to moderate now video as well as audio podcasts on topics of interest and relevance to the Longmont community and with the people who are central to whatever those stories are. The irony in today's backstory is we're doing a backstory on the new entity in Longmont that's going to be public-facing. You're going to hear stories, new stories of all types from the Longmont leader as over the next couple of years. Today's the backstory, probably the first of maybe a couple of backstories we'll want to share about the Compass experiment and the Longmont leader as time goes by. But today we're going to start this backstory by hearing from really the two principles right now in the Compass experiment. That's Mandy Jenkins who's coming to us from New York City. Welcome Mandy all the way from New York City to Longmont this morning. Mandy is the publisher and the general manager of the Compass experiment and publisher of the Longmont leader. Mandy you can fill in more of your professional background as I'm going to ask you to do in just a minute. And Macy May who has now been engaged as the executive editor. I think that's the right title. Come along. I think just editor but executive sounds good too. Okay. And the irony of this conversation is that the last the last backstory we did was on Longmont Public Media as our new public access television provider for the city of Longmont. And Macy was introduced then as the executive editor and general manager of Longmont Public Media. So in the month or so since that podcast, Mandy is Macy has been engaged in is going to change hats. That's just an indication of the range of her talents that she brings to Longmont and how diverse she is. So welcome to both of you. And let's get started by telling us a little bit more about who you are, your backgrounds. Mandy Jenkins, let's start with you. Welcome to Longmont. You're muted, Mandy. Oops, I turned it off because my cat was making noise over here. It's hard. It's the state of the art today, isn't it? Yeah, cats. But thanks for having me on today. Ideally I would have been in Longmont. That was my big plan was when we were building the self that I was going to come and spend a lot of time there. But none of us are spending a lot of time anywhere but our homes right now. So we're working this out. But my background is mostly in local news and also in digital startups. So I started my career local public radio and then at local newspapers working on the digital side around the time that that started to become a thing. My first job, I always like to tell people because it seems so ancient now that was putting the printed newspaper onto the internet when we updated this website once a day at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. So I worked all night to put the newspaper onto the internet and I'm like, well, that's it for the news today. Let's go home. And since then been at newspapers, a couple of digital startups, some that worked and some that didn't. I had a brief time at the Huffington Post where I got very into learning a lot more about digital strategy and social media. And a lot of that experience has kind of informed me to kind of come back around and get back into local with this role at Compass. I joined the Compass experiment at its very beginning almost a year ago, actually really close to a year ago. The beginning of last June when we kicked this off. We're going to want to learn more about the Compass experiment obviously. And then like right after these introductions. So yeah. And that's my background. Well, we hope that on the other side of in the post-pandemic world that we see more of you in real time, not just virtually. Me too. All right. Macy, you shared some, you shared, if people want to go back and watch the last podcast they'd learn about Macy, but in case they haven't, tell us about Macy May. Yeah, I'll absolutely give you a short synopsis. I moved here in 2014 with my now ex-husband and my two boys. And gosh, three years ago I started with, I found Scott and Sergio with the fave server and quickly became the editor there and fell in love with journalism and especially local Longmont journalism. It was something that just drove me to get out of bed every day and I just, I loved how Longmont is nearly 100,000 people, but we act like we're 200 people and that small town feel and just being able to share stories is just, you know, just something that fed my soul, if you will. And then as the observer evolved and continued on, we, Scott, Sergio and I got into public access television because, you know, we were pretty much doing most of the same things that the Cable Trust was doing and we, we bid for the city contract and won that. So our focus did switch over to that, which is that last bat story. But as that journey continued, I found more and more that I missed the observer and being the editor and sharing the stories through the written word, which is really and truly what I love. I'm less of a video person. I can do it. I like it. It's fun, but words are really my passion. And Mandy had the position open for editor and I jumped in through my name in the hat again and so here we are and I've been working about a week now, I think. And it's been crazy, but it's been a lot of fun. I haven't scared her. I know Macy is wearing a number of hats this morning. Yes. We appreciate the time that you carved out for both of you to be with us today. You know, I should have in the introduction made that remind that anybody who watches these podcasts, the whole purpose of this is based on the premise that the backstory is at least as interesting as the public facing story on whatever the topic is. And not too long ago, there was an announcement, a release about the Compass experiment and what was coming to Longmont. So a good place to start in this backstory or in this podcast inspector is there. Let's go back to the announcement. There were a number of questions that were answered. We're going to come back to some of those questions before we finish this podcast. But let's go back to what is the experiment? What's the connection between McClatchy and Google in that experiment? And we'll build on that. Mandy, you want to start? Yeah, sure thing. So the Compass experiment was announced at the end of March about a year ago when McClatchy and Google came out and said that they were going to be launching this project to try to explore new sustainable business models for local news. We all know that local news, especially at a super local level like Longmont, is really having a tough time and being able to keep serving readers with the current climate and issues with finding a path forward to be able to keep that going, especially when you don't have print to rely on anymore, which used to be such a cash grab back in the day. So that was the premise of that was that we're going to start some three local news sites within a three-year time span and make different decisions and kind of turn different levers to see what kind of business models will work in different kinds of cities around the US. And we were specifically targeting cities that are underserved by local news right now. So either maybe they had a newspaper close, they've had newspapers really pull back, which is happening all over the country of newspapers losing losing their staff and just not being able to cover what they used to. And I started in early June last year, I actually had come out of a journalism fellowship at Stanford. So that's I'd been doing that for a year and I was going to be coming back into the industry and this sort of seemed like an ideal fit for me. So I really wanted to get back to local news. And our very first site we launched last October. So that was in Youngstown, Ohio. And we ended up going there because the newspaper there had closed at the end of August. And we'd seen, you know, in like June, they'd announced that that was going to happen. So that put it right on our list of a place to go to try to open something new for that community. And we launched it about 40 days after the newspaper had closed and the entire staff at our Youngstown site, which is called Mahometing Matters, all came from that local newspaper. So they all worked there together. And we hired them on to try to continue that tradition of local news in Youngstown. But very early on, I identified Longmont as a place that I wanted to kind of keep an eye on and I can get back to that backstory a little later. But it's pretty interesting because it involves the observer very early on too. But that's part of the story. That's part of the backstory. And I do have that question. But to your question about the Google connection and with McClatchy, so Google is providing the funding for this. So they give the money to McClatchy. We're owned and operated by McClatchy, but we're kind of this independent little country within this large newspaper company. And, you know, they are supportive of us and they certainly help us out with a lot of things like IT and administrative stuff. But, you know, we're completely editorially independent. We have our own technology systems. We do a lot of things our own way. Sometimes they don't like it. Sometimes they're learning stuff from us, which I think is really great that they're always open to hearing how they can be bringing in what we're doing to their newspapers. And Google, they said they're providing the funding to get us started. It's not a huge amount. I always joke it's like couch cushion money for Google is what they're throwing our way to get us up and going and get each of our sites up and going with the idea that we will make money ourselves over time and draw that down so that we're not relying on that for the long term. Well, this is a tested model of for innovators and innovation, right? More traditional enterprises sponsoring, right? A rump group at the edge or outside the edge of parameters of corporate life to discover the test, in this case, to experiment with very innovative approaches to solving long-standing or emerging problems. And that's really what you, it sounds like what we're into right now. Exactly. So you mentioned, yeah, you mentioned Youngstown. Are there, is it Youngstown and Longmont? Are these the two experimental sites right now? Yeah, those are the two so far. We'll be launching a third one sometime. I kind of put it thinking about that on the back burner until we're done getting Longmont up and running. So the intent is ultimately three sites. Right. And how important is context in those, you want widely varied context, similar contexts in testing this approach? Yeah, you know, we really wanted to look at different kinds of cities. You know, I would say that there are some things that Longmont and Youngstown have in common, but there's a lot more that they don't. You know, Youngstown is a very economically depressed community in comparison to Longmont and is shrinking instead of growing just because there's been a huge brain drain happening there. So the cities are facing different challenges and they're facing different news challenges, which is one reason why Longmont also made sense is being able to test some of the things that worked in Youngstown. We want to be able to bring over and test in Longmont and see if they work. And there's probably going to be things that are not going to carry over and some things that will make more sense in one versus the other. Well, that's important, I think, for folks to know. And my next question is about why Longmont, but the context matters