An Open Letter to Our Readers

Dear Readers,

We have recently covered a community issue that has brought attention to The Mamaroneck Observer, and we have many new readers.  While we are grateful for the thousands of our neighbors who have read us since we began publishing in January 2023, we welcome our new readers but realize they probably do not know much about us - the people behind the research and articles so it’s time to reintroduce ourselves.

Simply put, we are your neighbors.  We are a group of women who realized the lack of a local newspaper was hurting our community.  So, we started meeting one Sunday afternoon in November 2022 to figure out if we could do anything and if so, what?  We decided to publish a hyper-local online newspaper and the first edition of The Mamaroneck Observer “went to press” less than two months later.

All of us are long-time residents (30+ years) and have served our community as elected officials, appointed Village committee members, and volunteers for local nonprofit organizations.  One of our founders left in 2023 to run for office and has not been involved with the paper since.

You may ask why we would spend our time doing this.  We do it for several reasons.  Our research showed that communities without a local news outlet had a higher incidence of corruption and mistrust.  Also, there is misinformation spreading on social media that must be addressed.  More importantly, we all care deeply about the Village of Mamaroneck.

When we started, we agreed we needed a tagline that reflected our undertaking.  After much discussion, we chose Fair, Factual and Fearless, which is displayed on the top of our website.

Why Fair?  We are community members writing articles that reflect our community; this is where we live.  We follow the facts and do not look to accumulate “clicks” to woo advertisers.  It is our policy not to needlessly point fingers at anyone, even elected officials, unless necessary to the arc of the article.

Why Facts?  Facts lead us to the truth, and we spend hours chasing them down.  When we publish, we include links to source documents so that readers can see what we see.  If anything is wrong or “not quite right” and it is brought to our attention, we change it and note the change after verification.

We also believe that history matters so it is important to understand what has happened before.  We are known for our “deep dives” into issues facing the community.  Again, we research the topic and present what happened to understand how we got to where we are now and to inform future decisions.

Why Fearless?  We publish what we find, regardless of who it concerns or whether it’s convenient for anyone in public office.  That commitment doesn’t change based on who’s in charge.  We’ve reported across administrations that welcomed scrutiny and ones that didn’t, and our standard hasn’t moved.

We hope you find our reporting and articles about this Village that we all call home interesting and informative.  You may not like or agree with everything you read, but we stand by our fact-based reporting and are always open to constructive comments and/or requests for explanations.

Thank you for your readership so that we can keep local news alive.

The Editorial Board