Inside LINK is a weekly column from our CEO, Lacy Starling. If you have questions you’d like Lacy to answer, email her at lacy@linknky.com.
One year ago today, Mark Collier, Michael Monks and I signed a flurry of paperwork, attended the OneNKY Alliance Summit announcing the launch of LINK nky, and then went to Keystone in Covington for a burger.
(We tried to get into Blinkers, but we weren’t famous enough. Yet.)
Looking back on that night, it is truly hard to believe how far we’ve come in just 12 short months.
When we built the business plan for LINK, our original projection was that we’d end the first year with six full-time staff. We’re currently hiring our 13th full-time employee.
We thought we’d have a handful of editorial contributors. We have 24.
We thought we’d print a newspaper every other month for at least the first three years. Next month, we launch our weekly print newspaper.
We projected needing to hire a salesperson in early 2023. We’ve already hired two.
We were hoping to put up 45-50 pieces of content a week. We average 85 per week now – more news coverage for NKY than any other outlet in the universe.
I could go on, but you get the point: No matter what goal we set for ourselves in the beginning we’ve exceeded it. By a lot.
And there’s only one way that’s possible – we have to have the support of our community.
The Northern Kentucky community has embraced LINK so much more swiftly that I ever thought possible. The engagement, readership, financial support, and overall excitement that NKY has given us has been absolutely overwhelming.
In the (rare) moments when I get to take a deep breath and a step back, I am truly humbled by the trust and support we’ve received from our audience.
But once I’ve taken that deep breath and been grateful, I remind myself that we’re just getting started. Twelve months is a lifetime in the startup world, but it’s a blip in the life of a community. In order to meet our mission, we need to do more.
More stories, more engagement, more investigations, more listening, more conversations, more EVERYTHING. What we’ve done is impressive. What we’re going to to will be transformative.
It is our responsibility to take the foundation that we’ve created over the past 12 months and use it to continue to build the news organization the people of NKY deserve.
We’re going to take a moment to celebrate today, and to congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve come. Then we’re going to get back to work, because we’re only just getting started.