in these kinds of experiments. And the context here was conducive for this experiment. So what was it about Longmont? About growth, about economics, about history, and you made reference to the observer. Its presence was a fairly remarkable story by itself out of nothing what this team was able to create. So talk to us about why Longmont. Well, for one thing, you know, I was pretty familiar with Colorado. I was actually born in Colorado. My dad was stationed down at Lower Air Force Base in Denver and then lived there for a lot of my childhood. So I was familiar with the area and always love the idea of being able to have a good excuse to go back. So I will know that everyone wants a good excuse to spend some time in Colorado for one thing. But, you know, early on in working on this project, I mean, I would say within the first few weeks, I'd been reaching out and talking to people who were running small local news sites, who were doing really interesting things just to find out what was working for them, how they made decisions about that. And I had read in the Columbia Journalism Review a story about the observer in the library district. And I was like, this is really interesting. Like, I want to find out more about what these guys are up to. So I sent a cold email to Scott and he accepted it and decided he would take a phone call with me. And we actually had a pretty good long conversation just about how the observer came to be and how, you know, he's been working on thinking about some of the same issues I was about how to make something sustainable and how to serve a local community. And, you know, we agreed to keep in touch about that. And I had noted, you know, from talking to him and just from reading about a lot, you know, the media has really gotten pulled back a lot around Colorado and several cities, Longmont just being one of them, lots of jobs have been shed, lots of papers are consolidating. And Longmont being this really vibrant community. In every way that you can think of a community being by a great art scene, great schools, beautiful place to live, and it's growing while lots of people are moving in. And all of that's happening while the news has been shrinking. And I'm like, that's something that I really kept an eye on. And then when we decided to come out and look at a few different cities in Colorado for our research, we looked at a few places on the front range and also some towards the southern part of the state. And I met with Macy and Scott at the Observer Office and heard about the upcoming move over to Longmont Public Media and just that, you know, they were concerned that maybe they weren't going to be able to devote as much time to the observer anymore. And that really cemented it for me that, you know, without the observer and with everything else getting cut, you know, this is going to be a place that really stands to lose most of its local news. And so that put it right at the top of the list. Does he want to add to, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no, go for it. From the Observer's perspective, Macy, you want to add to this? Yeah, I can recall some of those early conversations with Scott about, oh, I have a meeting with this woman, Mandy, about this experiment with Google. And, you know, if you know Scott, you know, he's a skeptical. He was very skeptical. All of the Observer's interaction with other media support groups and whatnot had been really difficult, actually, because we were approaching news from a nonprofit standpoint and doing things a little bit differently than what a traditional newsroom would do. And we didn't really fit into the puzzle. And no one really knew what to do with us. And so funding was scarce and, you know, which in general didn't get a lot of support. And so he kind of felt like that was going to be the situation here, but he was like, well, I'm going to keep talking. I'm going to keep trying. And I thought there's your construction. Can you hear some construction going on? I can hear some construction. The one you missed is a belt. You might mute yourself, Osselman. That's what I'll do. Thank you. You're welcome. There you go. Down with yours. Anyway, so the more Scott and Mandy kept talking, the more it became quite interesting about how the Compass project might fit in with Longmont. And then as, again, as we started transitioning into Longmont public media, it was, it was truly a situation where we didn't know where the bandwidth was coming from. I had at pieces during the observer done most of the work on my own. And so then I was facing the idea of trying to balance a newsroom plus the public access television at the same time that COVID is starting to hit our community. So news is going up. The amount of news out there is going up and more important to report at the same time. Personally, everybody is impacted and my kids were at home and I can't go in and talk to people the way I had before and public access, just media in general, everything was increasing in workload to try to make sure that the community had as much information as they possibly could. So having Mandy and the Compass project coming in was kind of the light at the end of the tunnel for us knowing that our ultimate goal for the observer was always to have a news source that was focused on our community come in and serve that community. That was what was important to the observer. Whose name was on it was not that important. So it was, it was a very good fit to just to welcome Mandy and the Compass project and to say, please do take over the news part with the leader and, you know, the staff at LPM will continue to do the media as far as television was concerned. Thanks, Macy, for building on Mandy's response. Now the question is, why should