Why I subscribe to the Ann Arbor Chronicle (part 2)

I’ve written before about why I subscribe to the Ann Arbor Chronicle. As of today, my Ann Arbor Chronicle Number is 10. That’s the number of months I’ve been sending a modest donation to the Chronicle. The data comes from this page which also gives me the Chronicle Number of some other Ann Arborites I’ve met in my travels there:

23 Bill Tozier
32 Peter Honeyman
50 Linda Feldt

Here’s a chart showing the growth in numbers of donors per month¹:

The Chronicle’s evolving policy on donation — and disclosure thereof — is, like everything else about the publication, thoughtful and nuanced.

I have two reasons to hope that the trend shown in that chart¹ will continue. One is professional. The Chronicle was the first publication to adopt the web of events model that I am trying to establish more widely. So the Chronicle’s success helps me advance that cause.

The other reason is personal. Though I’m a refugee from journalism I care deeply about it. I wish the kind of journalism practiced by the Chronicle on behalf of Ann Arbor could happen in my town. And in yours.

I’m glad there’s a foundation chartered to help journalism reinvent itself. But while I deem the Chronicle eminently worthy of funding from that source it has thus far received none. And maybe that’s a good thing. Over the long run only broad community support will be sustainable. So I hope the Chronicle achieves that, and shows other communities the way.

1 July 2013 notwithstanding. But maybe as of today, August 1, the July data remains incomplete?

2 The spreadsheet behind the chart is here. And the code that created the spreadsheet is here:

import re

f = open('donors.txt')
s = f.read()
s = s.replace('\n\n','\n')
months = re.findall('\d{4,4}.+', s)
lists = re.split('\d{4,4}.+', s)
lists = lists[1:]
assert ( len(months) == len(lists) )

for i in range(len(months)):
  s = lists[i]
  s = s.strip('\n')
  l = s.split('\n')
  print ( '%3s\t%s' % ( len(l), months[i]) )

""" 
date copied/pasted from http://annarborchronicle.com/subscribe/ 
looks like this:

2013 July
Linda Diane Feldt
Nancy Quay
Jeremy Peters
Bruce Amrine
Mary Hathaway
Katherine Kahn
Sally Petersen
...
2013 June
...

output looks like this:

 93	2013 July
117	2013 June
120	2013 May
120	2013 April

"""