BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE
BACK BAY — About 10 years ago, I made a half-joking suggestion during a family gathering in Pungo. I said this would be a pretty good place to start a community newspaper. The thought wasn’t met with laughter but encouragement. Valuing local journalism is a part of how The Independent News got started, and it’s kept us going a good while.
Virginia Beach was our new home then, and our kids were young. My wife and I came to this city, as many folks do, for the schools, but the truth is I came kicking and screaming. I was working in Norfolk when we moved. As a native Rhode Islander, I couldn’t wrap my head around the new commute.
Thankfully, I was dead wrong. I fell in love with Pungo, and we later doubled down on country living and bought a house in Back Bay. I rediscovered sports radio on my drive and, in 2015, started The Princess Anne Independent News. It was named for the old county and because the acronym — PAIN — made me laugh. I stopped teaching, and this little paper became my work.
But here is another piece of founding the paper: it happened because I told people I was starting a newspaper, and I actually did it because I’d said it out loud in front of folks I love and respect.
Sometimes you commit and hope people who matter will help you stay true to your word, even when it’s hard.
We kept publishing despite my many faults as a businessperson, Covid and a rapidly changing landscape for local media. I initially meant to cover rural communities. The mission crept.
The Virginian-Pilot, already diminished in the digital age, was gutted. What had been a fairly large team of professional journalists working in a bureau essentially became a single reporter covering our commonwealth’s most populous city. The Pilot’s further collapse left us struggling to cover more and more city news though this was never set up to do that – or pay for it.
What we built and what our city really needs are different things. Our newspaper is not equipped to provide the sort of coverage Virginia Beach deserves. We could likely go on as we are for a while longer, but I’ve asked a lot of my family to do what we have done to date.
The last print edition of The Independent News will be on Sunday, Dec. 15. We’ll be off the stands by the end of the year. The site will stay up while I try to archive as much as I can, as time allows. But the best use of my time is focusing on what matters more than The Independent News. That’s just a name you either know or you don’t.
Virginia Beach needs nonpartisan, professional journalism that is fiercely local and focused on public-interest news. Its existence matters more than any one news organization or individual. We need to consider the bigger picture for our city.
The local news ecosystem is dire. The Pilot will not improve. The Virginia Beach Sun, a shell of its former self, has folded. Southside Daily came and went. WHRO has resources backing a regional news organization and seemingly lots of support, but its approach strikes me as wrongheaded because it is often duplicating existing journalism.
Virginia Beach needs its own news organization with its own voice and a clear mission of informing and looking out for citizens. It needs to employ a small team of fulltime professional journalists to accurately cover public affairs news. I aim to make that happen.
I have no idea whether I can get it off the ground, but that’s where my head is and my energy will be directed. I’m talking to folks. We’re working toward something.
It’s early, but we’ll see.
I love and respect our city and its people. We need our stories told to a standard. I think it’s possible. I’ve even gone and said it out loud, so to speak, in this column you’re reading.
Please hold me to it.
© 2024 Pungo Publishing Co., LLC