anybody care? You two are really into the new into reporting the news. Some of us are into consuming the news, but why not? Why now? Why should we care that there's some new news source in Longmont? I'd say that even aside from us, you know, the importance of having local news that's, you know, based in your city that everybody can have a go to point is really important and one of those things is disappearing across the country. And it's so important for people to have this place because communities that don't have local news, they're missing a few key things. I mean, for one, that sort of gathering place where the community knows that they can go to learn about other people in the community, what's going on there, you really lose out on some of that. And there's also tons of studies that show that communities that lose their local news sources and people aren't reading the news are way more likely to believe disinformation and fake news and to be passing that around. They're more likely to be fearful and untrusting of their neighbors. Those kinds of things, they damage the fabric of the community over time. And you certainly don't want that, especially as a community that's growing and you're bringing in new people who don't necessarily know much about the area and they don't necessarily know about its history and they don't know even where to go and who to talk to. And I think that's also important when you're looking at a place like Longmont that, you know, really is in an interesting position to be able to bring in new residents who can really change things and do really great things as long as you're giving them the information that they need. And I'd say that, at least for us in particular, a reason why it's important to care is, you know, we're really responsive to what the community needs and what the community wants. And, you know, we're building what we think is going to be helpful, but we're doing that really informed by what people in Longmont are telling us. And we're going to continue to be informed by that. I really learned a lot from the experience of the observer and some of what we've done in Ohio as well to have that really be a two-way communication and bringing the community together in one spot is a big part of that and a big part of what we're trying to do for Longmont. Well, I was just going to say, you know, it's interesting that through all of the years, the observers struggled in getting people to look at the website and to read the news and to care about the news. You know, we did, we did at some point reach a spot where we were about, you know, between 30 to 50 percent at any given time, you know, trying to reach in Longmont. But when COVID hit, it was interesting because we saw this huge uptick. We reached, we started reaching 80 percent of the town just because people were creating that information, that non-biased information. What is the government doing? Where do I need to wear a mask? Sorry. Sorry, my kids. Anyway, but people were seeking out that information. Some place to go to just to have a source that wasn't Facebook that they could rely on to give them the up-to-date information. So they knew what was happening and where they could go and what they could do with anything. Businesses, restaurants, and the government, and all of those regulations. So, you know, I think local news is just super important for things like that because it does change from just the state level to the county level to your city level. And people want to, you know, when they have to stay at home, what is impacting me close by? So I think that was a huge important moment. So we've talked about the observer. Who knew, right? As you founded the observer, the platform we were creating for now, what we see with this experiment. But just drill down a bit on the differences between the observer because there are some. The business model, the intent, the rigor, and the scope of news reporting that we're going to expect from the leader than what we experienced with the observer. Tell us what the similarities and differences are between the observer and what we will expect from the leader. Well, from the the observer's standpoint, the whole purpose was to be a nonprofit entity that supplied news to Longmont about Longmont for the people of Longmont and that included the people of Longmont. So you could write in your opinion, you could come and become, you know, a community journalist. Scott Converse founded it around the same principle that he has, the tinker mill and now on public media where it would be a maker space for news. It's very funny because it's hard to report on the news. People don't always understand what all goes into creating a journalistic story and people didn't respond the way Scott necessarily expected. But the concept was there and the beauty of transitioning into the leader is that some of those values will remain with non-biased reporting and, you know, hopefully expanding more into more in-depth stories and deeper reporting and wider coverage because the observer worked with a volunteer staff. I mean, in the three years I worked for the observer, I never made one penny unless the staff did not. But with the leader, we'll have a staff of four people that will be committed to writing journalism and then a business person that will help us build a sustainable model so that it can be around for years and years to come and it won't be so dependent on, you know, just people volunteering their time kind of thing like the observer was. Mandy, I don't know, this is still my first weekend, so I don't want to sit there and say, I got it all figured out. I'm still learning a lot of how the Compass model is working and I want to make sure that we stay in step together. Well, Mandy, from a