To be the city’s go-to news source by providing high-quality, unbiased, community-focused coverage, to foster an informed and engaged Waltham.
What is the Waltham News Alliance?
We are a group of Waltham residents who came together in the spring of 2024 with the goal of establishing a nonprofit newsroom to bring objective, nonpartisan news coverage back to the city. We want to create a go-to source of high-quality news to inform, investigate, entertain, inspire and debate the topics that matter to all
Why?
Like many communities, Waltham has seen its last local print newspaper disappear from our doorsteps and store counters, leaving a void in our civic life and the shared public understanding of a city we are proud to call home.
News and information in Waltham today is a fractured landscape of websites, video feeds, social media postings, and local cable programs that provide only a small glimpse of what is happening throughout Waltham. We often know more about what’s going on across the globe than we do in our own community. Large media corporations may have given up on providing quality local news coverage in Waltham, about Waltham, but we can change that
Our guiding principles
- The Waltham Times will deliver objective, nonpartisan coverage. As a 501(c)3 organization, we must follow specific guidelines.
- We will adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics
- We are committed to cover each of the diverse communities within Waltham in ways that serve the city as a whole
- Our staff should be reflective of and sensitive to the coverage needs of Waltham’s richly diverse community
What has happened to date?
An all-volunteer Waltham News Alliance startup team has been hard at work to establish the organization, with three main committees — Business, Community Outreach, and Journalism — each focusing on researching best practices, drafting policies and procedures, and implementing specific tasks in their respective areas. We’ve made significant progress. For example:
- Obtained our Employer Identification Number (EIN) under Waltham News Alliance
- Incorporated as a Massachusetts nonprofit through the Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth’s Office with a required board of three.
- Received our 501(c)3 nonprofit status
- Named our future publication The Waltham Times
- Opened a bank account
- Began drafting business, community outreach, and journalism plans
- Launched this website to keep you informed
- Launched a periodic e-newletter to our growing list of supporters.
How will you produce this newspaper?
We will hire professional editors and journalists as well as other essential staff as required to run a high-quality, sustainable publication. Volunteers will be critically important and will include our board of directors, writers and copy editors as well as pro bono finance, legal and marketing experts.
What do you plan to cover?
We will focus on local news, which residents have told us is most important to them. We will prioritize coverage of city government, schools, housing issues, commercial development, traffic, public safety issues, local events and local elections. We are attentive to the diversity of Waltham and plan to cover and serve all the diverse groups within the city. As we scale, we plan to publish signed opinion pieces and letters to the editor. Our aspirations are to publish features about Waltham’s history, personalities, businesses, arts and culture – the stories about what makes us a vibrant and wonderful community.
Will you publish an online or print newspaper?
We will launch as a digital publication with weekly newsletters and a website. We hope to publish a print edition (weekly, biweekly or monthly), too, for those who can’t or don’t want to access the news digitally. The print edition will depend on our ability to generate advertising sales revenue to cover the cost.
How much will you charge for a subscription?
We will not have a paywall or charge for access, as we believe everyone should be able to freely access the news. Instead, we will support our operations through donations, grants, memberships (“NPR model”), fees for posting legal notices, death notices, in memoriams, etc., and eventually advertising. We hope Waltham residents will agree on the value of news and will support the newspaper.
What is your timeline?
Our goal is to begin some news coverage in the fall of 2024 and launch a full news website early 2025. We expect to start with a small team and scale up as resources permit. Our timeline and coverage capabilities will depend on our finances. We are fundraising now. Toward this goal, we have formed teams to develop our business plan, journalism plan and community outreach plan. We are learning from other local news startups – many of which are successes. The WNA is fully committed to establishing Waltham’s new “paper of record.”