The Vineyard Gazette Media Group is a news and information company dedicated to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard and the people near and far who love it. In addition to our flagship weekly newspaper, we publish Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, Welcome to Martha’s Vineyard travel guide, Martha’s Vineyard Home & Garden and Martha’s Vineyard Island Weddings, as well as other targeted special publications. In addition to this website, our publication websites include www.mvmagazine.com and www.mvislandweddings.com.
Our news website, www.mvgazette.com, was completely redesigned in 2012 using state-of-the-art responsive design technology that adapts to fit different viewing devices. This technique, endorsed by Google developers, delivers a customized experience of the site depending on whether you are looking at it on a mobile phone, an iPad or other tablet or a desktop or laptop computer.
For a limited period, the Gazette is providing free access to all our content online without charge. After the trial period, select online content, including breaking news, a calendar of events, real estate and classified listings and a selection of feature stories, will remain free to the public. Subscribers to the Vineyard Gazette will continue to get full access to our website’s comprehensive online content, including decades of archived material, as part of their subscription.
We welcome your comments about our new website.
Since its first edition 167 years ago, the Vineyard Gazette has led a spirited community discussion about what makes Martha’s Vineyard an exceptional place.
In 1846, founding publisher Edgar Marchant began the conversation by suggesting that the Vineyard’s world-famous whaling economy was neither broad enough nor vital enough to last. He wrote that with superb fishing to be found off its shoreline, with its open countryside and detached and quiet spirit, the Vineyard might sell itself as a “Watering-Place in the Summer Season.”
Decades later, legendary Gazette publisher and editor Henry Beetle Hough — perhaps seeing Mr. Marchant’s vision succeeding a little too well — launched a campaign against unbridled development that came to be the newspaper’s signature cause. Mr. Hough’s mission went beyond preserving open space and conserving wildlife to include protecting the character of Martha’s Vineyard in human terms.
To this day, the Gazette has continued to identify issues and provoke debate about how to sustain the Island’s economy without losing the qualities that make the Vineyard special.
The Vineyard Gazette has prospered with independent stewardship since its founding. Former New York Times columnist James (Scotty) Reston and Sally Fulton Reston bought the Gazette from Mr. Hough in 1968 and introduced the modern technologies of cold type and the first computer typesetting system. In 1988, Richard and Mary Jo Reston took the helm as publishers in the family-owned business, and introduced the Gazette to the digital age.
In 2010, Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg, longtime seasonal Island residents and quiet philanthropists, bought the company, and hired Jane Seagrave, previously an Associated Press executive, as its new publisher. Julia Wells has been editor since 2004.
Today the paper has subscribers in 48 states and several foreign countries. The Gazette has kept its distinctive publication format – an oversized black-and-white broadsheet measuring 17.5 by 23 inches with seven columns of type. Its new state-of-the-art website uses modern technology to continue the paper’s longstanding commitment to engaging the Island community with high-quality news, information, feature stories and contributed commentary.
The Vineyard Gazette is dedicated to good, clear writing, excellent photography and the highest standards of journalism. Its coverage strives to illuminate the Island’s unique qualities, including its natural habitat, its arts and culture and its people.
In so doing, the Gazette has earned many prestigious professional awards, including being named Newspaper of the Year three times in the last decade by the New England Press Association. In 2011, the Gazette received a record-setting 27 awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association, including one for general excellence, the top prize for small newspapers. The judges called the Gazette “an outstanding, fascinating weekly newspaper” with “superb newspaper writing.”
The Gazette believes a community newspaper should help promote intelligent and civil discourse about the issues of the day. ”I want the Gazette to be a vibrant voice for the Vineyard community far into the future,” Mr. Kohlberg said in announcing his purchase of the company, “continuing the wonderful traditions from the past, offering excellent, in-depth journalism, reaching the Vineyard’s diverse communities, and adapting, as necessary, to the changing economic conditions which are affecting print media all across the nation.”
We welcome visitors to our home in the heart of historic Edgartown, where we still print the newspaper. The building, now owned by the Martha's Vineyard Historic Preservation Trust, was built in the 1760s by Benjamin Smith, a militia captain in the Revolutionary War. Home to the Vineyard Gazette since 1938, the building still retains eight original fireplace mantels and brick hearths, wide pine flooring and wainscotting. We are happy to accommodate individuals and groups who are interested in touring the building and watching the newspaper being printed Thursday afternoons all year-round.