Welcome To The Indy
Welcome to The Amherst Independent (The Indy).
The Indy is a free, all-volunteer, online news service providing Amherst residents with deeper coverage of town news than they can get elsewhere. The Indy website is updated weekly and weekly news digests are available via free email subscription. We feature accurate, well-sourced reporting of local news, as well as local features, and local opinion pieces from across the political landscape. Our goal is to help residents understand our town government and how it works, as well as to share information about current issues and events that impact life here. We also aim to be a venue for conversations about town issues, a place where people can share their knowledge and think creatively. To that end, each article features a section for comments. We enthusiastically invite responses from our readers. Comments are moderated ( and hence, there will be a brief lag between submission and posting on the site). We invite lively discussion! However, we will not knowingly post trolling, personal attacks, or profanity. And all comments must be signed with the writer’s real name.
In the coming months we will continue to tweak the site as we smooth out the rough edges that come with a new project. We will be adding new content as we perfect our editorial flow and processes. You might notice changes in layout and formatting as we tweak the site to find the optimal design. The same goes for archiving stories. We know that a major complaint about online news is that it is often difficult to find what you are looking for. We have now begun to tag our articles and you can use the tags (buttons located at the bottom of each page) to find similar content. We’ll be honing our tags in the coming weeks so that you can find what you need quickly. As you can see, we set off our articles with a photo from Amherst. We aspire to create a library of photos from around town that all can share. That aspiration poses a number of technical challenges and so our photo library is not yet publicly accessible. But if you have Amherst photos you would like to share, please send them to amherstindy@gmail.com.
We ask for your patience as we work to get all of our features up and running. We welcome your comments and suggestions. You can also help us launch this project by writing for us! The Indy “staff” currently consists of about a dozen of your neighbors including some professional writers or editors, some with deep knowledge about our town, some who are willing to attend meetings and report on them. All of us have a passion for sharing news and information with others. A lot is happening in Amherst, and we could use your help in covering it all. Please consider joining us! You can find our guide for contributors here.
Finally, The Indy embraces a mission of being a critical, progressive, and independent news source. You can read our mission statement here.