Observer’s origins based on Weston’s “hunger” for local news

While local news coverage was already scarce by the time the Weston Town Crier officially folded its print operation in 2022, the community’s news desert was about to get much drier.

For years, Kristin Barbieri and her blend of tongue-in-cheek humor and coverage of town affairs kept residents apprised of what was happening in Weston through her blog the Weston Owl, but she, too, opted to retire it last spring.

So, where could residents get trustworthy news coverage?

In 2023, the Weston Media Center had also been brainstorming ideas for better “connecting our community,” according to Observer board of directors member Joel Angiolilo. A conversation between longtime Weston Media Center team member Alanna Muldoon and Weston Garden Club member Katie Phaneuf, while they were producing a gardening video, was one of the sparks that led to the formation of the Weston Local News Initiative. The two discussed how the lack of a local newspaper was impacting communication.

“The conversations were being had and people were expressing interest,” Phaneuf said.

It soon became clear, though, the effort to bring a paper to town would take a village. “I don’t know if anybody was willing to do it as one person, I think it had to be a town-wide thing,”she said.

Two years and a whole lot of work from a team of dedicated volunteers later, the Weston Observer was born.

Importance of local news

The Observer’s foundation traces back to an initial meeting at the Weston Art & Innovation Center in September 2023, which then grew into a town-wide meeting at Regis College, according to Angiolillo.

Early the next year, the Weston Local News Initiative conducted a town survey, which found 94% of the 590 respondents believed it was important for Weston to have an independent community news source. Responses cited a local news organization’s ability to generate community and support a strong democracy as their top reasons for bringing a newspaper to town.

Even getting the survey out to folks was difficult, which underlined the importance of local news, according to Marion Packs, an early founder of the Weston Local News Initiative.

“It was hard to reach audiences because there was no community communications vehicle,” Packs said, adding a network of nonprofits helped distribute the survey.

In response to the survey results, the Weston Local News Initiative’s team recommended the creation of a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that could deliver independent, nonpartisan news to Weston residents.

“There is a very big hunger for local Weston news,” Packs said.

With a clear demand in the community, the team began to solicit volunteers to help with fundraising, accounting, branding, communications, technology, legal knowledge and media expertise, according to Joan Heilbronner, who now serves on the Observer’s advisory team.

“We put out a call for volunteers, and Weston answered,” she said.

For Heilbronner, joining the effort was about trying to reconnect with her town.

“I joined the effort in the fall of 2023” she said. “The Town Crier had lost its local feel several years before that, and once my children had graduated from high school, I began to feel disconnected with the community.”

That sense of community connection, Packs and Phaneuf added, is part of why the team decided to go with a print newspaper delivered each week to every home in Weston in the era of digital journalism.

“Our feeling was that everybody gets so many emails, so to get something tangible and physical every Friday, it engages the entire household in what’s going on in the community,” Packs said.

On Jan. 6, 2025, Weston News, Inc., which is managed by a board of directors, received its nonprofit letter of determination from the Internal Revenue Service.

It was time to make the vision a reality.

A community newspaper would be incomplete without community support, of course. The Observer’s board of directors said community fundraising was essential to seeing the creation of the newspaper through.

“We had to get people to donate funds without really seeing anything,” Phaneuf said.

Yet, donate they did – with the help of many generous donors, the seed money campaign raised $30,000, and community fundraising is continuing.

“It tells you the hunger in town for this paper,” Packs added. “To raise enough money to launch is kind of amazing.”

Credit for strong fundraising goes to Tim Armour, according to Charlie Cuneo, Weston Observer board president.

“Tim Armour has done an outstanding job spearheading the Weston Observer fundraising efforts,” Cuneo said. “His enthusiasm and experience have really made a crucial difference.”

What’s in a name? For the Observer, it’s a nod to a classic newspaper name and the Weston Observatory, Boston College’s geophysical research and science education center on Concord Road.

“We had a whole list we were going to test. I finally put the gauntlet down and said, ‘We don’t need to market research this,’” Packs said. “Paul [Foley, a member of the board of directors], said, ‘We do have an observatory in town.’”

As the Observer prepares to hit residents’ mailboxes this week, Heilbronner said the product is a labor of love from Weston residents to their neighbors.

“It’s taken us two years, and we believe it was worth the wait. We opted for slow and steady, and hope that residents are pleased with the final product,” Heilbronner said. “This process has truly taken a village. We had an amazing team of volunteers who committed much time and energy over these past two years to make the Weston Observer a reality.”