Through more than 40 years as a journalist, I have followed a path that is both global and local.
And this week that path came full circle when we gathered on Sunday, which marked World Press Freedom Day, in The Martha’s Vineyard Times’ newsroom on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven.
About 35 Islanders crowded into our modest and cluttered newsroom for a Publisher’s Forum, which is part of a promise we made to the community when I became publisher two years ago, to host outreach and information sessions about what we are working on and what you would like to see us working on.
At this forum, I shared an analysis that has shaped much of my work as a local and national reporter and as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and beyond. My take on this distressing moment we live in is that the crisis in local news has everything to do with the crisis in our democracy. Local news is a binding agent that, when done right, can pull communities together around a shared set of facts, around solutions to challenges we face, and around the stories of those who need to be held accountable and those we need to celebrate. Across America, local newspapers are dying at the alarming rate of two per week, and more than two-thirds of all newspaper jobs have been lost in the past 20 years. It is a full-blown crisis. And when a community loses its local news source, a barren landscape that is known as a “news desert,” we know three things happen: Voter participation declines, polarization rises, and bond ratings are weakened. That, in simple terms, indicates that banks and other institutions of lending will not want to invest in communities where no one is watching the store. So that is why I say the crisis in local news has everything to do with the crisis in our democracy. We are coming apart in part because we are losing the glue that holds us together: trusted, local news.
You’ve probably heard that before if you have read my essays in this space, but it is sadly becoming more and more true every day. So we thought World Press Freedom Day felt like the right day to make the connection. We wanted our local community to understand that the ongoing assault on a free, independent press is happening across America and indeed around the world, and we all need to care about it if we want to live in a functioning democracy.
We also wanted to share some exciting updates from our newsroom. We announced that our two talented reporters, Eunki Seonwoo and Hayley Duffy, have stepped up into the role of news editors. They will continue their reporting on transportation and the environment, respectively, while they also preside over a team that continues to serve the Island with reporting on all of the issues that matter.
We also introduced the idea that we are becoming “digital first” in our editorial mission. That process began with a much-needed redesign of our website, which we are aware has been pretty abysmal in recent years. We hope you see the improvements we are making to provide a better user experience for you, our readers, on our website, and we would love to hear your feedback.
This undertaking is being done in partnership with NewsPack, which is a division of WordPress, headed up by CEO Kinsey Wilson, an innovative leader who previously served as the head of digital at the New York Times and NPR. Newspack allows smaller, independent news organizations like ours to publish a great website, build an audience, and increase revenue with an affordable monthly fee.
We are not done with this process of reviving our website, and we still have quite a way to go to get it right. But we hope you see some improvement. At the forum, we discussed the importance of our comments policy, and we’ve created a page on our site to make it more visible to readers. It can be found under “Opinion” on the main navigation menu or found here.
We also made several important announcements at our forum in the newsroom.
We introduced Sean Potts, who will be serving as a new director of marketing and digital strategy starting later this month. Sean has been a lifelong summer resident of Martha’s Vineyard, and has been living on the Island year-round for the past few years. Sean is an extraordinary talent whom I have been recruiting for the better part of two years, and we are thrilled to be welcoming him to the team.
We also announced an expansion of our nonprofit initiative to sustain a new generation of Islanders who want to be journalists. Our nonprofit arm is run through the Islanders Write program, which we offer free every summer for the past 14 years through the leadership of our Islanders Write executive director, Kate Feiffer. Last year, Kate and I announced our first full-time reporter, or Island Writer, as we have named them. She is Sarah Shaw Dawson, who was born and raised on the Island, and her excellent reporting on housing in this edition is proof that this initiative was a very good idea. The first Island Writer was supported through a gift of $150,000 from John and Michelle Battelle.
And now, thanks to two new, and equally generous, gifts of $150,000 each over three years from Jim and Susan Swartz and David and Nina Fialkow, we will be able to expand the program. These two gifts will allow us to add two more Island Writers who will serve their community through local reporting in the years ahead. If you know someone who should be considered for this position, please have them forward a résumé and cover letter. We are looking for a new generation of Islanders who want to join us in telling the story of our Island. The deadline for applications for this year is June 1. If you would like to consider supporting one of these positions, please let us know. All communications can be sent to publisher@mvtimes.com.
Last but certainly not least, we also announced our first Tony Horwitz Internship. We all knew the late Anthony “Tony” Horwitz as Tony, a Pulitzer prizewinning journalist and writer, and year-round resident who loved every inch of the Island and who had a special passion for softball. This internship is supported by his widow, acclaimed novelist Geraldine Brooks, as well as his whole family, including Nathaniel, his son, who is a digital journalism entrepreneur. Nathaniel got his start at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School newspaper, which we are proud to publish weekly, and right here in our newsroom as an intern at The Times. We want to thank the Horwitz family for honoring this long connection to our community newspaper, and we are thrilled to announce we have named a rising senior at MVRHS who, just like Nathaniel, is a reporter at the High School View. Her name is Maria Barros, and she is part of the vibrant Brazilian community on the Island.
“She’s observant, curious, thoughtful, and a really deep listener — all qualities that make for a great journalist. She genuinely cares about telling stories that matter and approaches her work with a lot of integrity and heart,” Kate Hennigan, faculty advisor for the High School View, said.
Welcome, Maria! We are looking forward to working with you. And we are looking forward to seeing you, our readers, both in print and online as we forge ahead to carve a whole new digital path that we hope will wind its way right into your mailboxes and inboxes in the years ahead. Onward!
Charles M. Sennott is the publisher and editor of The Martha’s Vineyard Times.
