2023: The Shoestring’s Biggest Year Yet

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2023 was a big year for The Shoestring. It was our first year operating with a budget over $30,000 — more than double, in fact — and the first year in which we had something resembling a staff, with Dusty Christensen joining us early in the year after departing from the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and Brian Zayatz taking on editing full time. We more than tripled both our monthly output and our monthly views compared to 2022, and we paid almost $50,000 to local people to write and edit the news.

And we did it all thanks to a broad base of support: our advisory board and co-founders, our team of dedicated volunteers and freelancers, our fiscal sponsor, and perhaps most importantly, you, our readers and supporters who follow, pay for, inform, and share our work. We couldn’t produce the journalism we do, and would have no reason to, without you.

Let’s take a look at the stories we told together in The Shoestring’s biggest year yet.

Deep dives

In 2023, The Shoestring supported writers in producing journalism that breaks down complex issues and tells the stories of the local people impacted by them. In May, Christensen published a piece months in the making about the 2022 death of Lorna McMurray, a worker in a Trulieve cannabis grow facility in Holyoke who went into cardiac arrest after having trouble breathing on the job.

Co-published by The Nation magazine, Christensen’s story digs into the dark side of the growth of a new industry: new kinds of workplace hazards. In fast-growing legal cannabis, workers are on the frontlines of discovering these hazards while industry giants like Trulieve and regulatory agencies catch up. And nowhere is this more true than in Holyoke, where cheap electricity, ample factory space, and an underemployed populace have made it the state’s legal weed production capital.

In June, Alba Álvarez reported on the imminent change in state law that would allow undocumented residents to obtain drivers licenses, and the months of behind-the-scenes work happening in state agencies and in immigrant communities to prepare for the law taking effect.

This fall, what was intended to be a short piece by Christensen about a deal struck between Easthampton Mayor Nicole Lachapelle and private internet service provider GoNetSpeed led down a rabbit hole around the question: why do so many western Mass residents have such slow internet? The answer is a lack of competition, but with many of the region’s cities and towns developing their own municipally-owned internet utilities, private companies are making new offers to stay relevant. Lachapelle’s deal with GoNetSpeed raised questions of how towns should be involved in securing quality internet for their residents, and who should be making those decisions.

Just a few weeks ago, Naila Moreira looked into conflicts erupting in some of Massachusetts’ smallest towns over the siting of ground-mounted solar arrays in green spaces. With widespread agreement that solar should go elsewhere, Moreira asks why this keeps happening, and if policy can be fine-tuned to stop it.

And in our latest podcast episodes, we hosted discussions looking back on the rollout of police reform efforts since 2020, and on “progressive policing” in Northampton and beyond.

Public records

With the addition of Christensen and Shelby Lee to The Shoestring’s roster of regular writers in 2023 came a flood of public records. Lee’s early stories focused on weapons and other gear owned by Easthampton police: an April story looked into the department’s requests for new gear, totaling $390,000 in only the first year, and another in July investigates its use of automatic license plate readers, an AI-equipped technology with few guardrails limiting the use of collected data by third parties. 

These stories inspired another, in which Lee requested weapons inventories from departments of various sizes around the state to see how they compared to Easthampton, which seemed to have an excessive inventory for a city of 16,000. Over the course of several months, nearly every department contacted fought the requests, citing concerns over terrorism if their weapons inventories were public. The Secretary of State repeatedly ruled in favor of The Shoestring, but departments continued to deny requests, or stopped replying. We are continuing to pursue these requests.

Christensen, meanwhile, broke two major stories from the Northampton Police Department: in one, dashcam video shows a violent arrest of a 60-year-old woman who spoke little English over a broken headlight — our reporting of this story led to a protest outside of Northampton City Hall. In the other, Christensen found court records which included quotes from a police traffic stop in which NPD officer Heather Longley told a trainee “we’re gonna cheat.” After a judge suppressed evidence from the traffic stop in light of the comments, the NPD opened an investigation into Longley’s conduct. The Shoestring continues to follow this story as it develops.

And in a statewide story produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and Shadowproof, Sierra Dickey reported on records turned over regarding plans for a new women’s prison in Massachusetts, which were almost entirely redacted. The state cited the “deliberative process exemption” to justify its redactions, essentially arguing that the public does not have a right to records until it’s too late to have input on relevant plans or decisions.

Government accountability

In frequent collaborations with the Montague Reporter, Sarah Robertson looked into who is taking action in local and state government on issues important to the people of western Mass. In January, Robertson’s reporting shed light on who is falling through the cracks in the state’s emergency shelter system, and more recently, the possibility that those cracks could grow even wider without emergency funding. Robertson also won a Paul Keough award from the New England Water Environment Association for reporting on PFAS “forever chemical” proliferation in western Mass groundwater and state efforts to address the newly understood problem. Congratulations, Sarah!

Social movements

The Shoestring is committed to uplifting the stories of people in our community working to make western Mass — and the world — a better place. And we had no shortage of opportunities to do so in 2023. To name just some:

Blair Gimma and R. Nicholas by turns covered efforts by Hadley’s historic Trader Joe’s United local to fight unfair labor practices; Mo Schweiger reported on a rally for a fair home buyback for a foreclosed-on Springfield resident; Brian Zayatz, Shelby Lee, and Jason Kotoch each covered ongoing rallies around western Mass for peace in Gaza; and Christensen covered a new heavy music coop organized by and for fans and musicians of the genre.

The last story we’ll highlight for the year is our coverage of the demolition of the old Daily Hampshire Gazette building, for which Kotoch raced over to the site to capture photos, and Christensen spoke to former editors, reporters, and other workers about what it means to see the daily paper’s longtime home in pieces. Though the Gazette is still publishing every day, it’s hard not to take the demolition as a visual representation of the disinvestment in media we’ve witnessed for years in western Mass.

And that’s where you come in. We can only keep publishing stories like these with support from our community. We’re on the home stretch of our year-end fundraiser now, and the show of support has been amazing! We still have almost $20,000 to raise to meet our goal, but the good news is that we still have thousands in matching dollars left to earn. Your one-time donations, and especially your new monthly donations, are still needed. Can you give now to help us power independent news for western Mass into 2024 and beyond?

To everyone who has already given or supported us in any way, we give our deepest thanks. That you would trust us to bring you the news you need is an honor, and we can’t wait to keep it up in 2024.

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