Letter from the editor: No funding, no news

The Word continues to struggle for funding, and is again unable to publish original content for that reason

For the third month in a row, I have to say it: we don’t have the funding to publish a regular edition.

In August, we were lucky enough to have two people step forward and volunteer to write for us. Be we cannot rely on that happening every month. Our parent organization, the Organization for Accessible Journalism, has been searching for any funding beyond donations:

• Grants
• Business underwriting or sponsorship
• Endowments

We want to fund this magazine because it serves a vital function: It is the only magazine that specifically covers accessibility in journalism. We want to keep serving that purpose.

We don’t want to hide the work we do behind a paywall because we believe paywalls are limiting.

What can you do? Donate. Donate so we can pay journalists to produce original work. Maybe that’s $5 a month. Maybe it’s $100 right now. Whatever it is, it helps. It costs about $250 to $300 to produce a single issue of The Word, and there are three more months in 2026. If we can raise $900, we can produce issues for October, November, and December.

It is my greatest hope that we can make it happen.

Stacy Kess is the chief of editorial and accessibility for Equal Access Public Media. She previously worked as an editor and reporter at papers across the U.S. Find her on Bluesky at @stacykess.