Introducing: The Healdsburg Newsletter

Hey, everybody. If you don’t know me yet, my name is Simone, and I’m a 38-year-old local journalist who grew up here in Healdsburg.

(You’re receiving this email because you’ve either subscribed to my newsletters sometime in the past, or I know you personally, or you asked to be added to my email list. If you’d rather not hear from me anymore, please feel free to unsubscribe at any point! On the other hand, if this email was forwarded to you and you’d like to get on board, go ahead and subscribe here.)

Anyway, before I introduce my latest project to you, I’ll give you some history. Around four years ago, in the throes of the pandemic’s second summer, I began writing a casual email newsletter about my hometown — filled with everything I thought locals should know about what was happening in Healdsburg.

At the time I had no idea that writing this newsletter would eventually become my favorite thing to do in the world, and lead me back to the heart of my community.

In the beginning, you might remember that I wrote my newsletter for the Healdsburg Patch; to this day, some still know me as “the Patch girl.” But around a year-and-a-half ago, right after I moved back to Healdsburg full-time, I started writing my newsletter under the masthead of my beloved hometown paper, the Healdsburg Tribune, instead.

Which brings us to the present day, in Spring 2025, when I’ve decided to take my newsletter independent. I’m calling it simply “The Healdsburg Newsletter.”

This has been a bit of an agonizing transition for me — mostly because I adore the Trib, and believe it to be nothing less than a cornerstone of our local democracy. We need this kind of in-depth journalism to survive and thrive as a community. Huge props go to Dan Pulcrano — the grizzled newspaperman who bought our 160-year-old local newspaper right as it was about to go out of print in May 2022, and heroically revived it over a weekend — and to the Healdsburg Tribune’s editor, Christian Kallen, the one-man show who continues to pump out ~16 pages of gold each Thursday. If you can swing it, I would encourage you all to continue subscribing and/or donating to the Trib, to help keep our paper of record alive. Because PRINT IS NOT DEAD… and I really hope I don’t live to see the day it dies.

All that said, I think my Healdsburg newsletter offers something quite different —and equally special — to this community. From what readers tell me, it serves as more of a handy overview of all the most important and interesting things happening around here, through the eyes of a friend who’s paying especially close attention. (Me!) And with 20 years of international newsroom experience under my belt — as a journalist, designer, copy editor, editor editor and more — I feel ready to go it alone, full time, with no one to answer to but myself and my neighbors.

I cannot tell you how stoked I am for this new era. And in order to make it work, I’m asking that you upgrade to a premium subscription for $4-$5 per month.

That’s right — from now on, you’ll need to pay to see the majority of what I write.

Some context on why I’m taking the paid-subscription route: Ever since I was a young gun, pumping out school papers well into the wee hours as editor of the Hound’s Bark at Healdsburg High (sorry, Mrs. Lehrmann!), I’ve held the belief that local news should be free. These days, I’m less convinced. I’ve been trying to make an advertiser- and donation-based business model work for years now, and it just hasn’t been enough to provide Healdsburg with the kind of comprehensive local coverage that I dream about and suspect is possible if everyone pitches in.

So here we are! I’m basically asking you to “hire me” to be your full-time local Gilmore Girl, for a few bucks a month. I plan to do everything within my power to make it worth your dime, with regular and reliable email updates on all the local news, events and other intrigues you should know about.

I hope that you’ll subscribe, and that you’ll start to feel this is your newsletter as much as it is mine — a common source of information we can all unite around, as a way to orient ourselves in time and space together.

With that, I welcome you all to The Healdsburg Newsletter! Your first issue is coming later this week. 🫡

— Simone Wilson

P.S. As always, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] with any questions, concerns, suggestions, tips, pics — the works. I’m here for it!

P.P.S. I’ve got a piping-hot piece of local news that can’t wait til the next newsletter, so I’ll just share it now. You know “Edge Esmeralda,” that monthlong series of futuristic talks and other events taking over venues across town right now, for the second June in a row? You might have written them off this year because 2025 ticket prices are so much higher for locals ($1,000-plus instead of a cool $200 last year). HOWEVER: Edge Esmeralda organizers recently announced that all Wednesday programming is free for locals for the entirety of the monthlong event, which kicked off May 24 and runs through June 21.

I’m gonna make a day of it tomorrow, if you want to join me! Here’s their calendar so you can see what’s on the docket this Wednesday — stuff like AI tutorials, art classes, yoga sessions, a virtual reality tour of the Healdsburg plaza, a live remote talk by crypto celebrity Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of Ethereum) on “the future of decentralization” and other workshops with trippy names like “Access Your Innate Intelligence Through Quantum Creativity.” You won’t be able to officially RSVP unless you have a ticket, but you can see the event venue addresses on the calendar I shared, and organizer Devon Zuegel told me all locals are welcome to just show up to events on Wednesdays. Whatever opinions you have about these folks, might be fun to get an inside peek at what they’re all about… 🪐

AIR OVER HEALDSBURG

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