The Beacon begins its eighth year

Over the last seven years, the plight of local newspapers nationwide has grown increasingly bleak. With few exceptions, they have suffered relentless declines in circulation, advertising revenue and newsroom employment. As digital technology has given readers new ways to obtain information, the downward trend for newspapers has accelerated.

What hasn’t changed is readers’ desire for local news. The Rochester Beacon is proof of this. Since the Beacon launched on Oct. 18, 2018, its readership has increased steadily—and at times, dramatically. Indeed, traffic on our website over the last 12 months has surged.

But none of this was guaranteed. As I’ve noted frequently on our anniversaries, the Beacon’s cofounders knew the venture could easily fail. Most of us had spent years in the newspaper business and had witnessed the industry’s decline up close. But we believed a new approach could work.

Each weekday we published new stories, and as we did, readership grew. A few months before our fourth anniversary in 2022, the Beacon’s website reached 1 million total pageviews. Today, we log more than 600,000 each year and soon will reach a total of 3 million. We also continue to grow the number of subscribers to our Weekly Review email, which is delivered each Thursday.

The Mission Statement we drafted before the Beacon’s launch, which outlined our promise to the community, remains our north star. We strive to deliver a mix of narrative journalism, analysis and opinion grounded in facts, focusing on the complex challenges facing Rochester. We want our work to be available to all in the community, so unlike many others, we do not charge for access to our content. (If you want to receive links to each article we publish, sign up to receive our free Weekly Review email.)

We believe that for-profit news organizations play a vital role, but we are not one of them. The Beacon is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that continues to be a very lean and entirely virtual operation. For us, sustainability begins with donations from community members who believe in our mission. NewsMatch, our biggest annual fundraising campaign, once again will start Nov. 1 and run until Dec. 31. It is a national matching-gift campaign that matches up to $1,000 per individual donor to eligible nonprofit news organizations, all of which belong to the Institute for Nonprofit News. We greatly appreciate all donations, no matter the amount.

We also are very grateful for the generous backing of corporate sponsors—in particular Bond, Schoeneck & King, lead sponsor of our website and weekly email for many years—and charitable foundations. Over the last 12 months, the Beacon has received vital support from the ESL Charitable Foundation, the Riedman Foundation, and the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation.

To help keep our ship on course, the Beacon has a board whose members include former Rochester mayor Thomas Richards; Alex Amorese, a licensed real estate salesperson at CB Richard Ellis; Mark Armbruster, CEO of Armbruster Capital Management, and Valerie Alhart, the firm’s chief marketing officer; Allison Frisch, assistant professor of journalism and documentary studies at Ithaca College; and Erin Hunt, vice president of marketing at First American. We benefit greatly from their ideas and expertise.

Once again over the last year, the Beacon produced more than 250 articles and features. The most-read website story was “ICE raids Asian food store in Henrietta” by Narm Nathan. Other highly read stories included “Breaking silence over a Pittsford school incident” by Justin O’Connor, “Church without power for nearly a year in dispute with RG&E” by David Wazana, “An expulsion at Eastman” by Alex Holly, and “‘Hands Off!’ rally to protest Trump administration actions” by Jacob Schermerhorn.

In addition to the high number of pageviews these stories generated, they have another thing in common: All were written by young journalists who have been Beacon interns. In fact, two of them—David and Alex—were members of this year’s cohort of eight interns (up from three in 2024). The Oasis Project, our formal internship program, started in 2024. Led by Managing Editor Smriti Jacob and board member Allison Frisch, it is our effort to foster the next generation of local journalists.

In recent months, we’ve had a terrific addition to our roster of regular contributors: Gary Craig, who spent more than three decades as an investigative reporter for the local Gannett dailies. We also started a new recurring feature: Counterpoint, a dialogue between liberal Rick Dollinger and conservative Geoff Rosenberger.

Sadly, this year also has seen the loss of one of our most experienced and valued writers: Will Astor, a Beacon cofounder, died in January. Readers no doubt miss his expert coverage of health care and legal issues; we miss his friendship, loyalty and sense of humor even more.

Will believed deeply in the Beacon, and continued to write for us even as his health declined. He would have been buoyed by the growth of the Oasis Project and enthusiastic about what’s ahead for us, such as the development of the Beacon’s new website, which we expect to roll out in the coming weeks.  

Most of all, though, I think Will would want us to mark our seventh anniversary by once again thanking our readers. You make it possible for us to produce responsible, high-quality journalism and encourage respectful discussion and debate among members of our community.

As we begin our eighth year, we will work each day to deliver on the promise we made when we launched the Beacon.

Paul Ericson is Rochester Beacon executive editor.

The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing  [email protected]