For years, lots of people in Southern Delaware felt like no one was listening.
“We do not have a Sussex County newspaper per se that’s designed for Sussex County, the Harbesons, the Hardscrabbles, the Seafords, and all that,” one Sussex native told researchers.
When downstate Delawareans turn on the TV or look online, Baltimore and D.C. dominate the news. When issues like housing and traffic rock their communities, they struggle for insight and information, feeling frustrated that their voices aren’t being heard.
Olivia Marble, Tim Carlin and Maggie Reynolds – Spotlight Delaware’s new “SoDel Team” – are here to listen to those voices, and take on the issues that matter most for the 460,000 people who call downstate their home.
“I think everyone gets into journalism for a reason, to fight for the greater good,” said Carlin, a 25-year-old Cincinnati native who will head the team as deputy editor. “You get into this because you see a power in the written word to make change, and nonprofits have this ability to marry mission-driven journalism with authentic, supportive community engagement.”
It’s a community-focused mission that aligns perfectly with the team’s professional passions.
“There’s a real push at Spotlight Delaware to elevate those voices that haven’t been heard,” Carlin said. “That energy aligns with my belief system and value system, so being able to bring that to Southern Delaware communities will be rewarding.”
Already, the team has been touring communities from Smyrna to Seaford, talking with residents and strategizing their coverage. The team’s first stories reported on a controversial absence by one of Delaware’s downstate legislators, community reaction to a private helipad in Kent, and stumbling blocks on the way to introducing development reforms in Sussex.
Reynolds, 23, will cover rural communities and their unique issues, much as she did while reporting in upstate New York and Vermont. Marble, a 26-year-old Massachusetts native, will cover land use issues statewide, with a special focus on Kent and Western Sussex.
Carlin will guide their coverage while doing his own reporting, adding expertise he honed covering government action – and inaction – in South Carolina and Houston, Texas.
Reynolds and Marble are both bilingual in Spanish and English, giving them direct access to report on growing immigrant communities in their coverage area. (Spotlight Delaware’s news is available in Spanish as well as English.)
All three Delaware newcomers have been more than a little intrigued by the state’s peculiar political dynamic, by the sometimes stark upstate-downstate divide, and by Delawareans’ neighborly nature.
“I am really impressed already with the ‘Delaware Way’ of getting people together in a room and hashing things out,” Marble said. “That is something that’s lacking in much of the country today.”
They’re also happy to be part of Spotlight’s mission: The year-old news source is paywall-free, guided by a primary mission to ensure everyone has access to the powerful levers journalism provides.
“I was really drawn to Spotlight Delaware because it is a nonprofit newspaper, which I see as a really viable route for the future of journalism,” said Reynolds, whose position is funded by a grant from Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into newsrooms to counter the ongoing decline of local news.
Since 2005, Americans have lost approximately a third of their newspapers. When polled about news access, Delawareans complained that many local community outlets that existed a decade or more ago no longer exist, and that other publications have fewer reporters and less content.
“We’ve known since we launched that Southern Delaware was the logical next step for expanding Spotlight’s coverage,” said Allison Taylor Levine, Spotlight CEO and publisher. “Thanks to the many Delawareans who believe in our mission, we were able to create this team and begin to boost news access for the people downstate.”
In conjunction with the SoDel Team’s arrival, Spotlight Delaware is launching a grassroots fundraising campaign to sustain and grow Kent and Sussex coverage.
“This absolutely gives me a sense of hope,” Marble said. “A lot of models for how to do journalism are broken. And this one is working. It makes me reinvigorated to have this job, in this place.”
