The Provincetown Independent is Outer Cape Cod’s homegrown locally owned newspaper. We believe that high quality local journalism can bring you closer to your neighbors and to this outermost community.
The Indie celebrates all that is good here, in a place that’s proud of its tradition of welcoming separatists and strangers and creative people of all kinds. We also delve into the challenges to be faced on the far end of this sandbar. Every Thursday, we publish stories for and about the people who live and work in Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham, and those who love this place from afar.
We are grateful to be in a community that sees how having its own local newspaper matters. Please join in by reading, writing, and spreading the word that there is hope for local journalism. Drop us a line by clicking this link.
— Teresa Parker, Publisher, and Ed Miller, Editor
Our Team
The people of the Independent are devoted to producing truth-seeking reporting on our towns, community organizations, the arts, science and the environment, health and health care, education, children, family life, LGBTQ community concerns, fishing and farming, the local economy, and the unique and sometimes eccentric culture of this place.
Be a part of the Indie
We have three full time year-round jobs open now. We’re ready to hire two news reporters and an arts editor. Follow this link for more about these jobs and how to apply.
We’re on a mission to rebuild local journalism
Subscribe
Readers are our reason for being. If you’ve been browsing, we hope you’ll make the leap and sign up. Here’s where to do that.
Advertise
An ad in our pages is a great way to connect with people in this special place. And when you advertise in the Independent, your dollars stay here in the community, working to rebuild local journalism. We thank the local businesses who are in our pages. Here’s how to join them.
Donate to the Local Journalism Project
Gifts to the Local Journalism Project, our nonprofit partner, are helping the Independent do more than an ordinary newspaper can do. With your help, the project supports next generation of reporters who challenge and inspire us, and their writing enriches our community. They are at the heart of our commitment to creating a future for local journalism.
The project aspires to do more. What about working with local schools, perhaps creating a journalism program at our regional high school? Events for upstart news organizations from other places? Workshops on local civics and elections? Housing for our fellows? We can’t do it all yet. But we welcome your ideas and involvement in helping us get there.
Follow this link to the Local Journalism Project’s own website for profiles of our board members and fellows and for information on how to apply, and news about events. Works by our aspiring journalists are posted on the Indie website for all to read (they are outside our paywall, so may be read even by those who are not subscribers).
Become an owner of the Indie
The Provincetown Independent is a Massachusetts benefit corporation, which is an affirmation of our commitment to existing for the public good. Being a benefit corporation also means upholding higher standards of transparency than other kinds of companies. Our annual benefit reports can be found here.
On August 15, 2023, the Independent officially closed a year-long Direct Public Offering to raise needed start up capital. A D.P.O. provides a special path for community members who are not necessarily wealthy enough to regularly invest in stocks to participate in an offering. The minimum investment was set at $500 and we reached out goal of raising $375,000 from community investors, with 299 people joining in to become shareholders.
We do still have shares set aside for accredited investors. They are from the same series as those purchased by community investors, with the same price, risks, and potential benefits. The minimum investment is $10,000. The goal for this accredited investor raise is also $375,000 and shares are still available.
We launched with weekly publication before reaching our initial plan for capitalization, then had our start slowed by a pandemic year, but by 2022 were growing stronger thanks to our readers and advertisers. We determined to continue, re-set our goals with a focus on preparing for more stability: better staffing, fairer pay, the breathing room to experiment with some website improvements and special publications.
Please reach out to publisher Teresa Parker if you are interested in participating as an accredited investor. Here is a link to the business report distributed to shareholders at our 2023 Annual Meeting.
P.S. Why would anyone start a new newspaper?
People ask us why we have started the Independent at a time when there is so much to read about the death of local journalism. Researchers are busy mapping America’s growing “news deserts.” We are studying those dynamics so that we can make good choices about how to become sustainable.
Newspapers are not as profitable as they were in pre-internet years. Facebook and Google have eaten up a big chunk of the industry’s advertising revenues — income that made newspapers profitable in the past and kept subscription prices low.
But that’s not the whole story. There has been tremendous consolidation of news organizations in recent years, too, and with that, pressure to reach impossibly inflated profit targets. Deep cost cutting has followed. Left without the resources to do good reporting, pursue relevant stories, follow up, and listen well, many newspapers have disappointed their readers. Apathy about the importance of journalism has been a result.
The good news is that we have been talking to local newspaper publishers across the country who are succeeding, especially at community-focused weeklies. Their stories have encouraged us to believe that, instead of worrying, we can do something to turn the tide.
Having a good local newspaper turns out to be good for everyone, because research shows that in communities where local newspapers have closed people don’t understand each other as well, and their views become more polarized. Where there is less news coverage, fewer people vote. In towns without newspapers, bond ratings drop and borrowing costs go up.
We’re not about to let that happen here. There’s real joy in this, because a newspaper is, after all, a community’s way of seeking the true stories of itself. Having a good one will keep us all learning, connected, and ready for the next generation.
We are thankful to have advice from journalists like David W. Dunlap, Bob Kuttner, Dan Okrent, Jodi Kantor, Ron Lieber, Louis Black, Stephen Kinzer, Dan Kennedy, C.J. Janovy, Lance Knobel, Dick Meyer, Ed Maroney, and Bill Hough, who inspire us in so many ways.
We are grateful for your encouragement, and look forward to your questions and involvement.
