Support Better News & Information in Park Slope

$60 will get your more events, and eventually a podcast and a reporter!

We’re building better coverage of Park Slope

Hi all, it’s Nicole and John, the married couple who have lived in Park Slope for 20 years and who have been doing this events newsletter since 2023.

In that time—both living in the neighborhood and putting together this free newsletter for you—a few things have become clear:

• 😃Readers really want free neighborhood coverage. Our audience has stayed incredibly engaged–most of you open the newsletter every week. 

• 🙌We can, with time and effort, make the Park Slope Walk newsletter big enough to reach everyone in the neighborhood. People happily sign up for a free events newsletter. Reaching 100,000+ people in and around Park Slope is doable!

• 😦Neighborhood reporting from big publishers may not come back to Park Slope. You may remember a bygone time when startups like Patch or DNAinfo or tabloids like the Daily News or the Post had great devoted reporting around Park Slope. It’s not clear if anything will fill that cultural & reporting gap.

• 👎Most independent neighborhood creators burnout eventually. You may also remember homegrown outlets like Park Slope Stoop, F*cked in Park Slope and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. Often a neighborhood news outlet thrives–and makes the neighborhood more delightful in the process–until its creators run out of time or energy. We want to build The Walk into something more sustainable.

And that all leads us to our biggest takeaway: Our neighborhood will only get the deeply-informed coverage it deserves if neighbors support it directly. 

With your help, we can do this. We’re going to do this.

A $60 subscription is an investment in better coverage of Park Slope, and gives you access to our spreadsheet of events

As you can probably imagine, doing this enormous newsletter every week requires some pretty extensive work in Google Sheets. When you subscribe annually, we’ll give you access to our gigantic Google spreadsheet of events in and around Park Slope.

To be clear, the Thursday events newsletter will remain free. But when you need to plan a night out weeks from now, the spreadsheet will be at your disposal.

And as we earn more subscribers, we’ll invest more in free coverage of our community.

With our first 300 paid subscribers, we’ll improving our free events newsletter

We love doing this newsletter and we want to hire a freelancer so we can do more.

• We’ll update the Google spreadsheet further into the future, so paying subscribers can plan further ahead.

• We really want to dig into continuing education: There are as many great classes for adults as there are camps for kids in our neighborhood. Wouldn’t it be nice to see guides to camps and classes in one place before they fill up?

• We want more robust guides and maps around holidays, Best Of lists, and ways to volunteer.

• We’d also find excuses to do more reviews and interviews—so we cover not just events, but give a sense of the culture in the neighborhood.

We also want the events newsletter to go on forever. 300 paying subscribers would ensure it will.

From 301 to 1,500 paid subscribers, we’ll invest in a free podcast that explores the mysteries of the neighborhood

We want to launch a podcast for everyone: We’ve identified three neighbors who will answer questions about neighborhood mysteries you wonder about.

Like the Mystery Show and Search Engine podcasts, they’ll do their best work when you send your best questions. They’ll also explore their own questions, like:

• What exactly is going on with real estate prices in Windsor Terrace?

• Why does a building on Prospect Avenue claim to be a Swiss consulate? 

• Is the Park Slope Armory actually haunted? 

• Who’s been drawing these graffiti faces across the neighborhood for years and why?

The team that would launch this podcast include two award-winning reporters and a public radio producer. We need 1,500 paying subs to support these neighborhood talents publishing twice a month.

From 1,500 to 5,000 paid subscribers, we’ll invest in a reporter and editor to cover the neighborhood

Original reporting is our overall longterm goal, though we’re realistic that it is the hardest thing to do and sustain. To do effective work, a reporter needs time and support and legal protection. There is a dearth of reliable and locally sourced information around Park Slope: there’s not enough crime reporting, features, business profiles, guides, explainer or breaking news.

Today, in the event of a neighborhood emergency like a storm or a lockdown, there’s not one person you know you can reach out to to get you reliable information.

And today, bad information is free: that means rumors, AI hallucinations, and even well-meaning folks sharing incorrect things on social media. That’s bad for all of us.

Good information you can trust requires a reporter. We haven’t identified that reporter (or editor) yet, but as a neighborhood we’ve been blessed with brilliant reporters for years. And John’s history as a leader of neighborhood newsrooms gives us confidence we can find them again.

Can this really work?

Yes. Alternative weekly newspapers like The Village Voice used to build great original reporting off a foundation of events coverage. And it’s not unheard for local newsrooms to convert 5% of their population into paying subscribers.

We can build this together.

What do I get for my $60?

As mentioned, you will gain access to our Google spreadsheet of events, for when you need to plan a night out a month from now. 

But above all, you get to be a benefactor for neighborhood media here in Park Slope, Gowanus and Windsor Terrace. You’re supporting this growing team, and keeping our coverage free for you and your neighbors. 

We’ll also communicate with you as the critical stakeholders you are. We’ll send regular insider updates from us about how the campaign is going (Are we close to unlocking the podcast? Can we do some reporting with freelancers?) plus the occasional ask for help (Does anyone know a great designer or web developer?) and invitations to get together.

A $240 Founding Membership also comes with a bespoke sweatshirt, mug or thermos

Behold, our daughter's Cricut machine, which allows her to make irons and decals for just about anything!

We reserve this machine and its If you support The Park Slope Walk as a founding member, we’ll make swag just for you. Want an oversize mug? A cozy hoodie? We’ll correspond with you and then make it. (If there is a high demand, we will of course work with a proper printer to make these at scale.)

And the coverage I support will be accessible to everyone?

Yes. As coverage expands on the Park Slope Walk, we’ll stick to four values:

• We keep coverage free to everyone. When you support us, you’re supporting a service for all your neighbors.

• We deliver information in the format that works best. Not just free, but freely accessible. We think a newsletter is the best way to tell you about events. When we do a podcast, we’ll tell the stories that are best for that format.

• We rely on local voices. This means Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Gowanus and other neighborhoods a walk away.

• We don’t ask for freebies from local businesses. This has always been true, but as ask for your support, we want to say it out loud.

Let’s build something special and lasting.

-Nicole and John