Tone Madison is saying goodbye

Last week, the team at Tone Madison decided that after nearly 12 years of serving as Madison’s most fiercely independent journalistic voice on culture and politics, we will stop publishing. Our last article will go live on April 3.

We will cancel all recurring donations through Stripe and PayPal on April 3 as well. Any donations we receive between now and then will go toward paying our local freelance contributors, our local bookkeepers, and, if there’s anything left, the editors.

We deprioritized our salaries in order to pay others, out of the hope that it would keep Tone Madison going. We have not been fully compensated for our work for over two months. And so Tone Madison‘s current editorial staff has reached this painful decision, eliminating our own jobs in the process, for a number of financial and personal reasons. 

We are making arrangements to transfer the website to former Publisher Scott Gordon so Tone Madison can remain online as an archive.

Despite years of monumental effort, the publication has increasingly struggled to bring in enough revenue to cover costs, pay staff and freelancers, and publish the time-consuming, resource-intensive journalism our readers deserve. Some of our core team members—including former Publisher Scott Gordon and former Music Editor Steven Spoerl—have moved on to other opportunities. Others are ready to do the same. The money is stretched too thin, and so are the people.

As sad as it is to say goodbye, we have many reasons to be grateful. We are grateful for the support of readers who have donated their own money, taken the time to read and share our work, and have offered thoughtful feedback. We have had the opportunity to work with more than 100 freelance contributors since 2014, each of them adding a voice and perspective that enriched the conversation in local media.

And speaking of conversation, so many people in our community have been generous with their time and trust, from artists we interview about their work to anonymous sources at the heart of more sensitive stories. We’ve had the support of a small but supportive base of local advertisers, and not once have they tried to butt into the editorial process (a minor miracle in this incestuous town).

Really, it’s a testament to community support that Tone Madison has lasted this long. We’ve survived a few near-death financial scrapes, one website-debilitating technical disaster, and probably a few thousand “Scott swears to god that he is about to pull the plug on the whole thing in a fit of exasperation” moments. We’ve had opportunities that we could never have imagined back when we first went live in October 2014.

We’re proud that we stuck to our core values and priorities, stubborn to the death. Tone Madison‘s culture coverage dug into the complexity of the local arts world, and engaged deeply with the work itself, questioning the business and politics that surround it all. Our political journalism looked beyond Madison’s veneer of liberal consensus. Our editing process supported and celebrated the distinct voices and perspectives of contributors, from seasoned career journalists to first-time writers.

As detailed in our annual reports over the years, the majority of the money we raise goes towards paying freelance contributors and editorial staff for their journalistic work. (As alluded, since January, Tone Madison staff chose not to fully pay themselves to keep the lights on. This was unsustainable.) The rest of the money goes toward various other operational and administrative costs (website hosting, bookkeeping, etc.), which we’ve always worked to keep as low as possible. This is still the case. What’s changed is that our overall revenue (most of which comes from donors, grants, and advertisers) has fallen short over the past year. 

During our 2025 year-end campaign, we received $12,016 in small donations and $2,500 in local matches. Local matches are not matched by NewsMatch, but they did unlock a $500 bonus. Even though we are closing, we will still receive $12,516 from NewsMatch by the end of March, which we will put towards paying freelancers, our local bookkeepers, and other outstanding debts.

We are immensely grateful to everyone who donated to our year-end campaign, which spurred us to keep going and try to make it work. Unfortunately, those funds were not enough to counterbalance a precipitous drop in sponsorship revenue. We appreciate B-Side Records, Wisconsin Film Festival, The Big Share, Madison Area Community Land Trust, GLEAM at Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and Disability Pride Madison for their continued support. But even the most robust three-legged stool would falter if one leg was sawed off. 

Our business practices emphasized paying people as decently as we could for their work. Above all, editorial independence and full control over our work mattered—we didn’t water down our voice to placate advertisers or funders. There were no unaccountable executives, no rich men turning our publication into a plaything, no compromise. We’re proud that we were always willing to poke the bear, even when other outlets were busy trying to make friends with the bear.

Tone Madison Cooperative is incorporated as a worker-owned cooperative under Wisconsin state law. The cooperative is organized without capital stock, so none of the remaining worker-owners will be making off with any dividends. The law requires a dissolving co-op to distribute its remaining assets to either another co-op or a non-profit organization. In the event there is anything left to distribute, we will distribute those assets to our longtime partners at MadWorC. 

Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be proud to bring you a few more fiercely independent stories on local arts, culture, and politics.