In January, readers across the world devoured High Country News stories about the costs of building the border wall, the conflict between small-town residents and wealthy second-home owners in a Western resort area, and the gun-toting, transgender alpaca ranchers who are toppling stereotypes in rural Colorado. The appetite was so great, in fact, that we hit our second-best month of all time on hcn.org, with more than 536,000 visitors. Not too bad, considering that our record had just been set last November, with 597,000!
The expansion of our audience is one of the top goals of our 50th Anniversary Campaign. Now, thanks to the generosity of our readers, we are making the investments needed to keep us on an upward trajectory. It starts with people: In February, we hired Michael Schrantz as marketing and communications manager. He joins Director of Product and Marketing Gary Love, who signed on in September, and Laura Dixon, our events and business partner coordinator. It’s the first true marketing team HCN has ever had.
The next step is technological. With additional campaign donations, we hope to revamp our website, moving it to a more flexible and customer-friendly content management system. If you read only the print version, you’re missing out: hcn.org delivers not only all of our print content, but also quick analyses of current events and stories from our stellar media partners. Signing up to receive our newsletters is a great first step toward accessing everything we do.
Of course, the print magazine remains a primary tool for outreach. Thanks to a flurry of reader donations in early February, we are now sending copies to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Interior Secretary nominee Deb Haaland and every single member of Congress.
The online universe is clearly the place where we’ll find many of our future readers. Still, we can’t wait to return to the kind of in-person gatherings that brought staff and readers together for decades. Stay tuned for details about future get-togethers, both on Zoom and in the flesh.
We are excited to announce that Brandon Yadegari Moreno has been chosen as our first climate justice fellow, a new position made possible with support from the Society for Environmental Journalists. Brandon is a producer and cinematographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, on Lisjan (Ohlone) lands that were never ceded. He reports in both English and Spanish, focusing on displacement, migration, queerness, and land use in the American West and Latin America. The son of immigrants, Brandon was raised in Tucson, Arizona, and holds a master’s degree in video journalism from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. You can check out his work at brandonyadegari.com.
—Paul Larmer, for the staff
CORRECTIONS
In our story, “Life After Coal” (February 2021), we erroneously reported that the Salt River Project paid $110 million to the Navajo Nation. It was one of multiple stakeholders that paid the $110 million, which was part of an extension lease signed when the plant was closed. In “Remembering William Kittredge,” we included a photo of Lake Abert, noting it was in the Warner Valley, when, in fact, it is northwest of it. In the photo caption with the story “Mountaintop removal threatens traditional Blackfoot territory,” the mine shown is in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, not Alberta. In the January issue’s 50th anniversary pages looking back on the 1990s, we stated that President Bill Clinton took office in January 1992 rather than January 1993. We regret the errors.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Our expanding universe.
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