By Dan Kennedy
Those of us who live in Greater Boston have benefitted from the rise of independent local news outlets to replace weekly newspapers either shut down or gutted by the Gannett chain. These projects, both print and digital, are mostly nonprofit, though there are a few for-profits as well. Ellen is the co-founder of one, Brookline.News, and I’m cheering on the recently launched Gotta Know Medford.
Last week Gretchen A. Peck of Editor & Publisher profiled another one of those projects — The Belmont Voice, a print weekly with a robust website that debuted in January 2024. The nonprofit Voice is on the larger end of such projects, launching with $500,000 in grants and donations and operating with a $200,000 annual budget. It’s also got a staff of four editorial and business-side people, headed by editor Jesse Floyd, a Gannett refugee.
“We are trying to make it feel like what a community newspaper felt like in the 1970s when you knew the editor, you knew the reporter, and these people were at all the town events,” Floyd told Peck. That presence in the community is exactly how local journalism can rebuild civic engagement, and it’s what’s missing from the AI-powered projects that have gotten (too much) attention recently.
I was especially impressed to learn that the Voice has signed up 2,100 subscribers for its weekly newsletter. There are about 10,400 households in Belmont, giving the Voice’s newsletter a 21% penetration rate, even though the print edition is also mailed for free to every home.
Not getting a mention in Peck’s article is The Belmontian, an older, much smaller news outlet.
