Since we launched the Daily Yonder a couple of our most loyal and generous donors have been Joe and Helen Pickering, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law.
Helen is no longer with us, but she edited the Stanford Daily when the boys, including Joe, shipped off to World War II. She later ran Congressman Pete McCloskey’s west coast office and was the food editor for the Palo Alto Weekly.
Just this year Joe shut down his business. And up till the Covid hit, he played tennis, pickleball, and the bongos in a ukulele band. One of the tough parts of this epidemic is that you miss seeing your pals.
This year, Joe is offering a $5,000 Matching Gift. That gives us a chance to double his money and keep up the expanded coverage you’ve seen this year: more reporting, more contributors, more video, audio and livestream events, and a deeper look at the issues affecting rural life and work.
The Yonder experiment began as an idea that we could do a different kind of rural journalism. We are around today, more than 12 years later, because of the generosity of the Daily Yonder community. In honor of Giving Tuesday, please help us meet our first-ever “Joe and Helen Pickering Challenge.”
Thanks for being one of our pals.