Greetings,

Welcome to all our new subscribers, paid and free. We at The Edge are blessed by your support in whatever fashion you are able to offer it. Founder, publisher, and lead reporter and editorial writer at The Edge, my name is Whitney McKnight, and I would like to extend a hearty welcome to you on behalf of all of us here. 

We’ve had so many new subscribers in recent weeks, that a little background on who we are and what we do is in order, so let me fill you in. In short, we are growing. 

Who we are

We already had a few contributors, including Professor José Mora, PhD, who writes, What in the World?!, a a regular column in our Opinion section dedicated to exploring how world politics directly impact us here at home, and Jennifer Even Melton, our nature photographer for the now retired, but soon to be replaced, column Birds of Berea. We also hope to offer you more from tech columnist Chad Hembree in the months to come.

Now we have on staff as part-time reporters, Jemi Chew and William Bryant. Jemi covers the Richmond City Hall beat and has been filling in for me on the Berea and County beats while I address some health issues. William is a general assignment reporter for all three jurisdictions. Jemi joined us this month, while William came aboard in late May.

Support for their positions has been made possible by Press Forward Blue Grass, through the Bluegrass Community Foundation. 

Erin Teegarden is my assistant who also recently took over the How Can I Help? column, which will resume running every other Saturday as of this week. Next up is a focus on the Berea Home Village, so watch for that. We'd like to have more nonprofit helping organizations from Richmond featured. But regardless of where you are in the County, if you have a helping organization you’d like us to include in the column, please send a brief sentence or two about it and your contact information to us:

Connor Williams is my podcast production assistant. Connor and Erin’s roles were supported by Partners for Rural Impact up until last month, for which we say thank you. They have been with me for over a year now, but that funding has since expired, so we now cover their roles through our partnership with Press Forward Blue Grass.

It's a real honor to be training the next generation of Kentucky's journalists and communications professionals. Jemi comes to us by way of the University of Kentucky. William is a rising junior at EKU. Connor will graduate this coming year from Berea College, and Erin already did graduate from Berea College. My goal is to obtain the necessary funding to offer these up and coming reporters full-time.

As for me, in my various roles as either a reporter or a communications professional, I have been observing people in power and covering their policies in action for nearly four decades now. Born in Lexington, and raised in a community of ex-pat Kentuckians from Woodford and Estill counties living in South Florida, my international career has taken me to places far and wide, including a decade spent covering health policy and economics on Capitol Hill.

Now, I am so proud to have come home to Kentucky where it gives me great joy and pleasure to serve readers like you and others who tell me The Edge is having an important impact on local public policy discussions. 

I also have an advisory board, and will make an announcement soon about some changes on that front.

Our mission

We do not endorse any candidates nor political parties at The Edge. Frankly, there’s no point. Anyone can be bought by special interests, and while that doesn’t mean anyone in elected office is automatically in anyone’s pocket, it does mean that focusing on the players is a losing game. And, I think it's in bad taste for media outlets to tell people who to vote for. That's none of our business.

Instead, our coverage and analyses are aimed at policies in practice and how they can be improved by anyone with a stake in their implementation. What we are in favor of is transparency and healthy civic participation. Our mission statement is, “Turning readers into empowered citizens.”

We want you to understand how your local government works, and what you can do to make sure that it functions as it is supposed to for the benefit of all. Sounds simple. And in a way, it is, because we believe that when the Golden Rule is applied to anything, everyone benefits. 

But it’s also a huge undertaking at a time when local civic participation is only now starting to rebound from its colonization by special interest corporate media outlets like Fox News and MSNBC-MSNOW, and all the rest, all of whose profit-motive has proven divisive and destructive to local communities. 

It's also more complicated when there has not been a tradition of sustained scrutiny on our respective City Halls and Fiscal Court and now there is.

My personal view is that local journalism should function as a public utility above all else, and should serve everyone equally by shining a light on all corners of the civic process. To that end, I have always thought of The Edge as yours more than it is mine, even if it’s been me putting it together and aligning the necessary partnerships.

The partnership with you the reader, and all of you as a community is starting to solidify now, as more of you are offering us input about what you think we could do to better benefit the community.

How we're funded

The Edge was founded as a hybrid profit/nonprofit organization in October 2024 as a digital-only newsroom specifically to address the land use issues rapidly arising in a county under immense pressure from state, local, and even federal interests, to grow.

We soon began covering the Fiscal Court and Berea City Hall on a regular basis, quickly becoming the go-to source for news from these two governing bodies. This month, we added coverage of Richmond City Hall and plan to offer Richmond residents the same penetrating reporting we’ve earned a reputation for delivering elsewhere. We passed 100,000 views months ago, and now average in the 25,000-35,000 range of readers each month.

Yes, as the question has been put to me more than once recently, we are a real newspaper. We just don't see any sense right now in losing money to cut down trees we don't have the printing press to turn into pages. Besides, you're all on line, and we want to be where you are.

I named this news outlet The Edge as a nod to our geographical location. The full name of our publication is Reporting from The Edge of Appalachia in Berea, Kentucky. But that’s a mouthful, and in fact, we now cover all of Madison County. Currently, we are in the process of becoming 100% nonprofit, but for now operate as a for-profit under the fiscal sponsorship auspices of the Bluegrass Community Foundation and the Tiny News Collective.

We are primarily grant-funded, take tax deductible donations, and we have sponsorships and advertisements if you own a business who seeks to reach tens of thousands of readers monthly, and you are a person who is willing to transcend the outdated bromide that if it's not on paper, it's not real. We have your customers' and potential customers' attention every hour, day, every week, every month.

And of course, we offer paid membership tiers for readers like you who wish to support local news.

Thoughtful and snarky

If you don't mind a little snark, and you are a bit of a local political news junkie, you'll enjoy our paid subscribers-only column that comes out most, but not, Sundays, depending on my mood and energy levels. It's called Postmortem, and reviews the week that was and why I think it went that way.

Sometimes I open the column up to all readers, but if you want some insights not shared publicly, that's where you'll find them. For the haters who say anything online is just a blog, this is for them. But a little snark goes a long way.

We don't want to tear our leaders down, we want to do what we can do to support them in bringing us the very best in local governance. Sometimes that aim means we get a little edgy with our observations. Our name is a clue, after all. And we're just fine with it if some people get mad about us exposing what's been hidden.

Most of the time, The Edge is out there asking questions about how we as a community can amplify and replicate what's working well. And a lot of things do work well across our three jurisdictions.

The Kentucky Land Use News Desk

The Edge began as just me, the only reporter in Kentucky at the time who was providing routine coverage of EKPC’s Big Hill Line in the southern end of the County. The Kentucky Lantern began running my reporting about the growing controversy, as well as my coverage of the transition of the Blue Grass Army Depot, and other stories, firmly anchoring The Edge’s reporting in statewide discussions about land use policy. 

More details are to come soon, but for now, I can share that a pilot program for our own statewide reporting network, the Kentucky Land Use News Desk, will be fully funded by a granting organization. Expect to see more of our trademark in-depth reporting and analysis on how land use decisions impact everyone’s quality of life in our beautiful home state. 

Civic education

This week, our coverage of the Fiscal Court’s efforts to turn a large tract of agricultural land into a regional business park sparked, as one reader informed me, a “firestorm” across social media. A couple of members of The Edge Advisory Board and I have been having discussions about the nature of that "storm" of comments, some of which have been keenly insightful. But a lot of what we’ve seen indicates that there is a gap in our community’s overall understanding of how local government works. We're thinking about how we can address that head-on.

The Edge recently wrapped up Phase One of a pilot program funded by the Listening Post Collective where I was able to study the information eco-systems pertaining to land use across seven Central and Eastern Kentucky counties. The findings of that study are still being polished, but if you are an organization looking for a speaker on the topic of local land use information systems, and their impact on public policy, please contact me. 

The Edge has just been awarded funding for Phase 2 of our listening project supported by the Listening Post Collective to focus on Madison County in particular. Given internal discussions we’ve been having here at The Edge, I have been thinking we might apply that funding to offering civic education events. More on that to come.

Meanwhile, expect news soon about some walking tours we’ve been brainstorming as a way to help folks better understand that we may divide the land into private parcels, but to itself, the land is always contiguous, which has implications for how we express our shared values that ultimately are what drive public land use policy. 

At The Edge, we believe any land use policy discussions require a solid understanding of how property rights have been leveraged for and against communities across the Commonwealth. It’s still early days on that, but we’re committed to it.

The role of faith organizations

Before closing, I did want to add that a discussion about any public policy in Appalachia and the Bluegrass region would be incomplete without an understanding of the many faith organizations that underlie our value systems.

To that end, we have obtained a grant from the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky to help us gather and synthesize the commonalities across our many faith perspectives in the County. The Book of Common Good is the name of the project, and we will have more reporting on that for you in the new year. For now, you can learn more about the project here. 

In a week that featured breaking news, a controversial planning and zoning meeting, and a thorough analysis of the fall out, plus training new reporters, it was such a treat to pause from the pow-pow pace, and spend two hours with the ever-joyful Pastor Tim Lawson, and meeting his mom, Dottie, who is the church administrator, at the River of Life Foursquare Church on Mt. Vernon Road outside of Berea.

Our discussion ran the gamut from the loving applications of the Old Testament, which I don't tend to regard as a book that drips with compassion and tenderness, to what the Pentecostal Church has to say about aliens, to what Israel's role is in all Christian lives, and more. And of course, I got to hear from Pastor Tim about the differences within the Pentecostal church and how he and his flock apply the four Gospels to things like social justice and community. I can't wait to share highlights of the conversation with you all soon.

Personal thoughts

On a personal note, I just would like to say that I had no idea what was to come when I started The Edge. I was just mad there was no coverage of a utility project that was about to dramatically alter the common view of the landscape. I figured if no one else was doing it, and I already knew how, then it was going to have to be me to get it done.

So, I started reporting on what little discussion with the power cooperative was being forced by locals, and spread news of it far and wide. Things have continued to grow from there and here we are, a countywide news outlet, serving a great place to call home. I just feel so much gratitude to have been so blessed by all of you wanting The Edge to keep going, and offering your support so that we can.

We're on the precipice of becoming a true community organization now, and I have started seeking out people to help me put together a succession plan, not because I am leaving, but because we are growing and I want us to be future-forward in a way that helps sustains the community that is helping to sustain us.

Please consider supporting all our efforts at The Edge by investing in a paid subscription or a recurring tax-deductible donation. Our work is expensive, but the return on your investment is better governance for you and for all. 

Thank you for being a part of The Edge community.

Whitney