Reality hits home at Voice of San Diego

Voice of San Diego, now seven years old, has been Southern California's best, most accomplished example of innovation in non-traditional news media. But today the site laid off three journalists and said the budget is going down, not up. From the editor's note:

Today was a difficult day of change for voiceofsandiego.org.

Last year, we raised more than $1.1 million and drew up a budget for 2011 at $1.2 million. We're projecting lower revenue for the coming year and set the budget at $1 million.

There's no one cause for the change. No major donor has dropped out. Our sponsorships are consistent and our membership is growing rapidly. But in the past, we've relied on grants from national foundations to make up a large part of our funding and we can't be sure they'll be there for us again. We're in the process of building a thriving membership program to reduce our reliance on foundations, but we need time to fully establish a diverse donor base. Quite simply, like many of the agencies we cover and many families across San Diego, we have to be realistic about our prospects for the New Year.

In reducing our expenses, we prioritized what we feel we can do best as well as what our readers have told us is important to them. As a result, we will focus our resources on having a greater impact through a full investigative reporting team and a daily engagement and analysis team focusing on politics, public affairs, education and the arts.

"We're not going to give you the hackneyed journalism line that we'll 'do more with less.'" say Scott Lewis and Andrew Donohue. "We are, however, taking this as an opportunity to go back to our roots and focus on impact."