Charles M. Sennott
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Articles by Charles M. Sennott
America’s longest war is over, but it bleeds into a new era of conflict
On October 7, 2001, America launched a military campaign in Afghanistan. Now Oct. 7 is synonymous with a new wave of war in the Middle East where the U.S. is once again embroiled. What now? Twenty-five years ago, I was in northern Afghanistan for The Boston Globe, arriving just over a week after the September 11th attacks, and it seemed almost surreal to be riding a packhorse as it tapped its way through the rushing waters of the Kokcha River.
9/11 & journalists: What it was like writing the first draft of history
Twenty-five years ago this week, in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, 2001, I was heading for Afghanistan to report for The Boston Globe. I was with a small group of colleagues and we would be among the first Western reporters to get to Afghanistan. Looking back, it is hard to explain just how raw emotions were and how taut our nerves were as we, like America, tried to grapple with the fact that the horrific terror attack had changed the world. How do you begin to cover a story that big?
9/11 & journalists: What it was like writing the first draft of history
Twenty-five years ago this week, in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, 2001, I was heading for Afghanistan to report for The Boston Globe. I was with a small group of colleagues and we would be among the first Western reporters to get to Afghanistan. Looking back, it is hard to explain just how raw emotions were and how taut our nerves were as we, like America, tried to grapple with the fact that the horrific terror attack had changed the world. How do you begin to cover a story that big?
A letter from the publisher
In our weathered newsroom on Beach Road, where the roof leaks, the heat barely works as the colder months set in, and there’s flooding whenever a nor’easter hits, our small and scrappy team of tough, talented, and dedicated reporters, photographers, and editors as well as design and production staff work together week in and week out to tell the stories of our Island. And I am proud to share some good news about this extraordinary band of brothers and sisters.
The meaning of ‘public service” after the 25th anniversary of 9-11
After a quarter century that brought us a crisis in journalism, there are lessons learned by local journalists about serving their communities. NEW YORK — Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, the skyline of lower Manhattan emerged in the rearview mirror, and it seemed the perfect view to look back on last week’s remembrance of 9-11.
Lembrando o 11 de setembro como uma história local
0.5× 0.75× 1× 1.25× 1.5× 1.75× 2× Vinte e cinco anos atrás, na manhã de 11 de setembro de 2001, eu estava descarregando um caminhão de mudança em Londres. Eu havia acabado de concluir um período de cinco anos como chefe da sucursal do Oriente Médio do The Boston Globe, em meio à violência da intifada e, em particular, aos atentados a bomba em ônibus, que estavam acontecendo cada vez mais perto de casa. E havia chegado a Londres para assumir um novo cargo como chefe da sucursal europeia do Globe.
Richard North Patterson’s ‘Tripwires’
From his seasonal perch in a rural corner of West Tisbury, Richard North Patterson has spent more than 30 years writing 25 books. They include legal and political novels that traverse terrain that runs far from the Island, as well as a trilogy of novels that explore family dynamics right here in the rolling hills and rugged shorelines of Chilmark. More than 20 of Patterson’s books have been bestsellers.
Remembering 9-11 as a local news story
BOSTON — A field of small American flags stirred only faintly in a light breeze early this morning. Then, just after 8:46 AM, the wind picked up off of Boston Harbor, and the flags were suddenly unfurling with a burst of strength as if snapping to attention in their duty to honor each of the 2,997 lives lost on 9-11.
The meaning of ‘public service” after the 25th anniversary of 9-11
NEW YORK — Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, the skyline of lower Manhattan emerged in the rearview mirror, and it seemed the perfect view to look back on last week’s remembrance of 9-11. With all the public discussion and the stages set here and in Washington for the 25th anniversary, America was pondering the void where the Twin Towers once stood in a new and deeper way.
If memory serves
Twenty-five years ago, on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was unpacking a moving truck in London. I had just finished a five-year posting as the Middle East bureau chief for the Boston Globe amid the violence of the intifada and, particularly, the bus bombings, which were hitting closer and closer to home. I had just arrived in London with my wife and our three young sons to take on a new position as London bureau chief for the Globe.
Publisher’s Note: Investing in local journalism
The price of great local coverage? Just $1 a week. We believe strongly in public access to reliable information, and we are equally committed to building a sustainable future for the local journalism our Island depends on. We hope you have seen the improvements we’ve made to our website, as well as how we’ve stepped up coverage of news, events, and the arts. However, there’s a cost to producing consistent, high quality coverage across the Island — so we’re asking for your help.