publisher's perspective, what would you predict we'll see that's different in contrast to the observer? You know, I think that that, for one thing, the fact that we're a for-profit model is certainly a bit different though. I don't think it's as different as people might think, but it does come back to a mission. And, you know, I think we share a lot of the same mission as the observer and, you know, that's just that we're going to be executing in a slightly different way. And I think one of those is that, you know, we are going to be, you know, continuing the reader contribution model, but also, you know, adding on a big component for local advertising and local community partnerships that can help fund the site in the future. And a lot of that we're going to be taking from what we've learned in Ohio. So, there we have some really interesting sponsorships from businesses in the community where they're sponsoring particular content areas on the site. We do have some, like, the sponsored content that you think of where, you know, a business might write a story and will say that it's a sponsored story and they have that on the site. But also, we've had great success there with businesses sponsoring just whole content categories of saying, you know, this, we have a local bank in Ohio that is sponsoring a section that we call Movers and Makers, which is all just about entrepreneurism and thinking about those areas that businesses like that want to be associated with, but that it's also, you know, editorially independent and that we get to write whatever we want in those. But it's a, it's kind of a good marriage of their mission and what they want to have their advertising up against, but also the kinds of stories that we want to write. And that's a good way for us to expand our area there. And I'd say a way that that's different in a lot of ways from local media as you know it right now. And one of the reasons why local media is hurting in particular right now is that we don't use programmatic advertising. That is what's driving a lot of local news sites where it's automatically generated by keywords, you know, people are buying it through these online interchanges. So even if you see a local ad, it might not have actually been bought directly from that business to that media entity. It's bought through some exchange on the internet and the media entity doesn't get very much of that money. And a lot of the companies can make it so that doesn't advertise against certain kinds of content like coronavirus right now is one that they're not advertising against. They're blocking that keyword, which is what's driving down the revenues very rapidly for a lot of local news right now. So we do only direct sales that's built on relationships. It's built on us being in there talking with local businesses, finding out what their issues are, how we can help them get out to the right people and not going through these online interchanges where they're having to do it all like through computers and all of that. Very interesting. Those are insights that most of us would never be close to. How the sponsorship or advertising dollars get both sourced and carved up right? So it's my understanding you are going to hire reporters. Let me go back. Basically the long line observer, if there was ever an example of a labor of love, as you said, nobody ever got paid a penny for founding and sustaining or maintaining the observer. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, no, nobody got paid to do the sustain the core staff, Sergio, Scott and myself. We never got paid to do any of that. We did pay some freelancers for stories here and there, but that was the whole commitment was to continue providing that coverage to our community and not bringing in money for ourselves. So I'll stand corrected that the founders didn't. There were some some freelancers that did, but it's going to be quite different when you have a paid staff team of reporters. So talk a little bit about what might we see that's different in terms of what gets reported, how gets reported, the breadth, scope, edges of reporting that we might see with the leader that we probably didn't see with you. Well, you know, it's been an interesting week in developing some of that. I think it's even just kind of changed my thought processes around how I'm developing some of those stories and what stories I'm looking at and how in depth I would like for them to go. So when I would give a freelancer a story at the observer or even a volunteer who might have been pretty dedicated to covering it, it would still be a very topical coverage. You know, asking a few questions, but not really getting into the depth of the story. But you know, just in trying to create some content for the first week when we launch, I'm already going in deeper. Some of the questions I would have had before that I would have held back on, I definitely have put out there and made an expectation for those reporters to follow through to at least that degree and encouraging the freelancers I'm working with now to go further. But you know, I'm meeting with several reporters today and I know Mandy's been interviewing this week as well. But just having conversations with them and hearing some of the stories that they have worked on in the past, I think that that their natural drive will just get some different kind of perspective stories, like just asking a few questions of what stories do you think long what means. I'm getting some very, very interesting answers and things maybe I didn't even think about like local tourism and things like that that have us a perspective that I hadn't considered, but hadn't even heard it like I hadn't even really read anything on locally. So, you know, I think you're going to