Worcester Sucks turns four!
Worcester Sucks turns four!
A state of the newsletter address
Today is a special day: the four year anniversary of my quitting Worcester Magazine and launching this newsletter!
On Friday we celebrated in person at Redemption Rock. Thank you to everyone who came out and donated. We raised about $350 for the Worcester Disaster Relief Fund! And this is now my favorite picture of all time I think.
The post today is fun and different: We’re rolling out a brand new column and talking about the state of the newsletter. And then some other odds and ends.
Of course everyone’s talking about the six-hour city council meeting last night. I’m going to save my thoughts on that for the regularly scheduled Sunday posting. But these are the headlines: Moe Bergman’s Mill Street order failed with Kate Toomey as the deciding vote (lol), Candy Mero-Carlson got pretty racist in defense of ShotSpotter, and Thu Nguyen asked the police chief why he’s allowed to advocate for ShotSpotter funding while also trying to get a job with the company.
Before we get any further, I have a special anniversary offer for you:
Just $34 for a whole year of supporting this little newsletter that could as it heads into its fifth year.
Tips are also nice!
Introducing… Worcester Speaks!
Ladies and gentlemen, we are adding a fourth regular column to the Worcester Sucks local journalism empire. It’s called Worcester Speaks, and it’s a Q&A series with cool Worcester people written by none other than Liz Goodfellow, this newsletter’s stalwart copy editor for almost two years now.
As Liz describes in her intro, this newsletter has been heavy on the “sucks” and light on the “love it.” Her column is a way of remedying that disparity. The idea is that we spotlight people in the community who we think deserve spotlighting. That’s it. A 100 percent “love it” endeavor.
“Worcester Speaks!” will appear monthly, and the first interview subject is Jenn Gaskin, because she’s pretty objectively the best among us. We have a few more lined up but no spoilers!
Know someone Liz should talk to for this? Send a line to billshaner@substack.com with the subject line “Worcester Speaks.”
If you’re a subscriber, you may have already read Liz’s column. It’s in your inbox at least. Like Shaun’s “Bad Advice” and Aislinn’s “ WPS In Brief”, “Worcester Speaks!” has its own section on the website, and will come to your inbox separate from my weekly posts.
Like all the other writing on here, this column is paid for by our subscribers. You pay me and then I Venmo Liz for her work. Simple yet effective. So here’s a reminder about that deal :-)
Below is an excerpt, then you can click the link at the end to read the rest! Cheers! And let us know what you think.
Worcester Speaks #1: Jenn Gaskin
By Liz Goodfellow
It’s been four years, and Worcester Sucks is finally ready to tackle the second half of its title! I’m kidding—Bill’s tireless efforts to investigate Worcester’s sundry failings are of course a labor of love. But responding to recent events doesn’t always leave time to appreciate the people working to make Worcester the place you know and love. Here you’ll find the first in a series of interviews with notable Worcesterites. The goal isn’t to promote upcoming events or offer yet another platform for the powerful, but to have substantive conversations with people who think seriously about the city and, in various ways, invest in its success.
Our inaugural interviewee, Jennifer Gaskin, was generous with her time and candor. I’ve condensed and lightly edited a long, in-depth conversation for clarity. If you know someone who ought to appear in this space in the future, send us an email at billshaner@substack.com with the subject line “Worcester Speaks.”
Liz: Where might people in Worcester know you from?
Jennifer Gaskin: So most people know me from being the founder and president of the Worcester Caribbean American Carnival Association, which I started in 2012 with my husband. Both of our families are from the Caribbean, my husband from Trinidad, my family from Grenada. We participated for many, many years in the Boston Caribbean Carnival and when we moved out here to Worcester we realized that there was a Caribbean community out here, but we weren't really being represented or seen. I think it culminated with my daughter. I think she was in like first grade at Greenwood Elementary School. And she had said to her friends that she was going to Trinidad for school vacation, and she said nobody knew what Trinidad was.
