Listening to the vendors helped inform our new priorities. We asked what they want most and they said love, money, and meaning. So we built a plan around those ideas. We will deepen vendor/reader relationships and open up the whole organization for more vendor participation. We will take steps to increase vendor sales and success while we zero in on the kind of journalism that people expect: relevant, professional, and keyed to the issues our readers care about. We will publish a paper that speaks to what our readers want and makes our vendors proud. We will focus on broadening opportunities for vendor involvement in organizing around root causes of homelessness and poverty.

So that’s what I said, and it was what the vendors wanted to hear. It’s a good feeling to have our organization’s priorities line up with what the vendors want and need. It begins with respect for the people whose lives are hard, and for whom little comes easy. When you start there, the rest follows.