Cape Cod reporting about the place we all love

We produce local, video and textual reporting for and about the Cape’s diverse full time communities as well as their seasonal visitors. Bringing you news, features, arts economy, health + wellness, and coast + climate reporting that connects 220,000 year-rounders and 5 million annual visitors to this extraordinary place.

Our non-profit newsroom looks at local topics, digs deeply into our creative economy, takes the pulse of climate change and coastal life, and explores actions impacting the shape of Cape Cod.

CapeCodNews.org: Connecting YOU to Cape Cod with video and written local coverage

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Editorial statement

Our operating philosophy in a nutshell

In our editorial efforts, Cape Cod News strives to reflect core enduring editorial values: Fairness. Accuracy. Balance. Quality.

• We strive for a broad agenda reflecting the needs of all sectors of our community. We value community voice, community driven content, and community inclusiveness.
• We look to report the under-reported stories that matter for our local places, bringing the questions, the celebrations, the concerns, and the discussions to an open and public place.
• We strive to include under-reported voices and represent the full range of people who call Cape Cod home.
• We look to bring the national local, not merely parroting news but placing it within the regional and local context and exploring what it means … here.
• We’ll state facts as fact. We’ll call opinions opinions, and let people be the judge of them. We’ll strive to be accessible to everyone and to acknowledge that every community has many different truths.
• In all our actions we show respect for and civility to others, regardless of their roles, backgrounds, ethnicity, income, age, orientation, or how they present themselves.

We strive to live these values every day and in every interaction.

Sense of place and belonging

In the old west, a saloon set up shop, followed in fast order by a general store and a church. Schools appeared. But only when a newspaper started publishing did the settlement become a town with an identity. Local recording and reporting validated a sense of place.

Shared connections

The “newspaper” wasn’t about a form (ink on paper) but rather about creating a hub where community members shared news, celebrated or commiserated together, explored ideas and fears and connected with each other around a shared sense of place and belonging.

Shared knowledge and experiences help form a sense of “us” — and Cape Cod wants, deserves, and needs local news, reported and shared locally, by and about the people who live, work, and value this special place.

Common threads

The core human need for connection remains a constant. Like the Whoville community on Horton the elephant’s dust speck, we need to shout “We are Here!” in order survive and thrive.

We live in a time where so much feels so divisive — but that only emphasizes the need for sharing in a fair, balanced, and nonpartisan environment.

Local news

We began CapeCodNews.org inspired by a conversation at the 2017 Knight Foundation conference that talked about the role local media plays in “issues and troubles.” The world’s big issues matter, of course, but managing the myriad of local community “troubles” on daily basis forms the backbone that keeps our communities healthy places to live.

Local and hyper-local topics may not matter to humanity as a whole on a global scale, but they make a dramatic difference to everyday life in our home region. The connective hub of local media provides the stage upon which a community can engage and create together.

Local knowledge

Our small newsroom works with and within the community to gather and share stories using video, audio, spoken work, written, work and interactive presentations. The values of quality, accuracy, fairness, and balance matter more than ever, and our challenge lies in bringing these values to emerging media forms and to all participants within them.

We reach out and listen to different voices, all of whom have stories of value to share with others. We seek to report the under-reported and bring the national local, so we can all connect and together shape this special peninsula we call Cape Cod.

Convergence of forms and formats

We create versions of stories that weave together video, audio, the written word, and the spoken word.

Beyond doubt, the past several decades transformed the ways humans communicate connect, and share within and among ourselves and our world. Terms like “television” and “newspaper” describe delivery devices – but the reality is that we read, listen, watch, and interact on everything from paper to large monitors to computer screen, to all manner of digital mobile devices.

That’s why we create with video, write for audio and digital, and share online, in push emails, and through streaming channels – using all the tools available to tell and share the stories, connecting people to Cape Cod in the form they prefer.

Collaboration

To better serve our community, we find opportunities to work with other media organizations to tell and share regional stories, and grow and develop our respective skills. By welcoming collaborative work, we can bring more stories and strengthen the voices of Cape Cod.

Reporting from the community

We look for the stories and issues and conversations happening all around us. We listen and ask questions. We look at official reports and releases, watch social media, and stroll the local grocery store and post office to learn what people are talking about, wanting to learn more about, or needing to know about. We take in ideas and submissions too. You can submit ideas at capecodnewsorg@gmail.com.

We can’t cover everything, but we try to create a cross-section and snapshot of our communities … celebrating the everyday events, sharing changes, digging into questions, and bringing perspective to issues.

Taking the national local

We know Cape Cod doesn’t live in a bubble separate from the larger world, so we also look to larger state and national stories and explore how they impact our communities and how we experience them through our local lens.

Celebrating the good

Life holds lots of good moments, so we share solutions and actions that work. We celebrate. We learn from successes.

Going beyond the headline

Sometimes the interesting story is the story behind the story. Why did something happen? What history led us here? What does this mean in practice?Just saying something happened isn’t enough. We like to explore what lies below and bring us all to a deeper level of understanding and engagement.

Bringing it home to Cape Cod

So what do we cover? I guess the best way to say it is that we try to tell “the story of us”, of our Cape communities, with local voices front and center.