And I understand you're also an admin of the Mutual Aid Worcester Group?
I am. I started moderating in 2020, the first year that the mutual aid group started. And it's actually been a really amazing experience, just really being able to witness the community show up for each other. 'Cause that's really all mutual aid is—it's “I have something that you may need,” and standing up for each other as a community. And it's also given me visibility into a lot of stuff that's going on in the community that I otherwise wouldn't necessarily be aware of because I'm not connected to those different aspects of the community. And it's actually made me, in my mind, a better member of the community and more aware and more empathetic.
State of the newsletter
It’s been four whole years of Worcester Sucks now. Hard to imagine! I went back this afternoon and read my first post—from June 19, 2020.
Here’s what I promised.
I’m going to continue the gonzo experiment of blending opinion and reporting. I’m going to tell you just how I feel, but I’m also going to turn you on to stuff you should be paying attention to. I’m going to stick up for the people who need to be stuck up for and stick it to the people who could use a good stick every now and again. I’m also going to write nice things about kind and/or cool people doing kind and cool things in Worcester. I’m going to continue to use the breezy conversational tone I employed in Worcesteria, my old column at WoMag, and though you’ll get good reporting you won’t get it in Reporter Speak. You will never once read me use a word like “woes” or whatever other stupid language reporters have to use to Sound Objective. You’ll never once hear me talk about systemic racism as if it is a matter of opinion and not objective fact.
When I launched this thing, I had absolutely no idea it was going to work at all, let alone be my full time job some four years later. It was a desperate move, and as such it wasn’t really scary. Now, it’s very scary. I have something to lose!
So I want to take some time here to offer an in-depth look at where we are versus where we started, and most importantly where we want to be.
For paying subscribers, this is as much about you as me or anyone else on the team. None of this would be possible without you.
First off I hope you agree with me that the writing keeps getting better. I feel as though I’ve grown in my craft tremendously since 2020, and I’m hungry to get better and try bigger things.
Some of the work over the past year I’m most proud of:
John Monfredo's "teen-age accuser" takes her power back
Big long essays about specific Worcester problems as a petri dish for America’s ills. That’s the Worcester Sucks lane baby. Very grateful I get to continually work on the form here.
In the months ahead I plan to complete two of my most ambitious projects to date: a book proposal on homeless encampment sweeps, and “A People’s History of I-290,” a substantive look at what the city lost when it put a highway through its heart.
Before we get into some newsletter metrics, please consider once again helping to support this publication!
The numbers
But I want to let you all in on the metrics. Subscriber totals are the most important, because that’s the sole source of revenue.
At about 18 percent, this is an above average ratio of overall to paid subscribers. Substack itself says most newsletters hover around 5-10 percent paid. That we’re doing better is a testament to people feeling we provide necessary work. But still, as we’ll get to, more paid subscribers is key, and growing the free subscriber list is how you grow the paid, really. So recommend the newsletter to a friend why don’t ya?
On that note, we hit two milestones recently: 700 paid and 4,000 overall. That we’re still growing after four years is tremendous. Here’s the long view of overall subscribers...
Line goes up! Still!
And here’s the same four-year look at the paid variety.
You’ll notice the paid line is a lot more wobbly and that’s to be expected. The biggest dips are reliably in late June early July, when there are the most renewals going out. Hence the 50 percent off deal!
The gross revenue chart looks a lot like the paid subscriber chart for obvious reasons...
So that’s where we’re at, ultimately: The newsletter makes about $46,000 annual at the moment, and it steadily makes a little more.
It’s not a salary, and so not a 1-1 comparison, but it’s a good deal more than I made at any journalism job previously. When I left Worcester Mag, I was at $36,000 I believe.
But $46,000 isn’t a lot either! For my lifestyle, I can make it work as a sole source of income. And being able to do the newsletter full time has helped it grow tremendously.
Since taking it full time back in 2022, I’ve added new writers with standalone columns, taken on ambitious projects, and launched a local media non profit.
