The COYOTE crew has also learned a lot and have come away with a newfound appreciation for what we’re calling “co-op math.”
With co-op math…
Meetings actually break the spacetime continuum: Every meeting will last at least 1.67 times longer than you think, even if you feel like you’re being efficient.
Every one of COYOTE’s subscribers’ souls is worth 2.87 Olivia Nuzzis (and infinity RFK Jrs because he doesn’t have one).
Kicking one Cybertruck a week balances out the net evil of paying $70/month for Google Workspace.
Even if you pay a wizard $6.66 he cannot tell you why online ads cost what they do. No one knows.
On Ghost, indie media’s web platform of choice, every image you embed is 2000 pixels wide, no matter what you stick in there.
Each mention of a Waymo in a story nets us 1.97 more subscribers.
In all seriousness, in the scant 2.5 months that COYOTE has been alive, we’ve already accomplished a ridiculous amount. (Perhaps another bit of co-op math: Each COYOTE co-founder is actually 3.45 geniuses in a trench coat? Except for Soleil, who is 97 LGBTQ rats.) We’ve learned a lot from the detailed annual reports published by many of our worker-owned peers, and we’ll probably do one next year, but in the meantime here’s a glimpse at where COYOTE is at:
That work has been funded almost entirely by readers (with a tiny dollop of grant funding on the side). We’re absurdly grateful for those of you who have signed up as members already. And/but the reality is that without growth COYOTE can’t continue to create the work we’ve been making. Our team is mighty — 11 of the coolest reporters, photographers, writers, and editors in the Bay Area — but if COYOTE is going to be able to continue doing time-consuming investigative stories, offering free service content, and investing in freelancers, we need to grow our membership.
What makes COYOTE’s deal different from the rest? We’re so glad you asked.
The COYOTE team assembled and embarked on this incredibly challenging project because we believe that local news doesn’t have to be broken: that our communities deserve good, funny, and sometimes ferocious reporters on their side. That we can build a newsroom that isn’t oppressive or cutthroat or controlled by 2.4 billionaires and their AI assistants. That we can, together, create a space for humor and storytelling and investigation and commentary that gives people what they really want out of a local outlet: joy, insight, and accountability.
We want to enlarge our freelance budget to diversify our coverage even more. We’d love to get at least one of us working on this full-time to keep the blog machine running more smoothly (as opposed to having everyone tinkering on COYOTE on top of their day jobs). We want more community events, and to make podcasts, weird hotlines, and documentary shorts! We want to surprise and delight and, yeah, sometimes infuriate you due to the injustices of the world. And we want to do it with you — our community of readers and supporters.
So how do we get there? We currently have 1,400 paying subscribers. To be sustainable, COYOTE needs about three times that number. We’re not going to get there in a month, but we’re running an ambitious year-end campaign to get the ball rolling. And in the spirit of co-op math, we’ve set a goal of getting 2,026 total paid subscribers by the end of the year.
Gift subscriptions will also be 15% off this month, so grab one for a friend — or use the gift to troll someone who really hates smart and life-affirming journalism about the Bay Area. As an added bonus, we’re dropping the paywall during our campaign (December 3-31) to give new folks a chance to check out our work!
If you’ve ever shared or enjoyed a COYOTE piece; if we’ve made you laugh, or cry, or get Big Mad at the world consider becoming part of the pack today.
And if you’re already a member, thank you! You can help us reach our goal by sharing this post with friends, saying nice things about us on social media, posting our stories on Reddit (since we’re technically not allowed to, lol), and sneaking in a casual mention of COYOTE when you’re talking to folks who need a tax-deductible organization to donate to before the end of the tax year ;).
