Five years ago this month, Mississippi Today launched as the state’s first nonprofit, nonpartisan, digital-only news outlet. The vision of our founders and early team was that of an entrepreneurial start-up: build a new way of delivering news and usher in an age of journalism that answers to the reader, not to a mass media holding company.    

We cut our teeth on Capitol coverage and watchdog reporting, and have since grown to cover a myriad of beats, never straying from our mission of providing the best journalism for Mississippians without the barriers of paywalls and subscriptions. Our reporters listen, dig deep and mine data to give you the full picture of what is happening in our state, bringing awareness to systems, issues and stories that have long gone untold. 

We will be celebrating our five year milestone all year long, and as we kick off this anniversary, I want to say thank you for reading our site, sharing our stories and helping us get the word out about Mississippi Today. We are humbled by the support we’ve been shown since 2016, and are especially grateful to become a part of the lives of so many new readers over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Over the next month, we’ll be sharing more about our past and future. I invite you to join us in celebrating the value of mission-driven journalism focused on Mississippi.  We intend to be around for a long time, and we need your continued support to make it happen.

Being a nonprofit is central to who we are as a newsroom. It means we are driven by values, not by dividends, and it means that we rely on donations from readers to power the work we do: paying for records requests, keeping the lights on (literally), providing our team with health care and much more.

To our current membership: thank you, truly, for your generous support. Our work is not possible without you.

To our readers who are not yet members: thank you for your readership and engagement. I hope you’ll consider joining our community of members by making a donation. Our journalists may be the ones writing the stories, but without you, those stories go untold.

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Mary Margaret White

mwhite@mississippitoday.org

Mary Margaret White, a Mississippi Delta native, manages the business and development side of our nonprofit newsroom as CEO. She works closely with foundations and donors to ensure reporters have the financial support needed to do their work. She also collaborates closely with our marketing and engagement teams to make sure all outreach and promotion aligns with our mission of public service journalism. She has a bachelor’s in English and journalism and a master’s in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi.