Clayton Crescent

On the eve of the U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia, The Clayton Crescent 's sole employee is hard at work, running from the new one-room office in downtown Jonesboro to a campaign rally in Riverdale to a virtual City Council meeting, punctuated by research, interviews, writing, photography, video production, and administrative tasks.

And you know where Robin Kemp will be on Election Night--keeping watch over the ballot count, just as she did on November 5, and the audit, and the recount.

The Clayton Crescent thanks everyone who helped make the dream of nonprofit news in Clayton County, GA a reality. Now it's time to hire a staff!

We're expecting our 501(c)(3) determination from the IRS in the next few weeks and we are committed to nonprofit news for the 300,000-plus residents of Clayton County, as well as our underserved neighbors in the Southern Crescent.

We need your help. We must raise enough funds to bring us through the end of 2021 and to hire at least one additional full-time staff member, preferably two. 

News coverage is not cheap. Salaries, while modest, are our biggest operating expense. Each employee also needs medical and dental insurance. Many of our startup expenses were for things like a high-speed scanning printer and office furniture--things we won't need to replace for a long time, if ever--and our operations expenses are modest but mission-critical.

If you live in Clayton County, we need your financial support--right now and in the future. If every one of the 300,000 people in Clayton County gave just $1, we could hire a full staff and add professional video production capabilities for one year. If 2,000 of you gave $25, we could hire a second employee, two interns, and cover our expenses through 2021.

We are working on plans to give back to the community in other ways--like sponsoring paid internships for college students and community events that will raise Clayton County's profile and bring new energy to our neighborhoods.

Whether you can give a little or a lot, every dollar is an investment in your community, your neighborhood, your city. Studies by groups like The Pew Research Center  prove that, wherever a community newspaper dies, government becomes more secretive and less accountable.

Clayton County is at extreme risk of becoming a news desert .

We're not going to let that happen in Clayton County.

Take a stand. Fight the good fight. Join us.