Our mission
The reader of The Keene Sentinel will feel a sense of belonging and will be inspired and empowered to engage in community. This is made possible by an innovative, caring, proactive and responsive news organization that serves as a trusted source and civic partner.
Welcome to The Keene Sentinel! We are a media enterprise located in southwestern New Hampshire whose principal goal is to help the 100,000 or so people living in this region better understand the community they live in.
The Sentinel was founded by 21-year-old John Prentiss in March 1799, and, as we understand it, is one of the five oldest news organizations in the country continuously published under the same name.
You can read more about our history by clicking here.
About 60 people work here, in all sorts of jobs: news, advertising, printing, circulation, online operations, business and so on. We pretty much create a new product from scratch six days a week and online all seven. And we publish several other products in print and online, too, including a business magazine, a parenting publication, even a magazine geared to equestrians.
The paper is locally owned, which is a rarity these days. The publisher and owner, Tom Ewing, lives in Keene and occupies a corner office overlooking West Street. He, like all the other members of The Sentinel team, is answerable to and for an enterprise that has been serving the community for more than two centuries. (We only missed the administration of George Washington.) Acknowledging the public nature of our work, we are also answerable to you.
Policies
We are in the process of writing policies and guidelines to help you learn more about what we do and why.We hope these guidelines on letters to the editor and guest opinions (op-eds) make the process of sending in letters and opinion columns more understandable and easy to do. We look forward to your contributions!
You can also find more about the editorial board -- what it is, the board's members, and how its work is separate from the work of the local news staff.
