Eight years ago this month, a small button was pushed in downtown Easton, and a new and untested approach to education-based local news for Talbot County was launched.
Named to honor the great tradition of “Spy” newspapers in existence during Colonial America, founded as a safe harbor for free speech, the new electronic paper came into being online as an experiment in utilizing the powerful multimedia tools the internet now offers to even the smallest of websites to hyper-local coverage of public affairs, the arts, and regional culture.
In order to succeed, the Spy, lacking any significant start-up funding, had to attract the support and generosity of the community’s robust population of writers, videographers, photographers, poets, and opinion-makers to provide the much-needed content to make the newspaper relevant and useful to its readership.
In a country where civic involvement is at a record low, it was a bit far-fetched, even for a community like Talbot County, perhaps one of the most generous and supportive regions in the United States, to assume that professionals, who had spent a lifetime building a career or business, would offer their talents free of charge.
But come they have, and so have our readers.
To date, the Talbot Spy attracts more than 400,000 readers a year. In 2018, 1.6 million articles were read by those visitors. While impressive by almost any standard, those numbers gain added significance given the Spy serves a total population of 35,000 residents.
In short, this modest undertaking has become what its founder’s only aspiration was when the Talbot Spy was switched on in 2011: a community asset that is trusted and useful.
The primary reason is simple; the Talbot Spy is the community. Whether it be the writer or the subject, our content is merely a mirror of this remarkable place we call home. From local government leaders, artists, historians, or profiling Rotary members, the Spy puts a special spotlight on what makes Talbot County work so well.
But it has also been the cumulative impact of a multitude of small gestures of support that made this success story happen. Gentle emails telling us of typos, alerting us to people and programs needing attention, or just as importantly, criticizing the Spy on its editorial judgment, bias, or digression from our mission, are examples of the caring that sustains and comforts its editors and writers.
While the Spy depends on the generosity of our contributors, it does have real costs. From the stipends we pay our editors to technical support, the Talbot Spy has actual annual costs that need to be covered.
The Spy is fortunate and gratified that almost every segment of the County’s business community is represented with our ad sponsorships, but we must depend on our readers as well to be whole every year. And once again, we are using our anniversary to launch our 2019 annual fund appeal.
For the next few weeks, the Spy will be in campaign mode, and we apologize in advance for the pesky pop-up donation request that will be showing up frequently as part of this program.
I hope you can help by making a modest tax-deductible donation so we can continue to spy on Talbot County for many years to come.
Dave Wheelan
Founder and Executive Editor
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