We are looking back at a year that yielded difficult challenges, but also revealed great strengths of our Island. And we are looking ahead to wish you all the best in 2026. We came together to highlight the most important news stories of 2025 in our “Year in Review” as well as “A Year of Gatherings” in our Community & Calendar section to celebrate the culture, art, food, and local industries across our diverse Island. Both are available in our most recent print edition of the paper, published Dec. 24. Click here for the print version of the “Year in Review.”
It certainly was not an easy year, but it is definitely one in which the Island community pulled together and persevered by doing what we do best, which is helping each other.
The big news stories told of difficult challenges, from the fear of tick-borne illness to frustrations over the lack of accountability at both Vineyard Wind and the Steamship Authority. We saw the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement play out across the Island, resulting in ICE’s detaining at least 20 people and leaving a vibrant Brazilian community retreating into the shadows. We picked 12 coverage areas that we felt encapsulated the biggest stories of this year to round out 2025.
And in a year marked by great uncertainty beyond our shores, Martha’s Vineyard once again proved that gathering is both our tradition and our quiet act of resilience. From the Agricultural Fair to epic summer celebrations of literature and film, these events did more than fill our calendars. They truly held us together. As our new newsletter, The Grapevine, put it, the Vineyard is “not about spectacle, scale, or seasonality, but about continuity: showing up, sharing space, and choosing connection again and again.” Read more here.
We are grateful to all of you, our readers and our advertisers, for supporting us in a year in which we were named the weekly “Newspaper of the Year” by the New England Newspaper and Press Association. We are pleased to see how many of you are joining our membership model and helping us prove the point that fair, independent journalism requires community support.
Below are the 12 coverage areas we felt best summed up the news this year.
- Offshore wind makes waves
- The year of the tick
- Fifty years of ‘Jaws’: The Vineyard celebrates a half-century in the spotlight
- Island sports took center stage
- Fear among immigrants
- Islanders step up to help fill gaps created by federal funding cuts
- New high school project amidst many leadership changes
- Home is where the Island is
- A new age for the Steamship Authority
- Island Music’s closing and its downstream reverberations
- Remembering those we lost
- Celebrating the working waterfront