New Haven. Its neighborhoods. Its government. Its people – from the knuckleheads to the dreamers and schemers, and everyone in between.

That’s what this web site is about: A five-day-a-week report on news about the City of New Haven, Connecticut, produced by veteran local journalists, and by you.

The New Haven Independent is rooted in and devoted to the city. We believe that democracy starts at home, with smart, thorough, in-depth local news reporting and broad citizen debate about local issues. Thanks to the Internet, journalists and news-deprived citizens need no longer be hostages to out-of-state media conglomerates. We can reclaim our communities. Power of the press now belongs not to those who own one, but to those who own a modem.

We own a modem.

(Update:) Or we used to own a modem. You don’t even need a modem anymore.

The New Haven Independent is produced in conjunction with the Online Journalism Project, a not-for-profit effort to promote professional-quality “stand-alone” and “hyperlocal” news sites on the Internet. Our main financial sponsors are listed on the right-hand column of the homepage and most inside pages. This site relies on three sources of revenue: grants from foundations to support specific areas of reporting, such as health care, similar to the way that National Public Radio obtains charitable grants to support independent reporting; general ongoing sponsorship grants from institutions; and donations from readers. The reporting on this site is, as the name says, “independent.” All financial contributions to the site come with the understanding that contributors will not determine (or have any responsibility for) the articles produced on the site. (Feel free to contact us with further questions about the site’s financial support.)

The New Haven Independent features daily reports and diverse public discussion about news about New Haven neighborhoods, government, politics, criminal justice, schools, business, arts and culture. It links readers to other websites with information about New Haven.

And it depends on your contributions. Please send us photos and news tips. Add your comments at the end of articles. (One rule: Be civil.) Let us know what you like—and don’t like. Tell others about us (preferably by sending them e-mail messages with the link to the site). And sharpen that red pencil, to inform us of misspellings, typos and other errors. We’ll keep track of who catches the most mistakes and give out periodic Independent coffee mugs to the winners. (Sites like ours can’t afford proofreaders.)

Finally, you can pitch in your pennies to the cause of independent, not-for-profit local journalism. You can read everything on this site for free. But it does take money to produce. If you feel like making an ongoing tax-deductible contribution to New Haven Independent.org, click here.

The Independent shares some articles with New Haven-based La Voz Hispana, the state’s largest-circulation Spanish language newspaper.