Still mourning the shutdown of DCist? Don’t worry – The 51st is here and ready to fill your local news void.
The 51st is a worker-led, nonprofit news source that was co-founded by six former employees of DCist and WAMU, the public radio station licensed by American University. In February, WAMU shut down their local news site DCist and laid off 15 staffers.
Eric Falquero, one of the co-founders of The 51st, said that the decision to start The 51st came from wanting to continue providing as much information as possible to local communities.
“We want to report on D.C. for people who live here, right? For people who are invested in their community in D.C., whatever that community is,” Falquero said. “What’s the role of local journalism? [I] think it’s to reflect community in addition to informing people and being a trustworthy source for people to go to to figure out what’s what.”
The 51st is funded through donations and subscription plans offered at monthly and yearly rates. The organization also sends out a weekly newsletter detailing all of its recently published stories.
Though the organization is just getting started, it already has big plans when it comes to providing local news to D.C., including expanding its team of writers along with its news coverage.
“The aspiration and the dream is to become an indispensable tool, an indispensable part of the life in the District,” said Teresa Frontado, one of the co-founders of The 51st. “That people find our work relevant, important and that it empowers citizens.”
The organization also held multiple in-person tabling events across the city to ask readers a burning question: What do you want from local news?
Falquero stressed the importance of staying connected with community wants and needs beyond one specific story.
“You have reporters that are interacting out there with folks and asking specific questions for specific stories, but also having our newsroom community connectors… gathering information and bringing that back to newsroom meetings on what we should be paying attention to,” Falquero said.
Frontado said she feels that the need for local journalism has only grown as more layoffs occur across the industry. The journalism industry saw at least 8,000 layoffs in 2023 in the U.K., the U.S. and Canada. There were around 1,000 people laid off in January 2024.
“I don’t think that there has been a moment in the past 25 years where I have seen people more worried and more people aware of how necessary local media is for democracy in general, and again, to engage and empower… citizens and residents,” Frontado said.
Frontado said that the organization will continue “popping up in different places” and hopes to eventually host its own events and conversations.
“I think this could have been a sad story. This could have been a story about the end of a community… And it’s not. It’s a happy story,” Frontado said. “It’s a story about regrouping and putting community in the middle and saying ‘No, there’s a need and we’re going to address it’... For me, I mean, it’s important that it is a happy story that we’re here, we’re publishing, we’re doing it.”
This article was edited by Mackeznie Konjoyan, Maya Cederlund and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Ella Rousseau, Ariana Kavoossi and Sabine Kanter-Huchting.
