NewsBeat

August 2019 NewsBeat 23 Harbor Express Co-Publishers Gavin and Kathryn Menu with their children, Ella and Charlie, on Long Wharf. Michael Heller photo escaped to his father's vacation home in Water Mill. There, he learned The Southampton Press and its two sister weeklies — at the time, The Hampton Bays News and the Hampton Chronicle in Westhampton Beach — were on the market. "After more than five years in Africa and Europe, with three children who had little familiarity with their own country, my wife and I thought living in a small town while running our own country newspapers would be the perfect way to spend the next few years," Donald Louchheim wrote in the centennial issue of The Southampton Press in 1997. "Twenty-six years later, we're still here and our oldest son is about to take charge of the newspapers." Under Joseph Louchheim's tenure as publisher, the reach of the Press News Group–which at the time included two editions of The Southampton Press–was expanded to include the Town of East Hampton with the introduction of The East Hampton Press in 2007. Together with The Express, the company's publications will reach more than 40,000 homes across the South Fork and, with their websites, 27east.com and sagharborexpress.com, many thousands more in the New York Metropolitan region. Last year, Mr. Louchheim approached Mr. Menu with the loose proposition — one that the co- publisher of The Sag Harbor Express said he never saw coming. "I was very surprised," Mr. Menu said. "And, along with my surprise, I was very flattered. But I was also confident in what we've been doing, because I think that it's working. Once the surprise wore off, it was really excitement and, obviously, a lot of thinking about what was possible and what would need to happen for this to take place." In the coming weeks, the two newsroom staffs will unite, infusing their daily and weekly coverage — online and in print, respectively — with more in-depth reporting, while working to maintain the identities of the four individual newspapers, Ms. Menu and Mr. Shaw agreed. The merger follows the success of the East End News Project, a combined and cooperative effort by The Sag Harbor Express, the Press News Group and the Times Review Media Group newspapers to focus on the opioid epidemic across the region, in collaboration with Stony Brook University's School of Journalism — which Mr. Shaw said "worked splendidly." The content, which won regional and state awards, was shared among the publications equally and simultaneously. Mr. Boyhan has watched the East End media scene ebb and flow for three decades, and what has remained the same, and the most crucial, is the local dedication to community journalism, he said. "As a journalist, I think of the possibilities," he said of the merger. "It's like an all-star team. If you get a strong vision about what these newspapers can do, I think there is a tremendous amount of hope for the future of journalism on the South Fork and the East End of Long Island. I think there's a hunger for it. Despite a backdrop of unsettling times in journalism, the new media group is positioning itself to scale its newspapers and magazines, websites, and live events accordingly, Ms. Menu said, while maintaining their vibrant presence on the East End. "None of us is an interloper. We're not big New York City publishers coming in to run the local newspapers," she said. "Gavin and I grew up in East Hampton. We lived for many years in Sag Harbor before buying our house in Springs. Joe Shaw has been in Southampton for decades. The Louchheim family is an institution in Sagaponack. I think that's really cool and exciting–that these newspapers remain locally owned by families. What happens in these places affects my life and my family's life." For Mr. Louchheim, his priority lies in preserving the future of the Press publications and ensuring that residents of the South Fork continue to get the information they need to make sound, informed decisions about the issues that affect their communities and their livelihood. "I'm not worried about my legacy. I'm worried about the company's legacy," he said, "and I think it couldn't be in better hands than with Gavin and Georgie, and the management team that already exists here."

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