Screenshot of The DC Line homepage.

Just in time for the D.C. primary, a new local news site is on the scene.

The DC Line comes from Chris Kain, the former managing editor of The Current newspapers. He resigned in December after 26 years at the paper. The Current is reorganizing after filing for bankruptcy, following years of beleaguered finances.

With The DC Line, Kain wants to “provide the information that will help people become more active participants in hometown D.C.,” he says. The nonprofit site will have original journalism and commentary from officials, community leaders, and residents, along with civic and community calendars, and links to news of interest from other publications.

“In the lead up to this primary, it was so hard to track when candidates forums were taking place,” he says. “Those kinds of events we want to make readily accessible.”

The site went live on June 15, filled with a slew of stories about the D.C. primary election, during what Kain is calling a “proof of concept period” that he hopes will help in raising funds. “When I’m meeting with people, it’s not just them buying into my idea,” he says. “They can actually see it online.”

He’s currently working on inking a deal with fiscal sponsor, a 501(C)3 that will offer the site the ability to offer tax-deductible donations. He declined to share the identity of the nonprofit, but says the deal will be that The DC Line is “a separate entity but still working under the auspices of the sponsor organization.”

Kain opted not to wait until the deal was finalized to launch because “the election content was no longer going to be relevant.”

While in beta mode, before the fundraising push, Kain is providing the cash to keep the site alive. “My family had some money available in charitable fund that I’ll be using,” he says. The idea after that is to secure diverse funding sources with grants and events, though the “first one and building block is a vigorous member-donor support.” He sees local news organizations like Voice of San Diego and VTDigger as models.

For now, Kain is the only full-time staffer. The DC Line also includes a part-time copy editor and a team of about a dozen freelancers. District Links, the comprehensive city politics newsletter from Cuneyt Dil, is now a project of the site.

Dil says Kain reached out to him a few months back and he was happy to bring his newsletter, which has almost 800 people on its distribution list, to the site.

He says that in The DC Line, “a lot of what we cover is stuff that Chris knows really well—neighborhood issues, things that the D.C. Council does that other outlets might miss or not cover. It’s the same robust reporting that The Current used to do in a new format online with a new business model.”

Unlike The Current, which publishes every two weeks, The DC Line will focus on all eight wards. Kain wants to publish new stories several times a week, and update the calendars even more frequently. He doesn’t have plans for a print edition.

When he started brainstorming the idea of The DC Line, he says that local news looked particularly bleak: DCist had recently shut down and Washington City Paper’s future was unclear. He’s enthused to get back to the kind of nuts-and-bolts coverage he shepherded at The Current.

He says that “people interested in local D.C. will have more venues focusing on telling stories that really convey what’s going on in city.”