I'm proud to announce that The Sacramento Press hit a major milestone.

In two and a half years we have published work from over 1,000 unique authors.

A few are employees here and many are interns, but the vast majority are community contributors. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you to all of our contributors!

What does this number really mean? There are a lot of big numbers flying around these days. AOL probably has plans for more Patches than we have had unique authors. Facebook just hit 750 million users. Compared to that 1,000 seems so small.

But "small" is precisely the point. Our small team has worked diligently to foster a deeply informed and engaged community. We know many of these people. Many have attended our free workshops. Many more have utilized our free copy editing services. I've attended neighborhood association meetings with contributors and taught people how to use modern blogging tools. We have an open office and several people without computers have come in to write their stories in our newsroom.

I can't believe it, but this really is a vast network for our purpose and scale. It grew person to person. It is made up of purposeful people who believe in the power of community.

1,000 people gives me goosebumps. A couple of years ago I could have predicted 1,000 but I could never predict the texture of the journey. The intensity of local and the joy of it - leaves me speechless.