The Keene Sentinel – News for the Future – Monadnock (2024)

12-07-2021

Week Two Update

Dear Sentinel Reader and Supporter,

I write today updating you on our News for the Future fundraising campaign, which we launched June 15. Two weeks into this effort, we have raised nearly $14,000 toward our goal of $77,000. If you are among the 125 who’ve contributed, we thank you deeply. If you are considering donating, we’d welcome a gift.

As a reminder, we seek to hire a Statehouse reporter to cover policy and politics in Concord. We want to bring you more information on the senators and representatives serving Cheshire, Hillsborough and Sullivan counties along with how the governor’s actions may impact this region. Also, we want to add a part-time photographer to produce more sports and local photos and videos. Further, we want to boost the amount of news from contributing writers, and we aim to implement new technology allowing us to text information to you.

While our funding request is to kickstart these four initiatives, we are confident we can cover these costs on an ongoing basis through increased subscriptions and readership. We’ve enjoyed growth the last year as more and more people want to stay informed on the pandemic and other local matters. Producing more local content, we believe, will retain those readers, and the expanded information will allow us to attract more subscribers.

It’s been said that newspapers can only produce a product that a community is willing to support. The Sentinel is fortunate to have strong encouragement from readers who are willing to back our enterprise and keep our newsroom strong. Still, we know we are being bold making this request, and, yet, we remain confident the return to the community will be much greater than the investment. We will be better able to hold our public leaders and institutions accountable while providing more and deeper information on and for the area.

The Keene Sentinel’s Goss Community press has been in operation since the mid-1970s.

We’ve written about the benefits of a strong local newspaper, which include lower property taxes and higher voter registration and turnout. But let me talk about the opposite, about my own experience at a nearby newspaper that once had a newsroom of nearly 40, serving a city of 80,000 and a region of 250,000. At one point, that newspaper reached 35,000 households on Sunday and 30,000 homes the other days of the week. That same publication, today, has a newsroom of less than 10 and no longer prints except on Sunday. In print, it reaches a fraction of its former audience.

We think the Keene and Monadnock Region deserve more; that a strong newsroom equates to a strong community; that a vibrant news organization provides bonds that can unite and make things better; that the type of journalism we practice, with a focus on solutions, has value. No, we will certainly not get everything right, but we acknowledge our mistakes, correct them, and we constantly work at getting better.

Thanks for any support you feel appropriate and consider a donation at www.sentinelsource.com/donate or mail a contribution to The Keene Sentinel at 60 West Street, Keene, NH 03431.

Sincerely,

Terrence L. Williams

President & COO

P.S. Check out the replica version of the Sentinel’s first edition, our gift to anyone who donates $250 or more. ?

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Receive a poster of the very first New Hampshire Sentinel (The Keene Sentinel) originally published March 23, 1799 with any donation of $250 or more!