To the editor:
As a former board member of the Marblehead Current, I know firsthand how much care, sacrifice, and determination have gone into keeping the paper alive. That’s why I appreciated Logan Casey’s October 1 letter underscoring the importance of supporting local news and the value of Will Dowd’s reporting.
For three and a half years the Current has quietly pulled off something ambitious: the production, printing, and mailing of a weekly nonprofit newspaper—online, in print, and across social media—free of charge to 10,000 households and businesses. The board and staff have pursued that mission with extraordinary care, stretching each dollar and making hard tradeoffs to keep the presses running. One of the biggest commitments was sustaining a full-time reporter’s salary with benefits.
The Current has always faced a challenging paradox. Because it is so well done and shows up reliably in our mailboxes, it can seem like it doesn’t need support. Quality has earned the paper many fans and, at the same time, few donors — people seem to assume that a paper in need would “look” like it. Year after year, without lowering their professional standards, the Current team alerted the community that sustained support was essential to survival.
I can say with confidence: nonprofit journalism is hard math. There’s no corporate parent footing the bills—only local volunteers, donors, and advertisers working together to do something vital for civic life. The effort to sustain the paper, including retaining a full time employee, was consistently approached with loyalty, creativity, and determination. In the end, though, as a recent editorial explained, the Current’s budget “could no longer sustain a newsroom that, as best we can tell, has been significantly larger than those of the other startup nonprofit news organizations”. Will was offered the option to remain with the Current on an ad-hoc basis, continuing to strengthen the labor of love he helped to found, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
I hope the community recognizes that this is about more than one role. It’s about whether we are willing to have skin in the game so that independent, reliable reporting can exist – and even thrive. What Marblehead has in the Current is rare: a hyper-local newsroom run by experienced, professionally trained journalists with integrity. Since June, three editions of the Weekly News printed glaring errors (two positioning a notorious former school committee member as still in office, one seemingly reinstating a former school superintendent). They were alerted to all three; none were retracted. The Current has consistently prioritized accuracy, context, nuance and public trust – and when they make mistakes, like all organizations and human beings do, they own them.
Do we want to keep the “nice things” we value — like a quality newspaper landing in every mailbox every week? Do we want the Current to be able to afford things like qualified, full time employees?
If the answer for you is “yes”, please get in the game. Visit marbleheadcurrent.org/donate and sign up for a monthly sustaining donation. If you own a business, locally or not, run ads. If you value — on a Constitutional level, even — a free and fair press, you have a chance right in front of you to show it. Thank you, Logan, for reminding us what’s at stake.
Sincerely,
Kate Haesche Thomson
Bubier Road
