To our year-round and seasonal readers and friends:
Starting on Jan. 2, 2020, The MV Times and mvtimes.com will change circulation models from largely free to paid. Beginning in five weeks, newspaper and digital readers will need to subscribe, at a cost of $40 per year, in order to continue receiving their weekly Times delivered to their mailbox, and retain full access to our online content. Retail sales will be $1 per copy on newsstands (of course, by subscribing for a year, you’ll pay just 77 cents per issue). How-to-do-it information will appear in the newspaper and online (mvtimes.com/subscriptions) for several weeks to come.
Newspapers — from big dailies to small weeklies — have never been as important to protecting informed citizenship as they are today, and have never been in greater peril. (See our news story here.) The change we are announcing — combining advertiser, reader, and community revenue — will bring us closer to the financial model that we believe best serves great local journalism and also nourishes healthy, strong communities. And the environmental penalties of our mass mailing approach will come to an end.
We understand that any change like this is a surprise and can be disruptive, and it’s fair to ask, “What exactly is in this for me”? Certainly not MVTimes-branded mugs and caps. You’ll be helping to protect the independent community news coverage you need and deserve, reporting on all the places and events that make up the Vineyard’s singular year-round and seasonal community.
The Times is personal for us. Barbara and I consider ourselves stewards, sustaining this important community asset, and our extraordinary staff, and making a difference in Island life throughout the next 10 years and beyond, as we have for the past several decades.
We also believe that having website visitors and print readers share in supporting this awardwinning civic institution is the right thing to do: Healthy, informed communities need strong, reliable community newspapers. Islanders read The Times.
Barbara and Peter Oberfest,
Publishers