Winter is typically quiet time on the Cape and Islands. But not for the Nantucket Current.
Just in the past month, the island’s digital news outlet had a scoop on an emerging challenge to short-term rentals, covered a breaking story about the Trump administration’s pause of offshore wind farms, and reported on a brawl at Nantucket’s annual Christmas Stroll that TMZ, the New York Post, and the Daily Mail all picked up.
Since it launched four years ago to challenge the island’s 204-year-old newspaper, the Current has become for many the definitive source for Nantucket news both on and off the island.
Like most newsrooms, it pledges to reach audiences where they are, and has delivered on that mission with a 20,000-subscriber newsletter that goes deep on local issues such as housing. It has about 167,000 followers on its Instagram, where it posts drone shots of washed-up whales and clips of visiting luminaries, such as JD Vance and Jennifer Garner.
The secret to the Current’s success — it makes money entirely from advertising and became profitable roughly a year into existence — is editor Jason Graziadei’s balance of showcasing Nantucket’s spectacle for tourists, both actual and aspiring, while also owning breaking news and covering issues central to its permanent population. A town survey conducted earlier this year found that 90 percent of respondents — the vast majority made up of year-round and seasonal residents — typically get local information from the Current.
