From news desert to newsroom: How the Belmont Voice rebuilt community journalism

Bob Rifkin is the co-president of The Belmont Voice's board of directors, along with Sarah Caputo. All board members and editorial advisers are volunteers. Rifkin said the work isn’t monetarily rewarding but nonetheless personally fulfilling. (Photo credit: Still from the “Welcome to The Belmont Voice” video. Courtesy of The Belmont Voice)

We’re lucky here. We have people who have the resources and desire to step up and help us. There are a lot of towns that don’t have newspapers and don’t have the resources Belmont has.”

Bob Rifkin

The Belmont Voice marked its first anniversary in January 2025. Its young story began with a community, a need and a grassroots campaign.

Belmont, Massachusetts, is a western suburb of Boston. It was once a town with a newspaper — the Belmont Citizen-Herald, but that title went in a more regional direction, consolidating under Gannett’s WickedLocal.com brand. The Boston Globe and Boston TV stations cover Belmont from time to time, but typically in context to a specific event, The Belmont Voice’s Editor-in-Chief Jesse Floyd observed. Day-to-day coverage of the town’s governance, schools, community news and sports dried up. That became especially problematic for the community when COVID-19 came to town.

Bob Rifkin is the co-president of The Belmont Voice’s board. He recounted how a group of concerned citizens — including many who'd spent their careers in media — got together by Zoom during the pandemic. That's when the vision for The Voice began to take shape: a nonprofit, keenly local weekly newspaper and companion 24/7 website. Within a year, they’d formed a board and raised $500,000 to launch.      

Every Friday, the free weekly paper is mailed to 11,000 Belmont homes.

The paper isn't just nonprofit; it's nonpartisan. The Voice publishes columns by writers representing each generational demographic, but they don't publish editorials or political advertising.

Print was essential to The Belmont Voice's model. It allowed the nonprofit news enterprise to penetrate households directly, familiarize the community with their brand, newsroom and mission, and rise above the crowded landscape of digital news today. (Photo credit: Courtesy of The Belmont Voice)

The annual operating budget is $500,000. Rifkin said it costs approximately $200,000 to staff the newsroom and ad sales personnel for a year, plus $150,000 to print and mail the paper. There are other operating costs, including expenses related to maintaining an office in town, production and insurance. Board members, editorial advisers and columnists are volunteers. There are two revenue sources — donations and advertising. Current goals are to sell at least five pages of ads in every print issue and entice at least 2,000 households to donate $120+ a year.

Jesse Floyd was hired in late 2023 to lead the newsroom. He’d taken a buyout from Gannett and spent his days freelancing when he was recruited by Anne Donohue, a retired Boston University associate dean, journalism professor and Voice board member. He was energized by the idea of building something new, something lasting.

The Belmont Voice is staffed by just four full-time paid employees and a wealth of passionate community volunteers. Back row, l to r: Bob Rifkin, co-president; Greg Levinsky, sports correspondent; Chad Onufrechuk, board member; Eric Perkins, columnist; Kevin Sullivan, board member; Lisa Gibaleiro, columnist; Maria Treisman, board member; Jessica Barnard, columnist; and Will Jason, board member. Middle grouping, l to r: Deborah Dumaine, volunteer ad sales; Lucia Arno-Bernsen, board clerk; Kaninika Dey, correspondent; Sarah Caputo, co-president; Patty Hurley, board member; Melissa Russell, correspondent; Jane Rosenzweig, social media volunteer; and Holly Chen, calendar volunteer. Seated, l to r: Maile Blume, reporter; Jesse Floyd, editor-in-chief; Mary Byrne, assistant editor; and Martha Gallagher, ad sales coordinator.

There are just four people on the paper’s payroll — Floyd, Assistant Editor Mary Byrne, Reporter Maile Blume and Ad Sales Coordinator Martha Gallagher. Design and pagination are outsourced. In addition to the full-time staff, they also pay freelance reporters as needed. If they can add personnel to the newsroom in the coming years, Floyd said he'd like to produce more enterprise reporting.

“We’re trying to enhance our storytelling,” Floyd said. “We’d like to include videos and interview clips, and interactive maps online and then put a slug in the print story that says, ‘For more information, see online.’ Then, people will go there and have a different reading experience. That’s something we’re building in 2025.”

The Belmont Voice also produces a weekly e-newsletter for 2,100 subscribers.

Being physically present in town — having a storefront and being seen around town — is critical, Floyd said.

As The Belmont Voice’s editor-in-chief, Jesse Floyd leads a collaborative newsroom of three, including Assistant Editor Mary Byrne and Reporter Maile Blume. (Photo credit: Still from the “Welcome to The Belmont Voice” video. Courtesy of The Belmont Voice)

“We are trying to make it feel like what a community newspaper felt like in the 1970s when you knew the editor, you knew the reporter, and these people were at all the town events,” he said.

Floyd described the people of Belmont as well-educated and curious, with a shared desire to be informed and to make intelligent decisions.

Rifkin concurred that this community is unique, especially suited to their publishing model: “We’re lucky here. We have people who have the resources and desire to step up and help us. There are a lot of towns that don’t have newspapers and don’t have the resources Belmont has. If we were talking about a town with 80,000 in population, putting 80,000 papers out would be much more costly than just 11,000. … I think we’re kind of in a sweet spot here.”

Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.