With a loud thump, the Brookline Tab’s weekly paper edition arrived on every front porch in town. In between sips of coffee, it was easy to leaf through and learn what’s new: baseball, a new restaurant, a name change. Then, the paper stopped coming. Now, to fill the gap in town coverage, a team of experienced journalists have come together and created a new local news outlet: Brookline.News.

Founded in 1979, the Brookline Tab was delivered every week to homes across Brookline. In 2019, the Brookline Tab’s previous owner, GateHouse Media, merged with Ganett, a corporation that owns hundreds of media outlets across the country.

Then in May 2022, Gannett switched to a regional approach that ended print editions for the Brookline Tab, the Newton Tab, the Needham Times and other local news outlets. The move to only digital news effectively ended local coverage for these papers. The Brookline Tab’s website now covers news from many different towns, including Somerville, Weymouth and Ipswich.

Shortly after Gannett’s announcement, a steering committee made of Brookline-resident journalists formed, led by co-chairs Ellen Clegg and Julie Rafferty, and created Brookline.News. Clegg is a former Boston Globe city editor and Rafferty was a communications dean at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.

Brookline.News joined the Institute for Nonprofit News, which also acts as their fiscal agent, allowing their donors to make tax deductible donations while they wait for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. They hope to hire an editor and freelance reporters by the end of March.

Clegg said the goal of the paper is to make residents more aware of local news through the paper’s coverage of events throughout the town.

“We’re not out to reinvent the Brookline Tab; we’re out to elevate civic dialogue and civic information – the kind of information that people need to sustain local democracy and to have an idea of what’s going on, like what what Town Meeting is doing, what the Select Board is doing, what businesses are opening and school sports,” Clegg said.

Brookline.News will cover local news, as the Brookline Tab did, but in a more sustainable fashion. Clegg said that since the “print advertising model is collapsing,” they want to rely on other forms of media to engage a wide audience of readers. This diversified revenue stream includes memberships, corporate underwriting, live events and possibly some print issues.

Irene Sege, former editor of the Cambridge Chronicle and Boston Globe, is also on the steering committee. Sege said Brookline residents have a deep interest in local news, even without the special programming Clegg mentioned.

“Community newspapers have such a high readership because every engaged citizen, every active citizen and resident reads them for information purposes: just to be more civically engaged and know what you’re voting on, but also to feel like you’re part of this community,” Sege said.

Readers place a considerable amount of trust in local publications. There are currently other online newspapers in Brookline such as Patch.com and Brookline.com. Clegg said Brookline.News will establish itself as a reliable source of information for Brookline residents by having professional reporters and editors on staff, with much of the steering committee made up of former Boston Globe reporters.

“Deborah Douglas, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Emancipator at the Globe, has a great definition of what readers are looking for: authority, transparency and truth,” Clegg said. “We want professionally reported and edited news. We want to have boots on the ground in the community, to be everywhere. We want to reflect the many voices that are part of public debate.”

Sege added, “We want to be informative, interesting and useful. We’ll, hopefully, prove ourselves. I think it’s fair to say that when people hear about us, there’s a lot of interest and enthusiasm.”

Currently, Brookline.News is gathering donations from sponsors, hosting house parties and compiling a mailing list as they get ready for their launch this spring.

In terms of what to expect for possible future articles, Sege said they will cover a variety of topics for readers. Stories would cover major updates such as Brookline potentially becoming a city and both the girls and boys cross country teams winning the Division I State Championships earlier this year.

“It’s really important that we have a real mix, because some people would want to come to us because they’ve got to know what’s going on in town government and other people because of that new restaurant down the street,” Sege said. “There are big issues coming up in town, [such as] a lot of people talking about should Brookline become a city.”

In addition to covering major news events, Clegg said Brookline.News hopes to form connections outside of the town with college students interested in journalism and other independent local news outlets.

“We have two other pieces of strategy. We want to also be a laboratory for journalism students at BU, Emerson and Northeastern because they could work [at Brookline.News] and acquire some experience,” Clegg said. “In the last three weeks, I’ve talked to people who are forming news outlets in Winchester, Medford, Needham, Concord and Marblehead. We’re all going through the same process: in a way every community is different; on the other hand, you need to raise money, you need to build a website, you need to have something to handle emails. So we want to create a resource for a network of startups.”

According to CNET, polarization increases when local newspapers close. Through Brookline.News, Brookline residents will hopefully feel more connected to each other, Clegg and Sege said. Sege said it’s hard for people to be part of the community when they don’t hear about local news.

“There’s polarization locally when there’s not really a basis of information. One of my favorite quotes is from the Washington Post, and the writer said, ‘local news is the oxygen of democracy,’” Sege said. “Part of [the loss] is a sense of community. I think it’s hard to feel like you don’t really know what’s going on.”

Please contact [email protected] and [email protected] with any questions or ideas. Check out brookline.news for more information.