Worcester Sucks was just me when I started, and now it has a real team.
There’s Shaun Connolly with Bad Advice, Aislinn Doyle on the school beat with WPS In Brief, and now Liz Goodfellow, the resident copy editor for years, is stepping up as a writer with the interview column Worcester Speaks. On top of this, countless other people have written freelance pieces that enriched the newsletter with a diversity of voices. All this work is paid for out of the money I receive from paid subscribers.
While it’s difficult to see a direct correlation between this larger team and the subscriber count, it’s really obvious in the web traffic. You see it start to jump in July 2023, when I brought Shaun’s Bad Advice on, and then continue to rise.
A little scary to think about what the subscriber numbers would look like if I didn’t bring more people on board!
The numbers here make me feel very comfortable saying Worcester Sucks has a lot of stability and a lot of room to grow. We’re not going anywhere any time soon.
What’s ahead
My goal with Worcester Sucks has always been to build a real deal alt weekly style newsroom. I’ve been talking about it since at least 2022, as seen in this post from that November.
My ultimate goal for Worcester Sucks is a real, heavy-hitting, scrappy alternative newsroom covering the city like a hawk. An alt-weekly of old, but adapted to the current media landscape.
While we’ve tried our hardest, Worcester still lacks that newsroom. Even with a small handful of staffers, a truly independent and fearless local news operation would provide the sort of coverage and carry the sort of institutional weight which would truly hold the local power elite to account. It’s easy to mostly ignore a single writer like me—as they have, of course—but a lot harder to ignore a bonafide outlet.
More than anything, a paid subscription is an investment in the belief Worcester needs that and should have it. With the Telegram in sharp decline and myriad small outlets chasing the same surface-level stories, local journalism that actually holds power to account is in short supply.
A major step toward that goal would be bringing on a second full time writer. Right now, that remains a pipe dream. The newsletter would have to be making probably $120,000 annually before I could consider it. That’s 2,000 paid subscribers, give or take. At the current rate of growth, we’re years away at least. May never get there.
But at the same time, it’s sitting right there. If just half our subscriber list was paid, it’d be a reality.
At $120,000 a year, I could afford another full time reporter at a $50,000 salary, with money left over for taxes and freelance work. In the current state of local journalism, $50,000 is a very competitive salary. We’d be able to get someone with real talent for that money. Someone as good if not better than me, that’s for sure. That person would get free reign to produce the best work they can with no outside pressure. I’d look for someone with an investigative reporting and data journalism bent. I continue to fill my little quasi-columnist role while the second reporter focuses 100 percent on digging. I think I can safely say I’ve been more aggressive than other outlets on the police department, homelessness, and housing affordability. Imagine me and another reporter uncovering new information about these subjects the city tries their best to keep a lid on. There’s so much good, investigative work to be done here with time and resources and skill dedicated to it.
In that scenario, with that second reporter, Worcester Sucks really starts to become a bonafide outlet with institutional weight.
That’s just one hypothetical, of course. There are plenty of others. The Worcester Community Media Foundation could raise enough grant money and philanthropic donations that it becomes the primary funder of a news outlet, and Worcester Sucks subscriptions become just another revenue stream. There’s another outlet or medium that does better than this newsletter, and we shift focus to that.
The goal is to build the alt weekly of the future. I’m entirely agnostic about how we get there so long as we do. The state of local journalism is so perilous we need to be pursuing anything that might work.
The success so far of this newsletter is a gift. It afforded me a rare opportunity and I don’t take it lightly. I want to make sure I do as much as I can with it. I want to build a real institution of independent journalism in this city—however it ends up looking and however long it takes. I want it to be something that exists without me. Outlives me, even.
So here’s to another four years of Worcester Sucks! It’s been the pride of my life doing this thing. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.
One more paid subscriber pitch for the road...
Ok bye bye! More Worcester BS to come on Sunday.