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For the latest stop in NENPA’s Newsroom Spotlight series, we traveled to southwestern New Hampshire to visit The Keene Sentinel—the first daily newspaper featured in the series.
Founded in 1799, the independently owned Sentinel has been part of life in Keene and the surrounding region for more than two centuries. Today, a newsroom of about 15 journalists serves readers across roughly 30 communities while navigating many of the same questions facing daily newspapers throughout New England: how to balance breaking news with deeper reporting, grow and retain digital subscribers, use audience data effectively, and decide where increasingly valuable newsroom resources should be spent.
But during NENPA’s visit, what stood out wasn’t simply the Sentinel’s history. It was how deliberately the organization is questioning long-established practices and experimenting with new ones—from the stories it chooses to cover and how reporters spend their time to the way it attracts, understands and retains subscribers.
Executive Editor-Local News Anika Clark describes the Sentinel today as a blend of that history and an organization that knows it must continue to change.
“We have this really storied past, and we’re also trying to evolve for the future. We’re not sitting on our hands.”
That willingness to evolve runs throughout the organization, where Clark works alongside Sean Burke, president and chief operating officer, and Cecily Weisburgh, executive editor-digital, as part of a team working to ensure a newspaper founded in the 18th century remains relevant to audiences in the 21st.
Read the full Newsroom Spotlight to learn valuable lessons from this venerable, fiercely independent news organization.
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