Launching Salinas Valley Now: Monterey County Weekly’s new digital news product

For all intents and purposes, Salinas and Salinas Valley do not have a dedicated news source that they can claim as their own. That is the change we will bring to the community with Salinas Valley Now.”

Publisher Erik Cushman

Against a backdrop of a journalism industry replete with layoffs, buyouts and newspaper closures, Milestone Communications, the local media company that publishes Monterey County Weekly and Monterey County Now, is bucking the trend.

Publisher Erik Cushman announced that on Monday, May 11, the company launched a brand-new newsletter and website, Salinas Valley Now.

Readers can subscribe for free by email or WhatsApp — with both editions available in Spanish and English — to receive the Salinas Valley Now newsletter every weekday afternoon. The newsletter features highlights of reporting posted on the companion website, SalinasValleyNow.com, which is also published in both English and Spanish.

Milestone Communications has hired three additional journalists to report, edit and produce the newsletter and website. This team comprises Staff Writer Royvi Hernandez, Editor Joseph Treviño and  Digital Producer Sloan Campi. They will work with existing Monterey County Now staff to support technical and other elements of Salinas Valley Now.

Salinas Valley Now will feature well-reported and carefully edited news stories. It will showcase the people, politics and culture that make Salinas such a vibrant community.

With its 250,000 residents, 80.3 percent of whom identify as Hispanic or Latino, the Salinas Valley is home to an $11.7 billion annual agriculture industry and the center of emerging ag tech innovation hub. Today, Salinas Valley communities are facing many of the most urgent problems experienced anywhere in California — housing affordability, access to health care, low wage jobs and workforce challenges, technology dislocation, childcare obstacles, public safety threats and, most recently, the upheaval of the social order as a result of federal immigration policies.

These are issues that deserve thoughtful media coverage, but the corporate owned daily newspaper has essentially abandoned Salinas, with minimal staff today. In fact, Gannett’s Salinas Californian was the subject of a 2023 feature story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline, “The California newspaper that has no reporters left.”

Salinas Valley Now aims to remedy that.

It will be a close facsimile of Monterey County Now, the award-winning newsletter and website from Monterey County Weekly.

Publisher Erik Cushman said, “For all intents and purposes, Salinas and Salinas Valley do not have a dedicated news source that they can claim as their own. That is the change we will bring to the community with Salinas Valley Now.”