The Company

The Vineyard Gazette Media Group is a news and information company dedicated to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard and the people near and far who love it. Founded in 1846, we combine a respect for history with a passion for innovation and a commitment to excellence in journalism across platforms.

Our flagship newspaper, the Vineyard Gazette, has subscribers in all 50 states and several foreign countries. Printed onsite each week in our historic home in Edgartown, the Gazette maintains its traditional and distinctive format – an oversized black-and-white broadsheet measuring 17.5 by 23 inches with seven columns of type. Our award-winning news website, vineyardgazette.com, is updated every day with breaking news, still and video photography and commentary, and features The Time Machine, a captivating window into our vast archive of Island history.

In addition to the Vineyard Gazette, we publish Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, The Complete Martha's Vineyard Calendar, Welcome to Martha’s Vineyard travel guide, the annual Island Guide, Martha's Vineyard Real Estate Yearbook, Martha’s Vineyard Home & Garden, Martha’s Vineyard Island Weddings, Cook the Vineyard and the lifestyle monthly, The Vine, as well as other targeted special publications. Visit our store to subscribe to any of our products, purchase a single copy of publications or browse our selection of Vineyard Gazette merchandise.

Our History

Since its first edition, the Vineyard Gazette has led a spirited community discussion about what makes Martha’s Vineyard an exceptional place. 

Founding publisher Edgar Marchant set the tone early with his assessment that the whaling industry -- still in its heyday -- was neither broad enough nor vital enough to last. He wrote that with superb fishing to be found off its shoreline, with its open countryside and detached and quiet spirit, the Vineyard might sell itself as a “Watering-Place in the Summer Season.”

Decades later, legendary Gazette publisher and editor Henry Beetle Hough — perhaps seeing Mr. Marchant’s vision succeeding a little too well — launched a campaign against unbridled development that came to be the newspaper’s signature cause. Mr. Hough’s mission went beyond preserving open space and conserving wildlife to include protecting the character of Martha’s Vineyard in human terms.

To this day, the Gazette has continued to identify issues and provoke debate about how to sustain the Island’s economy without losing the qualities that make the Vineyard special.

The Vineyard Gazette has prospered with independent stewardship since its founding. Former New York Times columnist James (Scotty) Reston and Sally Fulton Reston bought the Gazette from Mr. Hough in 1968 and introduced the modern technologies of cold type and the first computer typesetting system. In 1988, Richard and Mary Jo Reston took the helm as publishers in the family-owned business, and introduced the Gazette to the digital age.

In 2010, Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg, longtime seasonal Island residents and quiet philanthropists, bought the company with the stated goal of preserving its high standards of community journalism into the future. They hired Jane Seagrave, previously an Associated Press executive, as its publisher in 2011. Julia Wells has been editor since 2004.

Click here for a trip through the newspaper's colorful history.

Award-winning

The Vineyard Gazette Media Group is dedicated to good, clear writing, excellent photography and a respect for the community it serves. Its coverage strives to inspire and inform discussion about important issues and to illuminate the Island’s unique qualities, including its natural habitat, its arts and culture and its people.

In so doing, the Gazette has earned many prestigious professional awards for writing, design, photography and business innovation. Each year, the Gazette is recognized in dozens of categories in the New England Better Newspaper Awards, including the Innovator's Award, given most recently for The Time Machine, its multimedia display of historic content.  The judges called the Gazette “an outstanding, fascinating weekly newspaper” with “superb newspaper writing.”

The Gazette believes a community newspaper should help promote intelligent and civil discourse. ”I want the Gazette to be a vibrant voice for the Vineyard community far into the future,” Mr. Kohlberg said in announcing his purchase of the company, “continuing the wonderful traditions from the past, offering excellent, in-depth journalism, reaching the Vineyard’s diverse communities, and adapting, as necessary, to the changing economic conditions which are affecting print media all across the nation.”

Visit Us

We welcome visitors to our home in the heart of historic Edgartown, where we create and print the newspaper every week. The building, now owned by the Vineyard Trust, was built in the 1760s by Benjamin Smith, a militia captain in the Revolutionary War. Home to the Vineyard Gazette since 1938, the building still retains eight original fireplace mantels and brick hearths, wide pine flooring and wainscotting. We are happy to accommodate individuals and groups who are interested in touring the building and watching the newspaper being printed on our Goss Community Press on Thursday afternoons all year-round.