On Friday, Sept. 6 the first edition of the Independent on paper rolled off the press at Graphic Developments Inc. in Hanover, Mass. It’s always a thrill to see the beautiful precision and power of the Goss Community web press and the skill of the printers who keep the news coming to us.
Many of you who have followed the newborn Independent online over the last month have already contributed in ways that confirm our sense that the time is right for a new newspaper here.
Others have greeted the Independent with raised eyebrows. After all, doesn’t everyone know that newspapers have been laying off employees and shutting their doors? The Boston Globe’s Aug. 9 story on us was headlined “They’re starting — yes, starting — a newspaper on the Cape.” WCAI radio’s Aug. 29 story has the headline “Dark Days for Newspapers See a New Light in Provincetown.”
So, you may be asking, are we crazy? Well, perhaps. But what “everyone knows” is rarely the whole truth. Many newspapers are indeed struggling to maintain the high profits that investors got used to in headier days, and too many have closed. Still, quite a few independent newspapers remain faithful to their mission of serving their communities first, and those papers, by and large, are not failing.
James Fallows wrote in the Atlantic on Aug. 30 about the Quoddy Tides in Eastport, Maine, a family-owned paper that has a print circulation of just under 5,000 in a town with a year-round population of about 1,300.
What’s their secret? “If you want to keep a healthy circulation,” publisher Edward French told Fallows, “you have to make the investment in reporters and providing the news that people can’t find anywhere else.”
French understands that publishing a community newspaper means efficiently running a small business — but it’s a business with a higher calling.
“We try to provide a voice for people in our communities that might otherwise not have a voice, so that people in power have to address their concerns and be held accountable,” he told Fallows. “That’s the basis for a healthy democracy. I think without community newspapers, democracy will really suffer.”
Ours towns — Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham — are small. But what the loss of local papers means for democracy is a big story that we are part of. We believe the people who love Outer Cape Cod deserve a truly local newspaper that reflects the extraordinary beauty, diversity, and uniqueness of this place and its human and natural history. We will invest in reporters and find stories that bring you closer to your neighbors. We want to celebrate all that is good here, in a place that’s proud of its tradition of welcoming separatists and strangers, while delving into the challenges we face on the far end of this sandbar.
The first print edition of the Independent is a preview, with some of the stories we have already posted here on our website. That issue is free, but starting Oct. 10 we’ll be publishing in print and online every week, and you’ll need to subscribe to see how we’re doing. And whether or not we really are crazy.
