About

The New York Groove makes independent, journalist-owned, member-supported ace reporting on New York City. Weekly issues for now. Brought to you by Tim Donnelly, Virginia K. Smith and Dave Colon; web development by Melton Sharpe; Jess Joseph is our community manager. Logo design and art by Eric W. Lee.

Who we are, and why we’re doing this

We’re a group of longtime New York City journalists and we’re building an independent journalist-owned newsroom from the ground up.

For more than a decade, we’ve watched countless local outlets fold altogether or wither away into shadows of their former selves, even when New Yorkers needed information and community the most. (We’ve also worked at a lot of them while all this was going down.) 

We launched The New York Groove in July 2023 because we want to create a site, and a community, that people can turn to when they need help navigating this big beautiful mess of a city, somewhere they can trust for service journalism that will show them how to get and give help, and a place they’ll turn to when they want reminders that fun is a core New York City value.

The overall mission at The New York Groove is to help our readers be better New Yorkers in every way that phrase implies. We know people are feeling lonely and disconnected after the pandemic, and frustrated at how institutions let us down over the past few years. In short, we’re building a newsroom designed to help New Yorkers become more engaged with the city around them, not merely enraged with it. We reject the constant refrain that the city is dead, or dying, or "used to be better and cooler, right before you got here."

We’re a community-supported publication, and for every dollar that finds The Groove, we repay it with the kind of reporting and service journalism that’s been missing from the media landscape for years. Whether we’re throwing events ourselves or hand-selecting good options around the city for our FOMO calendar, we’re also helping our readers get out into the city, and away from feeling stuck on a screen at home.

Interested in writing or creating content for us? Read our pitch guidelines here.

We’re asking for your help, and need your money

We’re also figuring this out as we go along. (None of us is coming into this as a media mogul – we think this is a good thing!) We want to be transparent with our readers and our community at every step of the process of building a new local media outlet from the ground up in this economy. We’re starting small, yes, but we want to grow this into something big, something sustainable. And we want you with us while we do it.

We also need you with us. To say the quiet part loud: we need your money. We want to grow this little operation into something larger and long-lasting, into a newsroom that’s able to commission writing from all the different voices that make the city what it is, and to pay them fair rates for their work. We will not ask people to write for “exposure,” nor rely on the largesse of any one mega-rich benefactor who can change or shut down our reporting based on a whim or a notion that AI could do all of this for us.

In order to truly support our readers, we need to be reader-supported. “How can I give you piles of money right now,” you ask? Great question, love that energy. You can do it right here.

Our content is free but we've been building a membership program since day one because you are an important part of The Groove. Paid Members will get access to bonus content, behind-the-scenes peeks, sweet merch, commenting privileges, events and more. Most importantly, by becoming a member, you're saying you want more independent local journalism in New York City.

So baby, you’d better believe.

Tell us what you want to see on the site! tips@nygroove.nyc