see a whole bunch of new topics come up, a whole bunch of new questions come up. And I think a lot of these ideas are going to also be driven by our community. I know Mandy sent several focus groups already. We have more plans so that people will be able to contribute at least ideas. And I know Tim, you actually gave me a great one this morning on a few online topics that I'm not going to share yet because I think it's really good and I would like to keep it a little bit secret. But I think that this would be, you know, we're going to see it more in depth, more varied scope of work that the observer just was not able to reach. Mandy, do you want to add to that? I would just add that it's been really interesting to see the response to the jobs that we have posted. We had something like 120 applications for the reporter jobs. And I mean, we've got some people who are fresh out of school, you know, lots of lots of people coming out from Boulder, but but also just long-time journalists, you know, there's lots of out-of-work journalists around Colorado. Got Pulitzer Prize winners who are applying for these jobs. People who've done some really interesting stories around the area, but also outside the area. And just seeing that response of how many people are really passionate about what we're doing here, I think was been, it's made it difficult for us to hire because there's just so many good people out there. But also it's just really encouraging that so many people want to be a part of something like this. Yeah, it's unfortunate that you have that kind of talent pool from which to select for the reasons that you have that talent pool. That's unfortunate. The fact that you have that kind of talent pool is an exceptional and unusual opportunity to get it right. So how are you going to know if you have it right? Not just in terms of personnel, but how will you, this is an experiment. So there's a timeline. So we talk about the timeline for the experiment. And there's a, and you might, you know, make judgments along the way, but there's a point in time where there's a determination. Was the experiments probably not yes or no successful enough for it to be iterated, adapted, and then generalized, right? So it's no longer an experiment or stabilized. How you make that decision and when will you make that decision? Yeah, those decisions. Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I think for one thing, you know, we're always going to be iterating because there's lots of it. There's like the big test, which is this all this project's existence, but you know, there's a series of smaller tests where it's like, we're going to be covering this, but you know, if no one's reading that, we're not getting great response to it. We're going to stop covering that or cut down on coverage of that and move our very small staff to this instead. So making decisions based on how things perform, what the reactions of the community are to it, adding things and seeing, you know, if we add this kind of service onto the site and it takes up this much time of the team, are we getting enough response to it to justify that expenditure of time and effort on the team? And we're doing that all the time. And I mean, that might be saying that we're going to try out a certain kind of content for three months. And if people like it, great, we'll keep doing that. If we're not really getting great ideas from it, we're not getting a lot of response to it, maybe we'll go and do something else. But the overall experiment part, you know, our goal in this is, you know, we want to be able to get a significant portion of the long line population coming to the site on a regular basis. Yeah, I'm going to say that if we get there within two years, I'd say that's a pretty great sign of success that we're getting like 10% of the population of long line coming to our site many times a month, hopefully many times a day. But becoming a habit for people, that's really going to be a sign that we're doing something right, because that is, that sends a great message to our partners and advertisers and sponsors. But it also means that it's actually working for the people in the community and that they are actually responding to the news that we're creating there. And, you know, at the experiment overall, the Compass experiment is for three years from the launch date, that's how long the Google funding is anyway. And, you know, at that period, if we're able to support ourselves, that we're making enough money to support the local team, and we're getting great response from the community, that's a good sign that that's something that we're going to be able to build a much longer term plan from that. And that it will no longer just be a your average experiment, though I always say that every local news site is an experiment every day, but we just have it in our name. So I won't push on hard metrics, but it sounds like generally, viewership or readership penetrate market penetration, and on the business side, sufficient cash flow or revenues to support the operation. Or the on at least one side of this, then you've got a journalistic side, whether or not you're kind of getting the kind of stories that you're interested in, but it's that combination that will lead to a decision. Is the launch date considered from the announcement or from your first publication? It's actually from the announcement. So we started this at the end of March, beginning of April of last year. And so we've got three years from that point to launch these sites. And that's one of the reasons why we want to get them all out there, give them a lot of time to get going. And then, you know, being able to evaluate, you know, where are we in this? Are we, do we think we're going to be able to get to