When I sit down to write for The Cambridge Spy, I’m always aware that local journalism in a city like ours is not a luxury. It’s a necessity.
In a community of roughly 13,000 people, many of the stories that shape daily life rarely receive attention from larger regional or national outlets. City Council decisions, school activities, waterfront development, arts programming, and the challenges facing local businesses go unnoticed unless someone is there to document them.
One of the central purposes of The Cambridge Spy is to make sure those stories are told and preserved. Day by day, article by article, Executive Editor Zack Taylor and I are building a civic record of the community.
My own role in that effort has become very personal to me. Over time, I’ve written interviews, feature stories, and commentaries that try to capture the life of the community as it unfolds. Some of my reporting focuses on government and public institutions in Dorchester County. That kind of work helps residents understand what their elected officials are doing and why it matters.
But local journalism isn’t only about oversight. It’s also about helping a community see itself.
In Cambridge, culture and community life are essential parts of the story. I often write about local organizations, traditions, and events like the Cambridge Ice & Oyster Festival. In a small place, covering those things matters because it reminds people that their town has creativity, history, and energy, not just political debates or economic concerns.
Some of the stories I write are practical. My feature “Fur Your Consideration” highlights animals that need homes. Those articles are simple in concept, yet they connect readers directly with a way to help. Journalism can sometimes feel abstract, but those pieces show how a story can lead to something tangible in the community.
Then there is my Cambridge Time Machine series. Through those brief features, I explore moments from the city’s past—old buildings, vanished landmarks, long-standing businesses, and the everyday rhythms of earlier generations. I’m not trying to write academic history. I’m telling stories that make the past feel alive and connected to the present.
Over time, I’ve realized that my role has evolved into something slightly different from that of a typical local reporter. I often feel less like someone simply covering events and more like a storyteller and chronicler of the community, someone trying to explain Cambridge to its own residents.
Since I’m also a fiction author, storytelling shapes the way I write. Even when the subject is a policy decision or a nonprofit initiative, I try to frame it in a way that reveals the human side of the story. Government reporting can easily become technical and hard to follow, so I try to translate those decisions into narratives people can understand. At the same time, I’m drawn to stories about individuals—artists, volunteers, educators, and business owners—because they are the people who quietly shape the life of the city.
History often enters my writing as well, even when the topic is contemporary. If I’m writing about a building, an event, or a local organization, I often connect it to earlier moments in the city’s past. That approach reminds readers that today’s Cambridge didn’t appear overnight but is the result of generations of decisions, traditions, and people.
The longer I do this work, the more I think of it as helping take care of the community’s story.
In many towns, the details of everyday life disappear quickly once they pass. Official records may preserve council votes or property transactions, but they rarely capture what people cared about, which cultural events mattered, or who the volunteers and organizers were who helped hold a community together. Journalism often becomes the record of those things.
Across the United States, hundreds of local newspapers have closed or drastically reduced their coverage. When that happens, communities lose more than just news. They lose shared civic information, public oversight, and the written memory of their own culture.
Publications like The Cambridge Spy are increasingly filling that gap. Even as a small online outlet, it provides reporting, commentary, cultural coverage, and historical storytelling that might otherwise not exist.
Thirty or forty years ago, my work might have been only one voice among many documenting Cambridge. Today, it may be part of one of the primary bodies of writing preserving and interpreting the city’s story.
That thought has changed the way I see what I’m doing. I’m not just writing articles about events as they happen. In a small way, I’m helping document the life of a city—its debates, its culture, its people, and its memories—so that the story of Cambridge continues to be told.
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