By David Gordon, CVPost board chair
When we launched the CVPost website in February of 2015, we hadn’t totally figured out where we wanted to place our emphasis.
Should it be on unreported stories about the nonprofit organizations that help to keep the Chippewa Valley functioning? Or should we aim to fill in some of the increasing gaps in general news coverage that were becoming apparent in local print and broadcast operations?
The board at that time thought both were needed, so we wrote a mission statement reflecting both options.
That statement was long and involved. It ran some 195 words and laid out far too many details of what we thought was important from a 2015 perspective.
Most of those items are still important but some have proven to be unrealistic, at least so far. For example, there has been relatively little community response to the mission statement paragraph that said we hoped to publish “material developed by Chippewa Valley residents and presented in their own voices.”
Additionally, when we looked back recently at the content we have provided, it was immediately clear that – in practice – we have reported most often on general community news. We’ve also published news and feature stories on the nonprofit sector, of course, but less frequently than we originally anticipated.
The net result was that the CVPost Board voted unanimously to adopt a new mission statement. This 2021 version is far shorter and reflects more accurately what we’re actually doing. It reads as follows:
The CVPost provides unreported and underreported news, analysis and commentary on topics of local interest in the Chippewa Valley.
That’s our effort to sum up what we do in 176 fewer words than we used in our 2015 version. We hope you approve!
One final note: this newly-minted mission statement absolutely does not mean that we will stop covering the nonprofit sector here. There are many “unreported and underreported” stories there that merit additional coverage and we will continue to seek them out and post them. If you have suggestions for us along that line, we’d be delighted to receive them. Just drop us a note at cvpostwi@gmail.com.