Hello! Here's who we are
Welcome to Sippican Week and SippicanVillageSoup.com!
Beginning today, we will provide the communities of Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester with daily local news at www.SippicanVillageSoup.com and weekly local news in Sippican Week -- distributed free of charge at locations in all three towns.
I’d like to use this space today to tell you a little about who we are and what we are doing.
I am a 28-year resident of Wareham with more than 30 years of experience in the media business, including the Boston Globe, Standard Times, Gatehouse Media and many others. The Standard-Times brought me here; the Southcoast lifestyle kept me. All three of my children are Tabor grads.
In 2009, my husband Patrick Lester and I established Beaver Dam Partners Inc., wanting to develop a model for modern, useful, truly multi-media, truly local, financially sustainable local media. In January of 2010, we launched Wareham Week and WarehamVillageSoup.com. Almost immediately, we became No. 1 in both distribution and the source of local news and information in Wareham. And we are continuing to grow today.
Sippican Week and SippicanVillageSoup is a replication of the model established in Wareham. What makes us different? The bright, modern, professionally designed and produced newspaper you’re reading right now. The VillageSoup website, designed in Maine as a true community website, featuring lots of ways for individuals, organizations, and businesses to participate. An editor and reporter who are professional journalists, living in the towns they serve. (In this case, both live in Mattapoisett). A local office, at 163 Front St., Marion. A commitment to focus exclusively on Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester -- and everything happening here. A commitment to a daily “newspaper” online; Sippican Week will be the best of the week’s news and events we’ve already reported online. A commitment to serve the businesses of the three towns with top-flight design, attention to their marketing needs, and affordable prices.
Our new team is led by Editor Matt Camara, a New Bedford native. Camara is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth where he majored in political science and the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Md., where he graduated with honors. A member of the Army National Guard since 2006, Camara is currently assigned to the 65th Public Affairs Operations Center as a photojournalist and public affairs specialist. He interned in the media relations department at the Boston Museum of Science and worked briefly for Patch.com in Wellesley.
Reporter Erik Fox is a native of Indiana and 2011 graduate of Ball State University, where he majored in journalism, wrote features for the alumni magazine, and created the blog “Hoosiers Doing Something.” He’s an active cyclist and has been a drummer in several touring rock bands. Fox is already enjoying being by the water and adjusting to having seafood with almost every meal.
Advertising salesperson Deb Alfonso, serving Marion and Rochester, is a Wareham native, where she owns her own small business, Onset Bay Trading Company.
The design of Sippican Week (and of Wareham Week before it) is by the Pena Design Group of Rochester.
Ad design is by MediumStudio of New Bedford and the Pena Design Group of Rochester.
Very local, very professional, and very committed to making Sippican Week the paper you’ll want to pick up every week and SippicanVillageSoup the website you will want to visit every day!
