Improve Your News Diet: Support the Observer's Summer Membership Campaign

The Dallas Observer doesn't just feed your mind with informative, engaging and entertaining reporting. Sometimes, we also feed your bellies. That was the case last week as we joined 20 of our supporters for a meal at Radici in Farmers Branch.

For our inaugural supper club event, sous chef Ivana Robinson prepared an Italian-influenced meal that left us dreaming of tiramisu, spicy rigatoni alla amatriciana, grilled chicken and much more. Robinson shared the story of her leap from working in business to watching instructional cooking videos online to joining award-winning chef Tiffany Derry, where her real kitchen education began. The conversation was lively, the guests were friendly and the food was delicious. We wish you were there.

Lucky for you, another chance to break bread with Observer staffers is coming up Aug. 12 ... if you're an Observer member, that is. And it just happens that now is the perfect time for you to join other readers who appreciate the unique local coverage the Observer provides day in and day out, as we've just kicked off our summer membership campaign. Our goal is to raise $6,000 by Aug. 10, and we hope you'll help.

Like the other best things in life, the Observer is and always will be free, but producing a free newspaper isn't cheap, and our supporters agree that having an independent voice keeping tabs on the Dallas community is priceless. (That's right, we're free, vital and priceless ... like love or air.) We pull that off by bringing readers fresh perspectives and untold stories, whether it's about putting attack drones in public schools, outlining changes to city trash services, introducing readers to new musical artists and filmmakers or directing you to the best places in the area to get a drink, our small, hardworking staff punches well above its weight to deliver stories you might not find anywhere else.

Doing that in today's media landscape isn't easy. There's a lot of clutter out there on the internet delivering a load of empty calories, and the competition for advertising dollars is fierce. Our belief is that by offering readers a healthier diet of fact-based news, entertainment and the occasional opinion, we can attract astute readers who care about the Dallas community and its future as much as we do. We hope you can prove us right and contribute to our membership program. Helping the Observer endure will give you one of the best things your money can't buy.