a sustainable point? And, you know, I definitely see my role in like, we have a little central team that works, that's going to be working across all of the compass sites. And, you know, really, I want to get to a place where our jobs aren't needed anymore, you know, that I look forward to putting myself out of work of being the training wheels for these sites so that we can help get them up, get them going, get a good team. And, you know, in three years, you know, maybe we won't be needed anymore. And, you know, that's a, that's a real sign of a local news site that's, that's sustainable and growing and able to be locally run. Any idea at this point where your, when your first publication might be available, when you're up and going, and we can start reading stories on the new leader website? That's very soon. I'll let Macy tell you. Okay, Macy. So we are launching on the 27th of May, and I believe we have a sneak peek for some of the, is it just the numbers or the donors, maybe? Of the alumni server? It's donors and kind of, I think some of the, the long-time contributors are also a part of that list to get a look at at the night before. Yes. So, so there's a little, a little shindig kind of happening with that. And yeah, but the morning of the 27th, there'll be fresh new content up on the leader website, longmonthleader.com. And right now you can visit that and sign up for emails. And information comes to you as things kind of roll out. Not knowing when these get posted, I've avoided stating the date on which these podcasts occur, because they're not necessarily time specific or time bound. But we are, we are approaching as we do this recording, the 27th of May. So we want to get this one posted pretty soon, so people can have access to the back story. And this will be any part of your soft launch, your soft launch or soft opening. Yeah, yeah, that's, and if you get it to me today, I'll have it up for you by, by early next week. I'm so wearing two hats. Mandy in the, a couple of weeks ago, at the end, well, a couple of months ago now, at the end of March, in a blog post on the medium, you anticipated a number of the questions that people might have about this new experiment and what it means, what it doesn't mean. I want to go back to, that was a great start, because you asked yourself a bunch of great questions and had a bunch of great answers. So these are questions you've already answered, but not maybe, maybe not everyone read the blog post. I want to go back to a couple of them. I think you've answered, again, the question about that you posted yourself. What will the Longmont leader write about? But you want to expand any more about that or on that question? The note I made to myself, is this included, will this include investigating, investigative reporting, which we haven't had much of in Longmont in recent years? Yeah, I'll say that for one thing, you know, next week, we're, when we're doing this, this soft launch, it really is a soft launch because, you know, we're going to be really trying to slowly ramp up. I mean, Macy's used to running websites like on her own, but we're going to be getting her more help. And I think that you're going to see different and more content added over time, especially as we get our reporters hired, bring those people and get them up to speed and really start to find our groove as to publishing. And, you know, over time to adding on things like, you know, maybe we'll add on new features based on some of the sponsors that come in that might give us some really great ideas for kinds of content we want to do or the community will give us ideas for the kinds of content we want to do. But I would love to get to a place where we are able to get that balance of the daily news of things that people need to know, the events that are coming up, some of the fun things that people rely on to know about the community, but also those investigative and more entrepreneurial pieces that are getting into things that, you know, lifting the lid on things that maybe people don't know that much about in the community. And I definitely would like to get to that place when we can be into a daily publishing rhythm, which in the time when we're all figuring out how to put things together, I think we're going to be growing and changing that over time. But I would like to get there. And Macy's already, you know, planning a lot of stories. So I'll kind of throw it to her on what she's thinking. I mean, of course, you don't have to share any secret stuff. She has some things cooking, it sounds like. No, I just really love this story that you did pitch earlier today. It's been one in my pocket for a long time, but it's always good to hear people wanting to hear more about it. I think right now, some of the things that we're going to roll out with, of course, and kind of what what's the next steps with COVID? How is Walmart reacting to that? How has Walmart itself been impacted? And we're going to look at different aspects of that. I'm working with the school district right now to get a story about, you know, kind of some of the stuff that they learned from their experience at home learning. Because personally, I think that's a very interesting question, having basically been a teacher for two different grade levels this, you know, the last few months. And then I have a lot of questions myself. Just what about the future for that? Like, we've heard a lot in the news about, you know, maybe not attending school in the fall, maybe starting off with online learning. So I think those are some interesting questions that I've asked the school district, and we'll see kind of where that goes. But then, you know, I think there's some other stuff that's kind of coming on too, like the census and how