Membership Month 2024: Help grassroots media thrive in New Brunswick

Dear friends of the NB Media Co-op,

It is March – which means it is once again membership month! Thanks to our supporters, we have accomplished some wonderful things over the past year. And what a year it has been for independent media with the passing of the Online News Act and the decision by Meta to block Canadian new content.

Today we’re asking for your help as we launch our annual Membership Month fundraising campaign.

This year, we need your support to increase our monthly donors to:

• sustain the NB Media Co-op throughout the year
• continue to operate with paid staff
• ensure that our articles are never hidden behind a paywall

Please make a donation or renew your membership here and share this call with your networks. We suggest a monthly donation of $5 (annual or one-time donations are also welcome — membership dues are $30 per year, or pay what you can).

Why support your media co-op?

The NB Media Co-op is committed to contributing to a better New Brunswick by producing critical, rigorous and community-centred media. Our full-time video journalist position is financed by annual grants via the Local Journalism Initiative — we are grateful for this support funded by Heritage Canada and administered by CACTUS (Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations).

For the rest of our work, we rely on financial support from members and from organized labour to provide an alternative, independent voice in a province marked by extreme concentration of media ownership.

We are living through incredibly difficult times; the attacks on labour, housing crisis, on-going frustration of reproductive rights,  mistreatment of temporary foreign workers, violence against Indigenous people, the war on Palestine, and ongoing oppression of the LGBTQ2SIA+ community.  The NB Media Co-op has covered it all.

As co-founder and coordinating editor Tracy Glynn states: “In this time of great challenge and change, the NB Media Co-op maintains its commitment to providing New Brunswickers with a critical media platform they know will offer independent and rigorously researched information. When disinformation is everywhere, people can count on the NB Media Co-op to tell the truth”.

At the NB Media Co-op, we believe that people working together can accomplish great things. Your support helps provide news coverage of social movements in New Brunswick, critical journalism on our most pressing issues, and hopeful takes about a more just future. We publish thoughtful commentaries that oppose tired old story lines and confront a dangerous status quo that dehumanizes and divides us.

By becoming a monthly donor, you can help us challenge the power of billionaires, big business, and right-wing populists, by platforming underrepresented voices on inequality, racism, colonialism, and the climate crisis. And we punch well above our modest weight. Today, an independent, critical media voice is more important than ever.

Our goal during Membership Month is to increase our total monthly donations to $1,500. Currently, 92 members are donating $1,076 per month. Increasing this amount would mean:

• 85 new monthly donors contributing $5 per month. Or,
• Ten new donations of $20/month; five new donations of $15/month; five new donations of $10/month; and 20 new donations of $5/month.

Over the past year:

• We joined Unrigged with 20+ non-profit media outlets across Canada to share our news from New Brunswick with a national audience
• We developed a new logo
• And so much more..!

With your help, we will continue to:

• Provide media workshops to community members experiencing socio-economic marginalization
• Distribute print issues of The Brief
• Organize events to increase media literacy and dialogue on critical issues
• Partner with community organizations and social justice academics, to cover urgent issues including the rights of migrant workers and reproductive justice.

We want to do even more, and we need your support to get us there!

In case you need other reasons to support media for social justice: we’re giving away a prize to both new and renewing members who donate in March! You will be entered into a draw to win a subscription to Briarpatch!

Thank you so much.

In Solidarity,

Tracy, Sarah, Susan, Dave and Tobin
The NB Media Co-op Board of Directors