Seven weeks ago, as we passed the two-year mark and began Volume 3 of the Independent, I wrote about our finances and where we stood in relation to our projections. That report was mainly about money: how much we had thought it would cost to launch a weekly newspaper, where the revenue was coming from, how long it would take to reach break-even, and how we planned to make it through the next few years until the business would be self-sustaining.
As important as the financial realities of producing a weekly community newspaper are, they are not the main reason we started the Independent. We saw the existing local newspapers getting weaker — not because their reporters and editors weren’t hard-working and dedicated to high standards of journalism, but because distant ownership was abdicating its responsibility to serve the best interests of the local community.
In some communities, independent journalists are attacking the problem of irresponsible corporate ownership by starting nonprofit news organizations, like the recently launched New Bedford Light. We chose a different route — a combination of a nonprofit fund to pursue educational programs (our Local Journalism Project) and a for-profit public benefit corporation, established under a state law that lays out the rules for such enterprises, which are held to higher standards of accountability and transparency than other businesses.
One of those rules is that we must publish an annual report that details the general and specific public benefits we aim to provide, with clear measures of how we are doing from year to year. Our annual benefit report for 2020 has been submitted to the secretary of the Commonwealth and is online here.
I don’t have to tell you that 2020 was not an easy year. We did not reach all of our goals, which included adding to our staff and providing employees with better salaries and benefits. But we did meet or exceed our editorial benchmarks, set to keep our focus on covering news stories that matter to our Outer Cape readers. An accounting of the scope of that coverage, from environment to demographics and from health care access to children’s lives, and including articles specifically affecting the LGBTQ community, is part of that annual report.
To us, what comes clear in this kind of accounting is the devotion of our staff. Their commitment to telling the stories of this community and keeping people connected to each other is what enabled us to persevere through the Covid pandemic’s disruptions. Reporting on health, naturally, emerged as a central focus of our efforts, but so did documenting the resilience and creativity of our fellow citizens. We thank you for reading their work. Many of you told us that it brought you hope and respite from the national news in a troubling and difficult year.
There is much more to be done to realize all of the benefits of a vigorous and independent press, both here and in other communities. I hope you will read our report and comment on how we might do even better.
