To our readers,

Last May, I wrote that it was time to change the ownership of NWCitizen. Today, I am pleased to announce that a new LLC with several owners has purchased the site. I am one of the owners, but will play a decreasing role starting today. The importance of this action is that this site will now continue indefinitely, not dependent on one person, but controlled by a group that can add owners and provide stable management for our citizen journalists. For starting, we are Deb Gaber, long time copy editor for NW Citizen and previously for the Whatcom Independent, Dick Conoboy, a long time writer for NW Citizen, and myself, John Servais, who started this site in 1995.

Indeed, the mission of this website is to provide an online venue for local independent citizen journalists. They inform their fellow citizens on local news and provide their perspectives on important community issues. The owners of the LLC will not receive any income from the site - not a dime. Our writers have always contributed their articles, and this will also continue. We all are committed to the ideas that our community needs to be informed of what our governments are doing and that this website for citizen journalists is worth our effort.

We try to provide information to our community that is not available from the professional news media. We all know of the struggles of corporate media and this is not a criticism of their efforts. It is an attempt to do what we can to help each other - as citizens - to participate in our local political process and vote intelligently.

Finally, I want to thank those who have helped me keep this site online for 23 years. I hope you will continue your support with donations for the LLC expenses. I want to thank the other 13 writers for their commitment to our community, the time they spend in research, and effort it takes to keep writing these articles that inform us all. We citizens are responsible for our own governance - and that can only be effectively done when we know what our elected officials are doing.