Local news keeps you informed about what’s going on. Good local news helps you understand it. It explains what happens at town hall and in our schools, introduces us to the neighbors who make Marblehead special, and helps us grieve together when times are sad. It’s also how we hold our leaders accountable.
In Marblehead, staying informed matters. At Town Meeting and at the ballot box, we vote directly on budgets, overrides and zoning. In June’s override election, 8,214 residents cast ballots — close to half of the town’s registered voters — when town elections before 2020 typically drew about one in five. In state elections, Marblehead’s turnout has run 11 to 13 points ahead of Massachusetts as a whole since 2020. Self-government on that scale only works when people have the facts and understand the arguments.
Across the country, those facts are getting harder to come by. According to the Local Journalism Index from Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News, the number of local journalists in the United States has fallen by about 75 percent since 2002. Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative estimates that about one in five Americans lives in a news desert or in a community at risk of becoming one. In many towns our size, nobody is at the meeting anymore. Marblehead still has reporters in the room.
The Current keeps you in the know with local reporters who live here, work here, and care about here. And it is your support that keeps us here.
We’re at the Select Board, the School Committee, the Board of Health, and countless other committee meetings so you can have dinner at home and not miss anything. Our team read through the 40 Town Meeting warrant articles and explained how they impacted each of us. We’re under the lights on Friday night, talking with the coaches after the final whistle.
We’re here when the news is hard. When Marblehead needs to come together, many of you come to these pages to learn what happened, to find out how to help, and to feel a little less alone. We know what that trust asks of us. In difficult times, we hold fast to accuracy, care and dignity.
How can you measure a year?
From Nov. 1, 2025, through Oct. 31, 2026, we published 1,790 articles online, about five a day, and printed 52 weekly editions. That includes 202 stories on town government, 123 on our public schools and 204 on Marblehead sports. We ran 234 letters to the editor — because a town paper should also be a town forum — along with 146 obituaries and 38 editorials. About 50 reporters, columnists, photographers and student journalists shared bylines.
Before the $15 million override vote, our five-part series “Overriding Considerations” dug into municipal payroll, state aid, property taxes and the town’s structural deficit, and showed how Marblehead compares with its neighbors. On this page, our editorial board made the case for Tier 3, the option voters ultimately approved. You may have agreed with us or not. Either way, you went to the polls with the knowledge you needed to make an informed decision.
This work is ongoing. We are tracking whether override dollars are being spent the way voters were promised, and we will keep doing that.
We tell the stories of the people who make Marblehead, Marblehead — the Rooney family organizing Friends of the Marblehead Rail Trail, the Burns family finding a new path after losing their lobster boat, a local jewelry maker whose work landed at Nordstrom, and Marblehead High’s first quiz-show team. These are neighbors you may know, and we try to show you something about them you probably didn’t.
We don’t just tell you what happened in Marblehead; we explain why it matters.
We are a nonprofit, and we answer to a board of directors made up of Marbleheaders, not to a distant owner or shareholders. Every dollar we raise goes back into covering this town.
We run lean. A newsroom of just a few produces a weekly print edition, daily website updates, and a weekly newsletter. Reporting, printing, delivery and the basics any small organization needs, from insurance to accounting, add up to about $7,300 for every weekly edition, or roughly $380,000 a year.
Like every household in town, we feel rising costs. Since May, the price of newsprint has pushed our weekly printing bill from $1,500 to $2,230, an increase of nearly 50 percent. These challenges are not insurmountable. But we can’t meet them alone, and we would rather ask you plainly than cut back on the coverage you count on.
Why your donation means more now
Once again, we are proud to take part in NewsMatch, a national campaign from the Institute for Nonprofit News that begins its second decade this month. From now through Dec. 31, NewsMatch will match every donation we receive, dollar for dollar, up to $1,000 per donor. We can earn up to $19,000 in matching funds this season, and our goal is to raise $50,000 by year’s end.
Over the past 10 years, $45 million in NewsMatch funding has helped nonprofit newsrooms raise more than $432 million from their own communities, and roughly 600,000 people have given to a nonprofit newsroom for the first time. This year, 437 newsrooms are taking part, from Los Angeles to Houston to Marblehead.
You do not need to give $1,000 to make a difference. Much of what keeps local news alive comes from donations of $25, $50 or $100. Through Dec. 31, a $50 donation becomes $100.
If you have given before, thank you. You made this year’s reporting possible. We hope you’ll renew now, while your donation goes twice as far. If you read our reporting but have never given, this is a good moment to start. Your first donation also helps us earn an extra bonus for bringing in at least 50 new supporters.
You can scan the QR code here, give at marbleheadcurrent.org/donate or mail a check to Marblehead Current, P.O. Box 102, Marblehead MA 01945.
Being part of the life of this town means understanding what’s going on. Help us keep Marblehead informed.
To support the Current, visit MarbleheadCurrent.org/donate.