A free press ignited the American Revolution
A free press ignited the American Revolution History matters, especially when it informs the present. As we reflect on the 250 years since the birth of America, the historic role that a free press played in that founding narrative should be remembered as it feels more relevant than ever.
Celebrating independence for America – and the press
Before the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago, there was an aspiring new industry known as the free press. It took shape thanks to the earliest practitioners, such as the young Benjamin Franklin, who as the printer and publisher of the influential Pennsylvania Gazette, was widely believed to be the first newsman in what would become the United States of America.
The presses keep rolling in Small Town America
Charles Sennott / GroundTruth The presses keep rolling in Small Town America It was the last great newspaper war in America. A fabled time in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s when four major daily newspapers were vying against each other every day for breaking news and fighting for circulation in the trenches of newsstands and kiosks that were on every corner.
Journalism labor unions reawakened in the age of AI
The dramatic decline of news organizations in the United States over the last two decades has coincided with a steady drop in union membership overall across the country, but recently the NewsGuild, which is part of the Communications Workers of America, is reporting a stirring of activity and a rise in membership. So what does that mean in real terms?
A note from the publisher: The Island’s Living History
History is like the shoreline: constantly changing and evolving based on both gradual processes and sudden, dramatic events. History, and the way it is recorded here on the Island, lies at the center of this edition of Arts & Ideas. The phrase “living history” has always been enticing for me, one that breathes with a wonderful double entendre.
A journey chronicling press freedom locally and globally
For more than two months, GroundTruth has been on a virtual road trip through the crisis in local news across America. We’ve been from Pittsfield, Massachusetts to Chicago and Montana down to Austin, Texas. But this week I am looking at how this issue is playing in other countries. These two paths — local and global — run parallel to each other and are headed in the same distressing direction that traverses the rising peril for journalists and the steep decline in press freedom.
Reflections on World Press Freedom Day
Through more than 40 years as a journalist, I have followed a path that is both global and local. And this week that path came full circle when we gathered on Sunday, which marked World Press Freedom Day, in The Martha’s Vineyard Times’ newsroom on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven.
What exactly is a “creator journalist?”
It was early in 2022, and I was part of a virtual panel on the crisis in local news hosted by WBUR in Boston along with an extraordinary entrepreneur and force of nature named Crystal Good, who was dialing in from West Virginia. It was on that panel that I heard the term “creator journalist” for the first time.
Chicago Pushes Back
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks on stage with Sasha-Ann Simons, host of WBEZ’s In the Loop, at the Online News Association’s 2026 conference in Chicago, Wednesday, April 1, 2026 (Photo from ONA’s Instagram) Editor’s Note: This is part of a continuing series mapping the crisis in local news, navigating newspapers in distress, those finding a way to sustain and highlighting bright spots in the new digital organizations that are emerging.
How Chicago’s local media is responding to Trump admin ICE raids
Editor’s Note: This is part of a continuing series mapping the crisis in local news, navigating newspapers in distress, those finding a way to sustain and highlighting bright spots in the new digital organizations that are emerging. CHICAGO – The city of big shoulders knows how to push back. It’s been six months since the Trump administration launched what felt like a military assault on Chicago by masked federal agents, but the city has stood firm.
A day to celebrate local news
The idea, according to its founders, is to establish a “national day of action connecting communities with their trusted local news organizations.” And at The Martha’s Vineyard Times, we are joining more than 1,200 local news organizations as part of this inaugural Local News Day.
The Berkshire Eagle soars once again
Posted Friday, March 27, 2026 9:32 am The Eagle building is nested into the triangle where Eagle Street meets North Street just along the railroad tracks off the Common in Pittsfield, MA in the Berkshires. A flat-iron building with a brick facade and enormous windows, it embodies the grandeur and the muscle of this factory town and what made The Berkshire Eagle such a great and beloved newspaper, with roots dating back to 1789.
The Berkshire Eagle soars once again Original
The old Berkshire Eagle Building in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (Photo by Joseph/ Creative Commons/https://flic.kr/p/ovf3tn Editor’s Note: This story is part of GroundTruth’s continuing series of posts on the state of local news across America. Today, we are launching a map of the series in the lead up to Local News Day on April 9. You can view the story map here.
