One year ago, I walked into 30 Beach Road here in Vineyard Haven to start a “part-time” job as publisher of this weekly newspaper. And right away, I was met with what felt like biblical plagues. Flooding at Five Corners left the newsroom in up to six inches of water, and high winds almost blew down the large wooden sign over our entry proclaiming “MVTimes,” which was left quite literally twisting in the wind as I entered. Then the server crashed. I wrote about this tale out of the Book of Exodus in my first column, “A sign of the times.”
But through it all, one year later, we are still standing. And I find myself in awe of an amazingly resilient team that publishes this newspaper week in and week out, despite all of the calamity we have faced. They would continue to find their way forward through a year of relentless news cycles on local, national, and global fronts, and a steady erosion of the traditional business models for publishing local news. What I have come to realize is that this paper’s role in this community rides on tremendous goodwill and, as we have just learned in our recent donor campaign, extraordinarily generous support for what we do.
So the Old Testament comparisons to my first week in the publisher’s chair may not be far off, but maybe a New Testament parable of the loaves and fishes is more fitting. As we turn the corner into the second year with Steve Bernier and myself serving in our respective roles as owner and publisher, we have found that this Island has faith in the work we do, and we are humbled by the bounty of support we have received.
We have seen a genuine understanding of, and support for, the importance of a local news organization that will hold local power accountable, that will enlighten and inform all of us on the challenging issues we face, and that will serve as a voice to sing the praises of the year-round population of some 20,000 souls who live and work here, from every corner of our diverse community.
How do we know this is true? It is because so many of you stepped up to participate in our end-of-year donor drive. More than 310 Islanders did their part to help us sustain our operations, contributing a total of $42,656.06 to our campaign, which began just before Thanksgiving. There were individual donations as large as $5,000, and some as modest as $15. The average donation was about $130. And there was one family who generously stepped up to match all of those donations with a $50,000 challenge grant, as part of what we are calling our “sustainer” program.
This family says it plans to make its role public, but for now has asked us to first make one last push to reach $50,000 — to raise $7,343.94 more to reach our goal in the matching formula, and raise a total of $100,000 going into 2025 to help us sustain the costs of providing local journalism that serves our community. We are very close, and we hope you will help us reach our goal.
The MVTimes is not a traditional nonprofit news organization, operating with a tax-deductible status. We are, technically at least, a for-profit organization, but one that is losing money as we try to carry out a mission that we believe is a public service. As many of you might know, the crisis in local journalism is a profound reality. More than two newspapers are dying in America every week, leaving an industry that has been gutted, and more than 2,000 counties in our country that no longer have a local news source. It is a national crisis I know well as the co-founder of a nonprofit program called Report for America, which seeks to address the problem by placing local reporters in local newsrooms. So, yes, I work two jobs, like many of you, to make ends meet, and because I believe that journalism is worth fighting for. Technically, I am part-time at The MVTimes, but in reality, they are very long weeks here, and at the nonprofit entity, which is growing. At Report for America, since we launched in 2018, we have placed nearly 700 reporters in about 300 newsrooms across all 50 states. It is a movement, and I am proud to have led the team that got this effort off the ground. But our efforts are not enough, and local news organizations will have to find new ways to sustain their operations.
Why? A dramatic decline in print advertising and a shift in the reading habits in the digital age have all conspired to fracture the traditional approaches that have provided the economic foundation of local news organizations. The result is a profound loss of revenue that we are trying to make up by calling on you, our community, to support our work.
To everyone of you who answered the call, we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You understand the importance of journalism, and are part of the future of solving the crisis in local news through a community-supported model. To those of you who subscribe to our paper, thank you, as you are the lifeblood of this organization. To those of you who advertise with us, thank you for trusting us to help you grow your business. We need each and every one of you to stay with us and help us get this done.
Over the next few weeks, we will share with you specifics on how we plan to put this money to work supporting our operations going into 2025, and especially in training a new generation of Islanders to serve as journalists. We want to provide emerging journalists in our community with the skills and the opportunity to tell the story of their own Island. That, at the end of the day, is exactly what local news is all about. We will keep you posted as the effort takes shape. We’d love to hear your ideas on how we can make this happen, and how best to deploy the community support we have received to better serve you.
And, for now, if you have not yet made a pledge, please consider doing so to help us reach our goal by clicking here.
Charles Sennott is the publisher of The MVTimes.
