EDITOR’S NOTE: Why Salem Reporter is providing free access for local schools
Last spring, I visited a class at North Salem High School. I was there to interview a few students and teachers about a program to help teens file their taxes.
One student’s reaction to my introduction surprised me.
“Salem Reporter? I love you guys!” he said. He pulled up our website on his school computer and said he appreciated learning about what was happening in schools and the community through our reporting.
I’ve been covering local schools for Salem Reporter since our newsroom was founded in 2018. Much of my reporting necessarily focuses on big issues: district budgets, state and federal policy impacts.
But my favorite stories are always those where I get to go inside classrooms and speak with the educators and students who actually spend their days at school. Through my time in Salem, students have candidly shared their thoughts with me about school lunches, the 2024 presidential election, weapon detectors, the Bush Park shooting, Black student experiences, teacher job cuts and so much more.
That’s why I’m thrilled that Salem Reporter is now providing free access to our news coverage to the Salem-Keizer School District. That means all district employees on their work computers, as well as students with district-issued Chromebooks. The staff, students and the school district pay nothing for this service.
We rolled the program out earlier this month. Already, we’re getting good feedback.
“It’s been so long since I’ve had an example of real local news to share. All our students have known is what they read on social media,” a high school librarian wrote.
As a small, independent newsroom, we do our best to balance the public good of informing citizens with our need to pay our journalists and cover our expenses.
We aren’t dependent on a handful of philanthropists or foundations to cover our bills. Instead, it’s our thousands of subscribers, most of them paying $12 per month, who keep our lights on.
But we know many people – among them high school students – often lack the resources to pay for a local news subscription. That’s why we have been providing free access to Salem Reporter at the Salem Public Library too – at no cost to the city.
We view these steps as part of our duty to the community. I hope opening this resource will give students a hands-on way to develop media literacy and understand the result of professional reporting. And I hope it empowers more students and educators to tell me about what they’d like to see in their schools.
Contact Managing Editor Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers education, economic development and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for over a decade and is a past president of Oregon's Society of Professional Journalists chapter. Outside of work, you can often find her gardening or with her nose buried in a book.
