The River | A Regional Voice with National Significance

The Hudson Valley is a celebrated region, and for good reason. It’s been home to presidents, poets and — allegedly — a headless horseman. It gave birth to one of the world’s largest technology companies. It inspired one of the most influential art movements of the past 200 years. It’s a large region, home to nearly 3.5 million people, spread across 25 cities and 235 municipalities, largely paralleling the Hudson River as it flows from far upstate to New York City.

As far as news coverage is concerned, though, the Hudson River is just about the only thing uniting this region — and lots of impactful stories are going unreported as a result.

Enter The River, the newest newsroom to form on Civil. It will be the first Hudson Valley news outlet to consistently offer in-depth news coverage from a regional — as opposed to hyper-local — perspective. It will focus on underreported topics that carry significance on both a regional and national level. The River comes from a group of veteran journalists, editors and technologists that know the region as well as anybody.

Its founding team is comprised of:

• Amara Projansky, Co-Founder. She’s also the founder and CEO at Luminary Media, where she launched Chronogram Magazine, a popular Hudson Valley cultural magazine. She’s also the founding editor at Upstate House and Upstater magazines. She’s based in Kingston, NY.
• Brian K. Mahoney, Editorial Director. Brian has more than 20 years of experience reporting on the Hudson Valley. He’s spent the bulk of his career chronicling life in the region and directing coverage of it as editor of Chronogram magazine. He’s also written for Utne Reader, T Magazine, Dolce Vita, American Craft, Pride, Art in America and the New York Observer. Brian lives in Kingston, NY.
• Kirk Ritchey, Chief Technology Advisor and Co-Founder. He was formerly the lead at a management consulting practice in distributed data systems and enterprise analytics and is based in Woodstock, NY.
• Jason Stern, Co-Founder. He’s founder and publisher at Luminary Media, has led the launch of several magazines and websites. Jason cut his teeth at local newspapers, including the Huguenot Herald and the Gardiner Gazette; he’s also the author of Learning to Be Human and based in New Paltz, NY
• Peter Martin, Data Analyst. He’s a Hudson Valley-based researcher with a knack for advanced technology and new economic development. He’s worked around local journalism for much of his career, and loves to craft stories that are accurate, informative, and compelling. He’s based in Kingston, NY.

“Everything in the Hudson Valley is place-based,” said Ritchey. “News outlets tend to be hyper-focused on their immediate localities, which is certainly important — but it also obscures a broader focus. Everybody says that the Hudson Valley is a region, but there’s nothing that’s consistently addressing regional news.”

The River’s founding team points to critical — and grossly underreported — topics like the environment (the region is home to the country’s largest Superfund site: the Hudson River), land use and taxation as especially relevant issues they’ll be addressing. The River will feature a weekly newsletter in addition to its Newsroom that will run on Civil. Each week will feature a specific coverage theme, which will include a lead story, a shorter feature as well as interactive/infographic-based content.

It’s high time for a publication focused on producing more in-depth and investigative coverage for a region that’s nestled between — and often overshadowed by — two larger media hubs in New York City and Albany. It’s the first local newsroom to launch on Civil that’s not hubbed in an urban center — and a harbinger for what we hope will be many more in the near future. Non-urban areas like the Hudson Valley are among the most severely impacted by the precipitous decline in sustainable, local journalism over the past two-plus decades. We’re committed to being a viable option for the many journalists and citizens around the world that want to reverse that course.

If you’d like to learn more about The River — updates on when it will begin publishing, its growing team or to suggest story ideas — you can do so here.