Dear Spy readers,
First, A warm holiday greeting as we come to the end of 2024. Since our spies need some downtime to recover from a hectic year, we will have limited coverage from December 24 to January 5 and come back fresh in 2025.
The Spy community is a rare phenomenon in a country that sees local news on death’s doors. In a regional market of less than 250,000 people in the four counties we serve, our four Spy newspapers consistently gain 1 million unique visitors each year.
That simple fact says a good bit about how unique the Spy is but, more importantly, the kind of people who live in Chestertown, Centreville, Talbot County, and Cambridge. The editors, writers, and volunteers are so grateful to you for this unprecedented engagement and support.
Last week, we asked our readers to share their views about what they are reading in Spy and how we might improve our coverage in the future. I want to report on those results and takeaways.
But before I do, thanks to the hundreds of people who reviewed the survey and then submitted their responses.
In short, we found good and constructive comments offered that we heard and are carefully considering as we enter 2025. More on that later in January.
We also heard that the Spy’s coverage of local stories and developments is highly regarded by our readers. Many asked for more regular coverage of local government agencies, and we will investigate creative ways to effectively do this in the future.
Quite a number of our readers also touched on an issue of political balance in our choice of local columnists, op-ed essays, and letters to the editors, with the vast majority suggesting a significant absence of socially conservative, pro-Trump opinions.
As executive editor, I acknowledge this gap exists. However, I also want to note that we have tried many times to recruit conservative writers, but this troubling political climate made most of those individuals unwilling to go public.
With the President-elect’s decisive election on the Mid-Shore, those same individuals might reconsider sharing their thoughts as the national conversation moves from presidential politics to presidential policy.
Back to the survey, we found that while most readers understand that Spy is a nonprofit project, there are a variety of views about the best way to bring in the resources to support our work. We were gratified to see that mostof you understand some support is necessary and that asking for it is entirely acceptable. We will continue to explore how best to raise the modest funds the Spy needs without burdening our readers.
In the meantime, we have set up a special end-of-year donation page, which can be found here.
Once again, happy holidays, and we’ll see you in 2025.
Dave Wheelan
Publisher and Executive Editor
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