At the first-ever Islanders Write midwinter celebration of authors, essayists, and journalists who make up the proud legacy of writers on the Island, the Martha’s Vineyard Times shared some big news at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs about a new initiative to ensure the legacy continues into future generations.
A pledge of $150,000 over the next three years was announced to support The Times in building a new initiative that will expand the news organization’s celebration of local authors known as Islanders Write. The gift will provide funding to mentor the next generation of Islanders to write for The Times, and to serve the community with trusted local news.
The funding, which will enable The Times to sustain the annual salary of an emerging writer from the Island, was made by John and Michelle Battelle of East Chop, a couple who had their own illustrious careers in journalism before coming to live full-time on the Island five years ago after raising their three grown children in California and New York.
“Michelle and I entered journalism at a time when it was hard, but not impossible to imagine building a lasting and satisfying career in the field,” John Battelle said. “Today, it’s nearly impossible. But even as the jobs vanish, journalism, particularly local journalism, is fundamental to the functioning of our democracy. We all chose to live in this extraordinary place, but unless we all step up, the next generation of journalists won’t be able to join us – and the Island will be much the poorer for it.”
“We need young reporters to be able to step up,” Michelle Battelle said on Saturday. “The world is changing rapidly, and we need good reporters to do good, in-depth investigative reporting to shine a light on what’s going on in the world.”
John Battelle is the founding editor of Wired magazine, and a successful entrepreneur in digital publishing in Silicon Valley; Michelle Battelle also worked at Wired, and served as a producer for CBS News.
After the Battelles spoke, Times Publisher Charles Sennott thanked them for the generosity and shared with the crowd that they first connected around their daughter Beatrix’s internship at The Times, and a shared sense of how The Times could deepen its mentoring and support for a new generation of journalists.
Standing at the podium before a crowd of about 100 at Featherstone’s on Saturday, Sennott announced the young writer who was chosen for the yearlong position is Sarah Shaw Dawson, 28, who was born and raised on the Island, and is a proud alum of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School who attended the University of Vermont. Dawson, who is also a musician, has worked as a freelance reporter for The Times for the past six months, and has shown a gift for covering complex issues such as the increasing insurance rates for local homeowners and the growing plight of the unhoused amid a crisis in affordable housing.
“I’m excited to shed light on topics that speak to the Island’s individual place as a kind of microcosm of larger issues,” Dawson said on Saturday. “It’s been such a gift to do this work so far, through the guidance of people who are so knowledgeable, and there’s nowhere I’d rather do it.”
Dawson will continue to explore enterprise stories and follow a wide range of topics, but she will be leaning especially into the issues surrounding the lack of affordable housing, according to Sennott.
With the help of the Battelles’ donation, Dawson was selected for what Sennott hopes will be the first in a long line of apprenticeships for Island youth who want to be part of telling the story of their own community.
As to how the donation came to The Times, word went out just before the holidays that there was an anonymous donor who had offered a gift of $50,000 to support this expansion of Islanders Write. It was revealed over the weekend that the anonymous gift came from the Battelle family, which has also pledged to continue their support through the next three years. To build upon their generous commitment, The Times then asked our community to step up through our “sustainer” campaign for community donations to help us carry out the service of local journalism. The community answered with smaller gifts that ranged from $10 to $5,000, and the “sustainer” campaign came very close to matching the $50,000.
The Times now has a total pool of funding that is just under $100,000. The Battelles’ gift will go directly to the reporter’s salary, benefits, and mentorship. The MV Times organizes and runs the Islanders Write event as a nonprofit arm through a longstanding partnership with the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation, which has served as our fiscal sponsor for tax-deductible gifts that help us to sustain Islanders Write.
Sennott stated that this pioneering approach is increasingly how struggling community news organizations are trying to make ends meet, but he added that it is layered, and a bit complex.
“We want to be transparent and good stewards as we do this, and so we would love to hear from you if you have questions,” Sennott said.
“We believe this community-supported model is the future of local news –– which, as you have heard me say before, is in a deep crisis in our country. More than two local newspapers have been shutting down every week in America for most of the past 20 years. That is largely due to shifting business models on the internet, and a dramatic downturn in print advertising. We are left with a ravaged landscape in the nation’s news ecosystem. We believe the demise of local news has everything to do with the polarization we see in America, and with the genuine crisis we are seeing in our democracy. Local news provides a binding agent that holds our nation together, and without it we are fractured.”
One way to be part of avoiding fracture and changing that pattern of decline is by making sure that here on the Island, there is an opportunity for the next generation of journalists to serve their local community. The Times has actually been supporting emerging journalists for many years through our work with the high school newspaper, The High School View, which we publish weekly, and through our robust internship program, which has brought amazing talent into the newsroom through the years, including former intern Nikeya Tankard, who is a freshman at Connecticut College, and who plans to return to work with The Times again this summer, and Natalie Wambui, who is the current editor in chief of the high school paper, and who will also be with The Times for her second summer as an intern. The Times’ reporter trainee, Nicholas Vukota, also raised on the Island, is now being promoted to a full-time staff position.
And now this tradition of nurturing talent will culminate with Sarah Shaw Dawson joining as the first journalist to have the newly established role of Island Writer, thanks to the community support that made it possible.
Read more about how the grant will work in our editorial section from last week at bit.ly/MVT_IslandWriters.