Share your news with us!

• We like checking out your media releases. Send yours here (capecodnewsorg@gmail.com)
• Have a story idea? Share it here (capecodnewsorg@gmail.com)

We subscribe to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News including:

• Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization.
• We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support, and acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.
• Our organization may consider donations to support the coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.
• Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $5,000 or more per year. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.

The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) serves as our nonprofit fiscal sponsor.

We are committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization. Accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services or opinions. Our news judgments are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors or any revenue source. We do not give supporters the rights to assign, review or edit content.

We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals, organizations and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics and special projects. We may receive funds from standard government programs offered to nonprofits or similar businesses.

We make public all revenue sources and donors who give $5,000 or more per year.

We also make available income and expense projections and past financial reports. Note that this 2025 – projected income & expenses CapeCodNews 2025 disclosure represents a projection only.

Our community board of advisors provides critical input in both practice of journalism and community need. We are adding to our advisors; contact us at capecodnewsorg@gmail.com if you’d like to engage.

Advisory Board (abc order) – CapeCodNews.org

Ellen Clegg spent more than 3 decades at The Boston Globe and retired in 2018 after 4 years of running the opinion pages. In between stints at the Globe, she was deputy director of communications at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She is a member of the steering committee for the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship at the International Women’s Media Foundation. Ellen is co-founder and co-chair of Brookline.News, a nonprofit startup news organization in Brookline, Massachusetts. She and her wife spend as much time as possible at their home in Truro.

Joe Batista, M37 Advisory, has had the privilege of partnering with organizations working alongside leaders and teams for over four decades, helping to uncover over $12 billion in new value across more than 650 client engagements. His approach isn’t about complex theories; it’s about a deep commitment to spotting the hidden patterns, revealing overlooking possibilities, and then working to act decisively and purposefully. Joe and his wife now live full-time in Brewster.

Dan Hamilton is a retired journalist who has covered a wide variety of Cape Cod issues and stories since 1981. Beats included state, county and town government, health care, and the environment. He has been an editor, and member of the news teams at The Register, The Cape Cod Voice, Cape Codder and Upper Cape Codder newspapers.

Andrew Heyward is a nationally known journalist, award-winning broadcast news producer, and expert on the changing media landscape. Andrew was President, CBS News, from January 1996-November 2005. Before that, he was executive producer of The CBS Evening News. Andrew was also responsible for developing and launching 48 Hours, the primetime CBS News hour that premiered in January 1988. He began his career working in local news at WNEW-TV and WCBS-TV in New York. He and his wife enjoy relaxing at their Chatham home.

Peter Howe is senior vice president at Boston-based PR firm Denterlein, which is a partner firm in PR World Alliance, with representation in major cities throughout North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific Rim. He has deep family roots in Dennis and cut his reporting teeth at The Register in Yarmouth Port and the Nauset Weekly Calendar before going on to The Boston Globe and New England Cable News.

Elaine Lipton has spent three decades in nonprofit management and arts leadership. She has an academic background in textile conservation and she has lived around the world but calls Cape Cod home. She is also the editor/publisher of CapeCodNews.org’s creative economy products, ArtsLight and ArtsLight on the Go and a proud Eastham resident and mother of two Nauset graduates.

Bill Mills is a former editor at The Cape Cod Times and a fervent believer in the role of local journalism. He and his wife are long-time Sandwich residents.

Chip Reilly is an emergency preparedness professional with experience in disaster planning, public health coordination, and crisis communication. He is passionate about helping Cape Cod communities stay informed and ready for emergencies.

Martha Sherrill is a prize-winning newspaper and magazine journalist, biographer, novelist, and founder of EXIT 89, a digest of Orleans issues.

Larry Tye is a New York Times bestselling author whose latest book — a joint biography of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie — looks at how these three maestros wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights revolution. Tye also runs the Health Coverage Fellowship, which helps the media do a better job reporting on critical issues like pandemics, mental health, and high-tech medicine. From 1986 to 2001, he was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He enjoys writing from his Cape Cod home in Cotuit.

Doreen Iudica Vigue is a writer and communications professional who spent her career as a reporter and editor at the Boston Globe, co-hosted a Boston radio talk show, and was a public relations/communications executive at NECN and Comcast. A Boston native and Cape washashore, she and her husband live in Centerville.

Ira Wood served on the Wellfleet Board of Selectmen for 12 years, owned and managed Leapfrog Press, an internationally distributed independent publishing company, serves as producer/host of The LowDown, a weekly interview show on WOMR-FM, and writes cultural essays for the station’s Friday news magazine.

It is the policy of CapeCodNews.Org, Inc. to comply with all laws and regulations applicable to the activities of CapeCodNews.org, including without limitation, federal copyright laws. The fundamental objective of copyright, as set forth in the Constitution, is to promote “science and the useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries”. We support the public policies embodied in the Constitution and federal copyright law, and it is our policy to comply fully with them. All  individuals who create content to appear in LowerCapeTV.org must follow the policy contained herein as part of their ongoing obligations. Improper use of copyrighted materials by members, employees or Producers could expose them and LowerCapeTV.org to substantial civil and criminal penalties.