Jessica Cejnar Andrews | Photo courtesy of Paul Critz

Once upon a time, five years ago, news on the Wild Rivers Coast changed.

The Triplicate, Del Norte County’s award-winning newspaper of record, found itself under new management and without most of its reporting staff — some of us were laid off or quit in protest. Its sister publication, the Curry Coastal Pilot, also had new owners.
Enter the Lost Coast Outpost.

Editor and founder Hank Sims took a chance on an out-of-work reporter and brought his digital news site north of the Klamath River. Since getting that phone call the Monday after my final day at the Triplicate in June 2019, I have endeavored to bring timely, reliable and accurate news to Del Norters.

I have met Klamath families who, despite living miles away over slide-prone U.S. 101 from the nearest grocery store, continue to work together to make sure no one goes hungry. I was with the rest of Crescent City when it welcomed the delegation from Rikuzentakata in 2019. And I stood in the rain to talk with Del Norte County teachers who were demanding better health benefits and a better wage from the local school district.

Over the past five years, I and the Outpost documented COVID shutdowns and the community’s reemergence from the pandemic. There were landslides, wildfires, power outages, elections, recalls, fisheries closures and sheriff’s office shakeups on both sides of the state line. The Outpost was there for them all.

Get ready for another change. The powers that be at Lost Coast Communications Inc. have decided to pull the plug on the Wild Rivers Outpost. Keeping the news flowing in a rural community like Del Norte and Curry counties isn’t easy and I’m grateful for the support they have given me these past five years.

Though the Outpost will no longer operate, Redwood Voice Community News will fill in the gap. I’m proud to announce that I will join the team of intrepid student journalists and together we will irrigate the news desert that is Del Norte County. My colleagues may be young, but they’re passionate, hungry and dedicated to keeping you, the reader, informed.

Redwood Voice Community News also seeks to show Del Norte’s young people that journalism is still viable and valuable. It’s constantly changing, and making a living at it is no mean feat, but it is essential to keeping the community connected, to amplify voices that would otherwise be silent and to keeping our democracy going.

If you valued the Outpost, if independent, hyper-local, home-grown news is important to you, please show some love to Redwood Voice. You’ll be glad you did.

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