Blake Bertuccelli runs a WordPress agency called Decubing, based out of New Orleans. Blake recently announced that his agency will be donating 11% of their revenue to organizations that support independent journalism.
The first donation was to the Prison Journalism Project (PJP). The PJP migrated to Newspack in October 2021.
You can click here to read Blake’s announcement. I also asked Blake some brief questions about this move:
Hi Blake. Can you introduce yourself and Decubing?
In 2012, New Orleans’ only major newspaper sacked 200 employees. Two veteran editors tapped me to build an outlet for newly out-of-work journalists. We launched NolaVie (now ViaNolaVie). That project was the first major WordPress news site in New Orleans and led to a windfall of web design jobs that I coded under the name “Decubing Web Services.”
ViaNolaVie is a project of Tulane University. It’s a community-driven digital magazine packed with New Orleanian culture. WordPress provided a natural framework for the site’s highly searchable, taggable content generated by numerous authors.
What led you to focus on supporting indie media?
Indie media, by definition, puts out independent – radical – viewpoints. Radical viewpoints spur opinions and opinions matter. Every citizen must cast their opinion in the form of a vote. What better work can I do than help indie outlets inform new opinions? Beyond just our donation, we hope our 11% initiative inspires new opportunities to sustain the journalism that is the lifeblood of our free and open society.
What changes are you seeing in the media landscape at the moment?
Publications now love templates. Instead of building bespoke WordPress themes, our clients ask for pre-built solutions like Newspack. I celebrate that shift. Good templates lower the cost for smaller journals to publish, increasing the voices that build a better universe.
