Good morning, RVA! It's 55 °F, and I’ve got some personal news.
Water cooler
Bittersweet news: This is the last edition of Good Morning, RVA for the foreseeable future! I’ve taken a job with the City’s Office of Strategic Communications and Civic Engagement—which I’m incredibly stoked about—and I think this professional transition marks the perfect time to press pause on this, Richmond’s premiere zoning and rezoning newsletter.
The last time I had to write a post like this it was for dramatic and sad reasons: Closing down RVANews because I couldn’t find a way to financially support a newsroom of multiple people doing good work in an industry that was (and still is!) struggling to figure out how to make ends meet. This time, though, I get to write a see-you-around post (very different from a so-long post) with a much better perspective: Making a proactive choice to do something new. I’m excited to move on, interested in exploring new projects, and, without a doubt, looking forward to getting a little more sleep each morning—because, to answer a Frequently Asked Question, I do (did!) write everything fresh each morning, waking up at 5:15 AM (another FAQ) to make tea and read the news.
I’ve read and written about a lot of news—and a lot of PDFs—over the last eight years, and when I look back, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. Eight years is a lot of years, and, while I haven’t really kept track, I’ve written somewhere north of 1,800 daily emails, with maybe just one single unplanned absence (when I got my first COVID-19 vaccine). That’s incredible!
As the years piled up, I got less and less interested in “what people want to read” and more and more interested in “what I want to write about.” I think, maybe counterintuitively, that’s what makes (made!) Good Morning, RVA successful. I’ve tried real hard, especially in recent years, to only write about what I find fun and interesting and to write about it in fun and interesting ways. Now, many years down the road in 2024, I write (wrote!) a daily, ad-free email about budgets, zoning, bicycles, and fascinating stories I happen upon (have I told you about the lifecycle of bamboo??). It’s not something that I’d ever have predicted thousands and thousands of people would want to read every morning, and I’m proud of that.
I’m most proud of the work I’ve done to normalize actual news coverage on topics like the combined sewer overflow system, transportation infrastructure, and, of course, budget season. I think Richmonders now expect our local media to cover those sorts of things, and I’ll take a small portion of the credit for creating that culture. I’m also particularly proud of the work I did during COVID-19 and the summer of 2020. I’ve been reading over those entries from four years ago, and it’s both a humbling and affirming experience—Four Years Ago Me really knew how to put together a sentence!
I am also just incredibly proud of you, the audience, who has read about whatever thing I decided to write about each and every morning for eight straight years. What an amazing and supportive group of people! I think I can count on two hands the number of negative emails I got in response to nearly a decade of having (sometimes strong) opinions on (sometimes emotional) local issues. If I’m honest, the part I’ll most miss is that I’ll no longer have people emailing me thoughtful feedback and kind words.
At this point, though, it definitely feels like it’s time for me to move on to something different. Don’t get me wrong: zoning is still, of course, fun, interesting, and incredibly important, especially with the big zoning rewrite coming up. But I’m having a harder and harder time writing about it in fun and interesting ways. One of my hopes is that by stepping away from GMRVA, I will leave space for the next great zoning and rezoning email newsletter writer to step in and start explaining how the City works in new ways. It’s clearly something Richmonders crave, and I’m sure folks would love to hear from someone with a different perspective than my own.
So, that’s it! Thank you so much for reading. If you’re a Patron, you’ve allowed me to keep time and space in my life for this email, and I’m incredibly thankful for that. Finally, an infinite thank you to all of Richmond’s actual reporters who make it their job to sit in endless meetings, interview our community leaders, and lift up issues important to residents. Without y’all Good Morning, RVA would not have existed.
Eight years ago, when writing my previous sign off post, I ended with this, which still feels just as true now as it did in 2016:
Other than that, though, who knows! I don’t want to commit to anything, but you know how sometimes I just can’t not write about buses, or bikes, or education, or City Council…
I don’t know where you’ll find my next thing and what that’ll look like...but you know how I sometimes just can’t not!
Lastly, some logistical bits
- I’m gonna keep the GMRVA email list around, and I can’t promise I won’t send out some infrequent emails about whatever random stuff I’m into at the moment. Please don’t offer to buy GMRVA, step in and run it, or fold it into some other thing you’re working on.
- Later this morning I will “pause” Patreon and with the eventual goal of “unpublishing” my Patreon page. I need to figure out how all the tax stuff works before I go ahead and unpublish, but, moving forward, Patrons will not have their cards charged again. It won’t be necessary, but if you want to make double sure, you’re also welcome to cancel your patronage.
- I intend on keeping the GMRVA-adjacent projects running: the Boring Show, the RVA.FYI mastodon server, and the legislation and candidate trackers.
- You can always email me at my personal email, <rcatrow@gmail.com data-preserve-html-node="true">! It’s not like I’m dead, I’ll still be around having opinions!