that's been impacted not only from COVID, but also especially those underserved populations. So I have a story coming out or being worked on for that. There's, you know, just some different kinds of things in that realm. And then I definitely want to get into more of the arts and culture section, because I feel like we all just need to have something fun. It's summer. Today's the last day of school. And then it just feels like, where's my summer concert? Where's my, you know, my beer on the brewery patio kind of, you know, vibe. That's what we're all craving. And we need to feed into that as much as possible. So I'm just kind of thinking about some of the things I've heard about around Loma that people are missing and trying to connect them as much as we can through the news to some of that lifestyle as well that we're all missing. Well, and some of that answer begs maybe for you to reiterate, and I'm going to mute myself here because I can hear the rumble, but talk a little bit more about those who want to continue to contribute like they have contributed to the observer. Well, we have an addition to our reporters that we are hiring. We do have a freelance budget. And that's kind of where we're starting until those reporters have, you know, have been hired on and gone through all of the HR and on boarded. But, you know, we're also looking at different columns throughout the community, you know, maybe something with the theater company, something with the business, all the business districts, you know, just kind of getting a sneak peek into their world from their, their word of mouth. And then of course, I think, you know, as people still want to contribute, we're still open to seeing what they have to say and definitely getting some of their opinions out, you know, op-eds kind of stuff. But, you know, if somebody just wants to write a column just for the fun of it, I think we're open to that too. And I know that was something that I really loved about reading and the observer was having these voices from the community be a part of that. And we definitely want to keep that part of things going. So people who have ideas and, you know, there's lots of expertise and history in the community that I think there's a lot that we can bring to the table from there. So if, you know, people want to be contributors, whether that's a column or whether they want to do more reporting type work, you know, we've got outlets for that. And I'll plug that if they are interested in contributing in some fashion, our email is info at longmontlater.com. So I've asked you a number of questions that maybe that there are questions I wanted to be asked that I hadn't asked. So if there are any of those, answer them. So I guess, I don't know, Mandy, if you wanted to step in on this one, but one of the questions I know that we have had in the past is what has happened to the Longmont Observer? And the answer truly is that, you know, it's kind of going, by the wayside, the name itself is what governs Longmont Public Media. The contract with the city is Longmont with Longmont Observer, but they do business as Longmont Public Media. So the name will be around for the remainder of the year, but the news entity portion of that will be forwarded on to the Longmont leader. And so you will be able to look at old articles that are currently being archived and organized by the amazing team who have been working really hard to figure out all of those methods. But you'll be able to still read some old articles that will be archived there. So yeah, Mandy, what else is there? Yeah, so yeah, on the day that we're launching our gentle launch, as I keep calling it, you know, that when you go to the Observer site, it's going to be redirecting you to the leader site. And like Macy said, all those stories will hopefully everything looks good, but it'll all be accessible there. And the same thing goes for the Observer social media accounts, at least on Twitter. Facebook has actually already changed over on Instagram, but we'll be changing those to the leader and being able to make that more of a continuous stream of content on there too, so that people can go back and see old posts and continuing on to the new ones. And also I just would want to note that, you know, we're really looking forward to working with Longmont Public Media as partners in all of this. You know, that's something that Scott's always been interested in is this idea of like a private public partnership on media. And I think that that's one of the things that makes Longmont really special. And I think we look forward to seeing what we can do together and, you know, that side with lots of the video and lots of public contributions there, you know, us being a bit more based in text and being able to marry those two up in ways that it makes sense. And of course, we look forward to working out of the LPM offices when people someday go to offices again, whatever that might look like. All right, listen, I appreciate your time and your willingness to share with Longmont viewers and listeners. So a couple of closing comments to the Longmont leader, welcome home to Longmont, number one. Number two, when asked, what are the great things that you know of that came out of Oklahoma? My first response right now would be Macy May. You hail from Oklahoma. Yes, Macy, I got that right. And in response now to the question, what are the great things that have come out of Colorado? I would say, Mandy Jenkins. Now, I don't mean to, I don't mean to reduce you to things, I would say people. Great assets, right, that came out of Oklahoma and out of Colorado. So thanks for your contributions back from Oklahoma and from New York back to Longmont. Longmonters, that's your backstory on the Longmont leader. Thank you.