Exactly one year ago today, The Overlook began publishing weekly with a simple mission: to provide rigorous, community-rooted journalism to the Catskills. I’ve never been sentimental about birthdays, but this feels different.
We launched in the belief that Hunter, Hurley, Olive, Saugerties, Shandaken, and Woodstock deserved consistent, independent reporting. The kind of journalism that asks difficult questions and connects local decisions to larger forces.
Over the past year, we’ve worked to earn your trust.
We exposed how federal policy shifts rippled through small towns, reporting on SNAP freezes and USDA cuts that strained food pantries, animal shelters, libraries, and arts venues. We pressed for government accountability with sustained coverage of town meetings and broke major news about the sale of Bearsville Center and the prolonged potable-water outage in Boiceville, prompting a public response from Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger.
We investigated rural healthcare gaps, examined development pressures reshaping the region, and reported on how pharmacy benefit managers are squeezing independent pharmacies from Woodstock to Phoenicia.
We documented the Catskills’ cultural life, profiling musicians and local characters, from Funkadelic’s Clip Payne to the Grateful Dead’s Grahame Lesh to the B-52’s Kate Pierson, alongside stunning original visuals by our staff photographers Roy Gumpel and Michael Sofronski.
And we strengthened local democracy, publishing “Meet the Candidates” interviews across multiple towns to give voters clear insight into those seeking office.
Today, we’re taking another step forward.
The Overlook is launching a free community events calendar. Any resident, nonprofit, school, or small business can submit events directly to our site for free. In time we will introduce an option for paid placements to help sustain this work while keeping events accessible to all.
The broader media landscape remains unsettled. Recent layoffs at The Washington Post have raised renewed concern about journalism’s future. The challenges are real and daunting.
But on our first birthday, I feel an overwhelming feeling of excitement and momentum.
In just one year, independent nonprofit local journalism has taken root here. With your support, we will continue to ask hard questions, document change, and celebrate the people who define this region.
This is still the beginning.
Thank you for reading, and for being a part of building local, community journalism.
Noah Eckstein
Editor-in-Chief