DCist, a digital news outlet run by American University-owned radio station WAMU, was a key cog in the D.C. media landscape before its February closure.

But the staff behind the business and editorial sides of DCist are now starting a new media venture. The 51st, a newsletter focused on accountability and service journalism in the District is set to launch this fall, former DCist staff announced last week.

WAMU leadership cited the COVID-19 pandemic, the decline in the advertising market and struggling philanthropic efforts as motivations for their decision to shut down DCist and lay off 15 employees, primarily in audio production positions. The announcement sparked backlash from current and former WAMU and DCist staffers, who accused leadership of a lack of transparency and an unwillingness to remedy ongoing staffing shortages. 

Eric Falquero, one of the 51st’s founders and the former strategic partnerships editor of WAMU, per his LinkedIn, said conversations around starting the new publication began among laid off DCist staff almost as soon as the publication closed.

WAMU initially deleted DCist’s entire site archives from public view alongside their mass layoffs — content later restored and made available online for the next year due to backlash from journalists, lawmakers and D.C. officials alike. Falquero said the loss of local history and news coverage at the time “lit a fire” under him to create something that could take DCist’s place.

“Not that no one else is doing local news, but just that, like every outlet, every reporter, every story, counts, because there is such a limited amount of resources available,” Falquero said. “And so that was a strong push.”

The 51st won’t be a carbon copy of the staff’s former publication, Falquero said. He said the newsletter will feature one to two “deeply reported” stories each week, which he views as a way to serve the D.C. community while being a manageable and sustainable workload for a small outfit like the 51st, which seeks funding through donations.

“What we’ve talked about up to this point is a weekly newsletter to sort of acknowledge we’re a small team,” he said.

He said the newsletter will focus on four types of coverage: the cost of living in the District, public service journalism like instructions on how to vote, accountability journalism that calls out potential “bad actors” and “pride of place” journalism about D.C.’s culture.

He said the 51st won’t focus extensively on food and arts coverage — a staple of DCist — but the newsletter will find ways to cover them in a long-form style, like profiles of notable figures. He said the 51st settled on these topics because they want the newsletter to hit on the issues they believe are most crucial to Washingtonians. 

Falquero said he and other 51st founders have discussed distributing print copies of the 51st’s service and accountability articles to residents of neighborhoods relevant to the coverage. 

“Like ‘How to sue your landlord to make sure they do their job,’” he said. “That’s accountability. That’s public service. But that’s also the voice and the attitude makes it engaging.”

Maddie Poore — another 51st founder who formerly ran DCist’s membership program — said the staff are running a monthlong crowdfunding campaign to pay their founders and hire new writers. She said staff have been “blown away” by the success of the drive, which has raised about $178,000 of the 51st’s $250,000 goal as of Friday.

She said the 51st plans to pivot to a membership-based monthly subscription service after its launch while keeping all their work free from paywalls. Poore said the newsletter also hopes to find philanthropic help from D.C. residents to keep it afloat, an increasingly common method of funding local journalism.

“Local journalism is one of those things that shines a light on the problems and also the solutions being done,” she said. “So if philanthropists are donating to make sure that people in the community are fed, they also need to be supporting local journalism that is highlighting why people are going unfed.”

Danny Hayes, a GW professor of political science who wrote a book in 2021 about local news decline, said the District has been a “microcosm” of the nationwide collapse of local media. He said DCist’s closure was the latest in a trend of declining D.C. local coverage, including national media titan the Washington Post slashing its local staff last fall.

Hayes said the 51st’s plan for intensive accountability reporting on local government is “exciting” to see from a local news outlet, but warned that a major focus on such coverage isn’t always a massive hit with readers.

“I think that one reason that local news has struggled so much in the last few years is that the kind of accountability reporting that it’s like so central to democracy and is so important to have, is just not that popular,” Hayes said.

He said that the 51st’s model is “pretty typical” among local news startups, where they focus on donations from philanthropic organizations. Hayes said philanthropic support and donations have flown into local media organizations in the past, but there’s no guarantee that will always be the case as such funders often move on to new causes.

Hayes said there’s no definite answer as to the type of business model that can support a news organization long-term. 51st founders said their initial fundraising goal of $250,000 would sustain the newsletter’s operations and personnel for five months, writing that The 51st will “make it work” if they don’t reach their goal and “halt the endeavor” if they don’t “come close.”

“It’s not clear exactly what the long-term business model is that can sustain a news organization,” Hayes said.

Amy Kovac-Ashley, the executive director of the Tiny News Collective — a nonprofit that supports news startups like the 51st through entrepreneurship workshops, fundraising support and networking events — said the collective is acting as the 51st’s fiscal sponsor for grant donations until the IRS approves its nonprofit designation.

She said the 51st’s founders are demonstrating their “community first perspective” through initiatives like tabling at local farmers markets as they spearhead their fundraising campaign.

“They are really trying to be grassroots, from the ground up,” Kovac-Ashley said. “That’s why you see them going to farmers markets and those sorts of things, to really build community.”

Kovac-Ashley said the declining profitability of advertising in local news begs the question of what news organizations can do to create revenue through entrepreneurship and beyond traditional ad deals. She said the 51st’s decision to be a worker-led organization demonstrates the novel concepts that entrepreneurs can bring to the journalism industry. 

“They are one to watch, and we should be both rooting for them and watching what they’re doing in their innovation,” Kovac-Ashely said.