Party at SN&R

A week from Saturday, on May 22, from 1 to 6 p.m., we are having a party at the world headquarters of the Sacramento News & Review. And you are invited. The Grant High School Drum Corps will kick off the event, followed by music from the CUF, Sister Crayon, Autumn Sky, the Streamliners, deejays Shaun Slaughter and Rated R, and more. There will be food vendors and a beer garden, and Blue Moon will show off its latest tasty brew, Pale Moon. There will be fun for the kids. We will be giving tours of our new office, once an abandoned 19,000-square-foot market, now an energy-efficient working space for our staff.

Most people who have visited our new digs have enjoyed seeing the blue-jean insulation, the skylights, the solar tubes, the recycled-glass countertops, the stained concrete floors and the whole-building fans. And a select few have even used our wonderful waterless urinal.

All that and more will be part of our celebration. We at the News & Review have a lot to celebrate. First of all, it is our 21st anniversary. We have printed more than 60 million copies of the paper and distributed it on nearly 1,100 Thursdays. We are celebrating our new spacious building, which we own, thanks in part to help from Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and City Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy. And we are celebrating our improved economic situation.

At the end of 2008, the News & Review ran into some very rough times. While our circulation remained steady, our advertising revenues dropped, and we lost a considerable amount of money. We had to work harder and smarter. In the last half of 2009, things began to turn around for us. Through it all, we continued to contribute to the community with projects such as the Jammies, our high-school music program. We continued telling important stories from our region and just won 10 awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for excellence in writing and reporting, including a first-place award in the Public Service category for our sustainability coverage. While our media competitors lost readers and viewers, our loyal audience stayed with us.

Each month, 350,000 of you read the News & Review. We are so appreciative. Each week, we produce a paper that we believe in. We take pride in giving voice to many members of our community who otherwise would not be heard, and in presenting stories that might not otherwise see the light of day, and to bringing attention to many wonderful local artists and musicians, thus strengthening our local art and music scene. We at the News & Review put out a paper that we love, with people that we love. But it’s only possible because of you, our readers. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

While there’s a certain efficiency to saying “thank you” with ink on paper, it certainly is much more fulfilling to say it in person. So please come to our celebration. Saturday, May 22, from 1 to 6 p.m., at 1124 Del Paso Boulevard. Look for the big red building. You won’t miss it.