OMG, this is so exciting!  This week, the Columbia Journalism Review released its News Frontier Database--searchable profiles of digital news sites of note around the country.  Oakland Local is honored to be one of the 10 local news sites on the list--and to be profiled alongside The Huffington Post, Slate, TechCrunch, Gawker and ProPublica.   We're also thrilled to see ourselves along Grand Rapid's hyper-local upstart The Rapidian, Colorado's Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network, and the African-American news & commentary site The Root. What a cool list of 50 to be a part of!

Oakland Local isn't the newest site on the list (Capital NY has that distinction), but we bet we have the smallest annual operating budget -- under $60,000 in our first year.

So can we have some money now -- please?  

We've been operating with volunteer leadership, underpaid writers, and tons of community contributors--and loving every minute of it.  Having said that,  we're in the middle of our first-ever fund drive and what we'd like from you right now is a donation.

Please give what you can -- $10 to $500 apiece would make us happy, depending on what you can afford.   Every penny you give goes to support our reporting on Oakland news and issues.

Donations are tax-deductible and we'll put your contribution to good use.

We're so proud of our team, our partners and the city we love--Oakland, Ca. We're one of 5 sites from California profiled by CJR, and the only one focused on the Bay area.

Please donate today to help us keep publishing in 2011--we're 2/3rd of the way toward our $5, 000 goal! (And once we get there, we can stop bugging you for $$.)

And come out on January 27th to hang with the OL crowd and have some fun at our winter drink-up at SOMAR. RSVP here, please.

PS. If you'd like to write/photograph/contribute content, please  get in touch--editor@oaklandlocal.com--ideas and tips welcomed as well.