Clark Kent wouldn’t have a job today Original
The entrance of the Art Deco building where the New York Daily News had its newsroom in its heyday (Photo by Charles Sennott/GroundTruth) Crossing the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan at sunset, there is a sweeping view of the Upper West Side down to the long, urban expanse and the spires of the financial district. On a recent drive, I found my eyes still searching for that place on the horizon where the fallen towers of the World Trade Center once stood.
Defining solidarity with Ukraine on the war’s fourth anniversary Original
The war against Russian aggression marks a grim milestone amid concerns that U.S. and European allies are wavering Elderly people stand in line under a snow storm to receive a free hot meal from the Sant’Egidio Christian community volunteers in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026.
An ongoing war on the free press Original
Don Lemon conducts an interview during a demonstration on Jan. 18 at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota (Screenshot via The Don Lemon Show/YouTube) Every week, it seems, we are writing about an increasingly pervasive threat to press freedom. The attacks on journalism, and on truth itself, are relentless in America and far too many corners of the world, from Gaza to Russia.
AI platforms need to wake up to an alarming crisis in local news Original
The offices of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on Feb. 14, 2019. (Photo by Keith Srakocic/AP) The beautiful, old Goss Uniliner presses that have run like a locomotive for generations at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will be grinding to a halt as the newspaper announced this month it will stop printing altogether on May 3. That event will make the “Steel City” the largest major metropolitan area in the United States to lose its daily newspaper and will put it one step closer to becoming a news desert.
The Martha's Vineyard Times
The road John Forté traveled brought him from Brownsville, Brooklyn, where he was born, to Chilmark, where he died suddenly on Monday. It led him on an extraordinary, half-century journey. Along that road, he navigated New York’s toughest neighborhoods and made his way to elite academic institutions. It took a celebrated turn down city streets of hip-hop in its heyday, bringing him to a red-carpet walk at the Grammys.
An Israeli checkpoint in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem Original
A stark, spray-painted picture of Mary and the baby Jesus, both adorned with barbed wire halos, peers out from the concrete separation wall in Bethlehem, the city where Christ was born. (Photo by Chris Herlinger/National Catholic Reporter from “Anxiety and hope mark Advent for Palestinian Christians.” Checkpoint 300 is a military post manned by the Israel Defense Forces on the edge of the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, where the New Testament tells us Jesus was born.
At the end of 2025, searching for light in the dusk of local news Original
Screengrab of Report for America’s 2025 Impact Report The year 2025 will long be remembered as a devastating milestone for the decline of local journalism. It caps two decades which have seen the news industry ravaged and the idea of truth itself under attack in ways that would have seemed unimaginable just a generation ago.
Tides of tragedy, waves of grief
The rising moon between Christmas and New Year ushered in what felt like a king tide of three separate tragedies, ushering waves of grief across four prominent families who have all given so much to the Island.
The Pope sends a message of hope, as Christians vanish in the Holy Land Original
As we march toward Christmas, following the “pa-rum-pa-pum-pum” beat of commercialism to the schlocky versions of ‘Little Drummer Boy’ piped into shopping malls or blaring in public squares this time of year, here is something to reflect on. This scene of a local boy called by the Magi, or wise men from the East, to honor the newborn Jesus was set in a shepherd’s field on the edge of the town of Bethlehem, in what is today often referred to as the occupied West Bank.
How Hungary’s journalists are fighting their strongman - and what American media under Trump can learn from them
I was supposed to be in Vienna today at the 75th annual World Congress of the International Press Institute, where I am proud to have been a member of the North American Committee for the last 15 years.
How Hungary’s journalists are fighting their strongman — and what American media under Trump can learn from them - MediaFeed
I was supposed to be in Vienna today at the 75th annual World Congress of the International Press Institute, where I am proud to have been a member of the North American Committee for the last 15 years.
An always unpredictable Middle East is now more unpredictable than ever
The only thing certain in the Middle East is uncertainty. I learned this truism in the more than three decades I’ve covered the region. Those who confidently forecast where it is headed either don’t really know the land and its peoples, or don’t mind being proven wrong time and again. Or both. These days the level of uncertainty in the Middle East is running unusually high amid shifting power balances, the aftermath of the war in Gaza, and the stepping back of U.S. influence in the region.
Our membership model helps sustain community-supported journalism
Thank you for helping us to become New England’s 2025 Newspaper of the Year. We are honored by this award, and honored that you are part of our commitment to community-supported journalism. By having the MV Times delivered to your mailbox and/or inbox, you are what we consider a “member” of our community. And this new “membership model” is more than just a turn of phrase.
