I am excited to share some big news about my friend and collaborator Ellen Clegg. Ellen has won a 2024 Yankee Quill Award, given by the Academy of New England Journalists, for her “contributions to the betterment of journalism,” which include a long and distinguished career at The Boston Globe; her work on our book about local journalism, “What Works in Community News,” and our podcast; and her co-founding and ongoing leadership of Brookline.News, a digital nonprofit startup.
Ellen is not the only journalist I’m associated with who won a Yankee Quill. Ed Miller, the co-founder and editor of The Provincetown Independent, has built a unique news organization — a print and digital outlet that’s a for-profit public benefit corporation, with a nonprofit arm known as the Local Journalism Project that supports certain types of public interest reporting at the Independent. (Disclosure: I’m a member of the Local Journalism Project’s advisory board.)
There were three other winners as well: George Brennan, a longtime editor on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard who also worked a stint at the Globe; Izaksun Larrañeta, executive editor of The Day in New London, Connecticut; and Mark Pothier, a veteran journalist and Globe alumnus who helped start the nonprofit Plymouth Independent and is now its editor and CEO. (A further disclosure: I’m a proud member of the Yankee Quill Class of 2019, and yes, I had a hand in picking this year’s honorees.)
The five will be honored at the New England Newspaper and Press Association convention on March 23. Here’s the press release, including bios of the winners. Congratulations to everyone!
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This is great news Dan. congratulations to Ellen Clegg. Great journalist and very cool to boot.
Congratulations to all.
I wish Dan would give some love to the Lynn Item. It is locally owned, independent and publishes a print edition six days a week. It provides excellent local coverage in Lynn, Swampscott, Nahan,t Marblehead, Saugus and Lynnfield. It has miraculously withstood the assault on local journalism that has devastated every other local paper in the state from the Springfield Republican to the New Bedford Standard Times. I believe, but can’t confirm, that it is one of only two daily newspapers that is not owned by some cost-cutting chain. (John Henry owns the other)
I love the Item, of course. It’s not alone. The Berkshire Eagle and The Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn (of which I’m an alum) are still independently owned — the latter by the family who founded it in 1901. I’ll admit that it’s easier to focus on startups than it is on legacy outlets that are doing good work.
The Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton is owned by the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, which makes it part of a small, non-corporate chain.