This column wraps up our annual “year in review” series by Asheville Watchdog journalists. So far you’ve heard from:

• Watchdog visual journalist Starr Sariego, whose powerful photos and videos captured the images and emotions of our community throughout the year.
• Watchdog reporter, opinion columnist, Answer Man, and bon vivant John Boyle, who provided much needed clarity to the murky water situation in Asheville after Helene;
• Watchdog investigative reporter Andrew R. Jones, who scooped the news that patients at Mission Hospital were in “immediate jeopardy” of harm or death because of HCA’s failure to comply with basic safety standards;
• Watchdog investigative reporter and co-founder Sally Kestin, who described the heartbreak of reporting on “The Lives We Lost” to Helene, the deadliest and most destructive storm to hit our region in more than a century.

Now it’s my turn. 

On behalf of Managing Editor Keith Campbell, Executive Director Linda Topp, outside directors Trish Jones and Marta Reese, and all our other volunteers and part-time contractors, it’s my privilege to tell you why Asheville Watchdog itself was one of the year’s happier stories.

Here’s why: Despite a year of much upheaval and distressing trends in the news industry nationwide, The Watchdog continued its trajectory of rapid growth and secured its place as a reliable, sustainable, primary source of important local news for Asheville and Buncombe County.

This is biased reporting, of course. It’s also bragging. But it’s also to provide a peek into the inner workings of The Watchdog. These days, with public trust in the news media at historic lows, I think it’s important that readers get to know us better not just as neighbors but also as a reliable source of impartial, quality news. Here’s my case:

In early 2020 a small group of volunteer retired journalists and news executives launched Asheville Watchdog as a civic experiment, with one big unanswered question: Would the community support quality, in-depth local news, the kind of fearless, independent journalism that other local media were unable, or unwilling, to tackle?

The answer is now clear: Yes.

Here are the facts:

As of this writing, The Watchdog’s front page — www.avlwatchdog.org — has attracted 1.7 million visitors in 2024 (up 150 percent from 2023). People looked to us for reliable news in a tumultuous year.

Those visitors logged 2.9 million pageviews (up 137 percent over 2023), an astonishing number for a four-year-old online-only news organization. In the local market we trail only the long-established WLOS-TV and Asheville Citizen-Times websites, both of which serve much broader geographic areas. Our growth has been consistent and began long before the “Boyle Water Advisories” and Answer Man columns that became must-reads following Helene. 

Nearly every day throughout 2024, the small but feisty Watchdog team delivered important, thought-provoking, and sometimes heart-breaking news to our neighbors — for free, as a public service to the community.

We’ve posted 388 news, opinion columns, and Answer Man columns so far in 2024, hitting our managing editor’s goal of having something fresh and interesting for our readers every day.

To put that in perspective, just two years ago, in 2022, the Watchdog team posted 88 stories.

We were able to hit that story-a-day milestone in 2024 as a direct result of the financial generosity of our readers, which allowed us to hire a staff of full-time professional reporters and managers. More donations = more hiring. More reporters and editors = more stories of interest to you, the reader.

We truly are grassroots, a community-supported venture. Eighty nine percent of The Watchdog’s annual funding comes from individual donors.

The remainder of our revenue comes from our grants, including through NewsMatch, which until midnight tonight (hint, hint) will match dollar-for-dollar new donations of up to $1,000. 

The Watchdog’s journalism team consists of two paid full-time reporters (Boyle and Jones) and a full-time paid managing editor (Campbell), and a visual journalist (Sariego) plus our core team of unpaid, part-time volunteers including Pulitzer Prize winners Fiedler, and John Maines, and Emmy and Murrow award-winner Michelle Feuer.

We also welcomed Michelle Keegan as a part-time marketing and development director. To keep our website and databases humming and secure, we hired contractors Jason Reed and Logan Venderlic.

The Watchdog’s three volunteer co-founders — former Tribune Publishing Co. vice president Bob Gremillion, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Kestin, and former New York Times reporter/editor me — were honored in 2024 as recipients of the Leadership Asheville Forum’s “Circle of Excellence” award for “outstanding and dedicated service to the community.”

We also collected in 2024 the Insight Award for Explanatory Journalism for our 2023 four-part investigation of Asheville’s $3 billion tourism industry and its effects on the community. Kestin conceived the series, and teamed with Jones, Boyle, Sariego, and Campbell to produce the national award-winning series.

In 2024 we also said “happy second retirement” to original Watchdog volunteer reporter Barbara Durr (UNCA turmoil, Silver Tsunami), and former Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter John Reinan (artists priced out of River Arts District, legal cannabis). Thank you for your service.

Happily, The Watchdog’s annual revenue grew a bit faster than our expenses in 2024, which will allow us to add another full-time investigative reporter to our paid staff in 2025. Stay tuned.

Although we’re sometimes described as professional cynics, in reality most journalists are optimists; we do what we do because we think we can make a positive difference in the community. Our ability to do that — through our  rigorously reported and fact-checked journalism — is imperiled by an incoming president who has repeatedly threatened to punish a free, independent press for doing its Constitutionally protected job.

We won’t back down. Strong, local journalism is more important than ever. Thanks to the support of the community, The Watchdog looks forward to 2025 full of hope and determination.

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Peter H. Lewis is The Watchdog’s executive editor and a former senior writer and editor at The New York Times. Contact him at plewis@avlwatchdog.org. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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