Alden to News: Drop Dead
A knot of Daily News employees and newspaper union officials were bound together Wednesday afternoon in front of City Hall to raise awareness – and raise hell – about the outrages of its corporate owner, Alden Global Capital, and what this rapacious hedge fund has done to New York’s hometown newspaper, and so many others of the nearly 100 newspapers it owns across America.
What American journalism needs to learn from Hungary
I was supposed to be in Vienna today at the 75th annual World Congress of the International Press Institute, where I am proud to have been a member of the North American Committee for the last 15 years.
Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalists silences Gaza’s ground truth
Today marks the 700th day of Israel’s war on Gaza, and there is no sign of any light at the end of any tunnel. And even if there was a glimmer of hope in this increasingly opaque conflict, the world would not know about it because of an unprecedented targeting of journalists which keeps us all in the dark.
A search for truth behind “Napalm Girl”
It is one of the most important photographs of war ever taken. It is sometimes referred to as “The Terror of War,” and more informally as “Napalm Girl.” You probably have this searing image filed away somewhere in your memory: A naked 9-year-old, Vietnamese girl is running down a road in terror after a napalm attack on her village. It was taken in 1972 and the image received the Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo awards. It shocked the world and in some ways galvanized opposition to the war.
Like a hurricane: Local news crisis is a relentless and destructive force
The crisis in local news keeps gathering strength, like a hurricane taking shape in more and more ominous ways. Its destructive force is being felt nationally and globally, steadily undercutting a free press, washing away guardrails for accountability, and eroding the very foundation of democracy. This is an issue I have been focusing on for more than a decade, and it feels like this hurricane has reached Category 5, the highest level on the threat matrix.
The High Princes of "techno monarchy” gather in DC
If the vision of the philosophers in the palace of Trump is to create a “techno monarchy,” as they like to call it, then this week’s AI summit in Washington was really the first gathering of the high princes of AI to celebrate the first royal decree.
A note from the publisher - The Martha's Vineyard Times
Change can be difficult. And at The MV Times these days, we are taking on some big changes by shifting to our new membership model, which we announced last week. We want to apologize upfront for some glitches in the rollout of this model. We also want to let you know we are doing everything we can to fix them.
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MV Times launching membership for community-supported news
Welcome to the heart of summer, and we hope you are enjoying all that our Island has to offer. We have lots of news to share with you, our community of readers. This summer, we’ve steadily covered important news in these pages on housing, climate change, and the impact of new federal legislation here on our Island. We also published a special issue on the 50th anniversary of “Jaws” in the weekly print edition and in our Vineyard Visitor magazine.
What does it mean when Trump signs his “big, beautiful bill” on the 4th of July?
Across America, in small towns and big cities, families and friends will gather to celebrate the 4th of July today, while President Trump celebrates in the White House with his closest aides and the Republican leadership as he signs into law a sweeping bill that promises to alter America’s future for generations. President Trump has called the legislation the “big, beautiful bill,” but for most Americans the reality of it is a big ugly hoax.
Shifting sands in the Middle East after Trump joined Israel in airstrikes on Iran
A longtime Middle East hand who works in the oil markets once shared with me a broad framework to understand the complex history of the region, what fuels its layers of regional conflict and the ways in which global players so often intervene. There is no doubt that the events of the last two weeks mark an historic turning point. First, Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear sites on June 13th. Iran retaliated soon after with missiles into Israel.
'Jaws,' capitalism and Fidel Castro
“It was 1975, and Fidel Castro was reading ‘Jaws.’” Wendy Benchley shared that complex shard of history with me. She’s the widow of Peter Benchley, who authored the best-selling novel that would inspire the Hollywood blockbuster that this week celebrated the 50th anniversary of its release. It was hard to miss all the hype and the kitsch that is marking the anniversary, with the Chamber of Commerce sponsoring a full calendar of events.
"Jaws" at 50: why it is still relevant in this age of anxiety
“It was 1975, and Fidel Castro was reading Jaws.” When I heard that beautifully complex sentence from Wendy Benchley, the widow of Peter Benchley, the author of the best selling novel which would inspire the Hollywood blockbuster that today celebrates the 50th anniversary of its release in theaters, I knew I wanted to write about it. I had never heard the idea of Jaws as a Marxist critique of American capitalism.
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