I am pleased to announce that LkldNow has been awarded a $20,000 Sustainable Publishing Solutions grant from the Knight Foundation. We were one of 25 independent newsrooms chosen for the grant in a nationwide competitive process.

Huge thanks go to Trinity Laurino, our community engagement director, for assembling our application under a very tight deadline.

The grant’s purpose is to let digital newsrooms upgrade their underlying technology. (The grant won’t fund our newsroom; we still need community support for that.)

LkldNow will use the grant for both a redesign of our website and a move to Newspack, a publishing platform built for small and medium-sized news organizations that incorporates best practices for presenting news and growing readership.

We’re looking forward to being part of Newspack. First, it’s a part of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, which powers LkldNow and 455 million other websites so we know we’ll be getting world-class tech support. Second, the Newspack staff and the nearly 200 participating news organizations include some of the best minds in independent news publishing and there’s a huge focus on collaboration and problem solving.

Some of the goals of our redesign will be to improve readability of the site, increase reader engagement and improve our offerings for the local businesses that support LkldNow through sponsorships.

We’re in the very early stages of planning the new design, so we don’t know when our readers will see it yet. We’re aiming for November. We’ll keep you posted.

— Barry Friedman, Editor & Publisher, LkldNow