About Us

Since our founding in 1984, The Martha’s Vineyard Times has become the Island’s most widely read newspaper for year-round Islanders, long-term summer residents, and Vineyard visitors, with an average circulation of approximately 15,000 copies each week. Last year The Times’ circulation was more than three times greater on-Island, and two times greater overall, than that of the Vineyard Gazette, the community’s other weekly newspaper. The Times is generally acknowledged as the community newspaper for Martha’s Vineyard.

In January of 2020, The Times changed its model of providing a free print newspaper to every post office boxholder on the Island, to one of paid circulation. We will deliver newspapers to all subscribers, continue to sell them at retail outlets, and provide complimentary copies to assorted venues. As of March 1, 2020, we had 10,000 readers, on and off-Island, and a press run of 5000 copies. Our website content will be free to all print subscribers; those who’d rather do without a print paper can subscribe to web only.

We believe that a useful and vital community newspaper needs to be successfully immersed in Vineyard life, and we dedicate considerable resources to cover our community broadly and deeply; our myriad awards (weekly newspaper of the year from the New England Press Association in 2017, 2018, 2019) have shown us that our peers agree.

Companion to the weekly Times, our newspaper website mvtimes.com, has published 100% of our weekly content, in addition to web-only material, since it first went live more than 15 years ago, and has consistently won awards among New England peers. Responsive design means mvtimes.com is very effectively rendered across desktop and mobile platforms. It attracts more than 3.5 million unique visitors and 4.3 million sessions annually, roughly equally divided among Islanders and off-Islanders from all over the country and the world.

Our daily newsletter, The Minute, lands in the email boxes of close to 11,000 subscribers every weekday by 5 pm, making it the Island’s only daily news source.

The Martha’s Vineyard Times also publishes a strategically balanced portfolio of interest-focused products, print and web. Martha’s Vineyard Arts + Ideas Magazine (mvartsandideas.com), The Local (mvtimes.com/the-local), Vineyard Visitor (vineyardvisitor.com), Edible Vineyard (mvtimes.com/edible-vineyard),  and programs for our two largest Island-wide events — the annual Agricultural Fair and High School Graduation — each provide texture and focus for particular interests among our readers and advertisers.

Throughout our history, The Times has developed and continues to underwrite a number of important community initiatives. We developed The Bargain Box, a free classified service matching Islanders with free or low-cost goods and services more than 25 years ago. We publish the High School View, a weekly student newspaper in our pages (making it one of a handful of high school publications in the U.S. that are circulated to the entire community). We publish the monthly newsletter of the Island’s Councils on Aging as well as lengthy town warrants and ballots at no cost to the public. We have been the exclusive local sponsor and underwriter of each year’s Scripps Howard national spelling bee for more than 25 years. We also sponsor or serve as media partners for events carefully selected for their broad Island benefit.

Perhaps most ambitiously we organize Islanders Write (islanderswrite.com), attracting several hundred attendees for a completely free day-long series of panels, roundtables, workshops and exhibitions celebrating writers, publishers, readers and teachers with deep ties to the Island, from all over the country.

All of our print and web products are published by Martha’s Vineyard Times Corporation Inc., which is owned by Peter and Barbara Oberfest. Visitors since the early 1970’s, they moved here year-round in 1993 with their three-year old son. The Oberfests became partners in The Times with Doug and Molly Cabral in 1996 and became sole owners in 2014.

For information on subscribing to the Martha’s Vineyard Times, visit our subscriptions page.