The Marblehead Current and its competitors were featured in an editorial “The local news business is in crisis. Marblehead is showing us a possible solution” in the Jan. 18 edition of the Boston Globe, which you can read below. The editorial follows a front-page article in the newspaper’s Jan. 4 edition, profiling the Current staff and its competitors.
Knowing that the Globe editorial might bring some new eyeballs to our website, we thought we would take this opportunity to further introduce ourselves.
As Marblehead’s only nonprofit news source, we do not have a media parent company funding us — or dictating our community coverage.
Our newsroom is right here in Marblehead, staffed by veteran local journalists with over five decades of combined experience covering our town. We depend on individual donations, which are tax-deductible, modestly-priced advertising and sponsorships, also tax-deductible, and support from foundations through the Institute of Nonprofit News and others.
Every dollar we raise goes directly to supporting independent journalism – to paying for freelancers to add to the depth of our coverage, to the printing and mailing costs of our print edition and to our digital news site.
Since 2005, more than 2,000 local newspapers have closed around the country, eroding vibrant coverage about local government, business, sports and the arts. These closures have resulted in “news deserts” where citizens no longer can count on being up to date on important stories in their communities. We didn’t want that fate for our town.
After Gannett took over the Marblehead Reporter in 2019, slashed resources and bare minimum local coverage ensued. Former editors and journalists from the Reporter got together and vowed to not let Marblehead become one of those news deserts. The idea for a non-profit, sustainable, newspaper was born. Local leaders, like Jessica Barnett and Ed Bell, got involved, and the Current became a reality.
Two newspapers got Marblehead through its first 150 years. Our mission is to provide Marblehead with objective, independent news for the next 150. If you would like to help us by supporting the Current, you can donate here: https://bit.ly/3fggUv5
