The Forum Board of Directors•Start Date:October 13, 2023Issue Date:October 14, 2023

It is with great sadness that The Forum's Board of Directors announces it will no longer publish new content after October 14, 2023.

The Forum first came into being in 2005, and subsequently received a Knight-Batten Citizen Media Award in Journalism. Over the years our many volunteer reporters and editors have covered local elections, hundreds of select board meetings, zoning board meetings, planning board meetings, and other town meetings as well in our four towns. We created space for community dialogue, published announcements and reviews of local events and profiles of artists; covered sporting events, and encouraged members of Candia, Deerfield, Northwood, and Nottingham to become hyperlocal journalists in this unique experiment.

Eventually it became clear to us that many of our readers were getting their local news and information from social media outlets where dialogue is encouraged and opinion and news is reported sometimes instantaneously. Based on our analytics, we see that most of our readers still depend on The Forum for accurate and rapid results from our town elections and we regret we will no longer be providing those results. 

We have had an excellent and long run, have made many local leaders accountable for their actions, and have encouraged numerous hopeful writers, editors, and technically adept volunteers to take part in their community through the paper’s many opportunities.

The board reached this decision not long before founding member and Board Member and former Chair Maureen Mann passed away in September. The Forum  was Maureen’s brainchild and she committed herself with considerable passion to bringing the paper to fruition, serving in any and all roles without hesitation. She was a dogged reporter and a fierce advocate to many people and for many causes. Maureen was active with The Forum until her final days and was integral in the board’s discussions and decision to bring it to a close.

In August we also lost Board Member Lucy Edwards of Northwood. Lucy covered a wide assortment of Northwood happenings from the earliest days of the paper and served as Board Chair at times during the past 18 years.

And so we say a huge thank you to the many members who’ve supported the paper through the years. And a thank you to all community members who helped create and shape The Forum by contributing to it. And finally, thank you to the thousands of people who’ve regularly read our print and weekly online editions over the years.

While we recognize times are different, we can all be proud of the ways we as a community have come together to better appreciate that, as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once said "All politics is local.” We believe his statement applies to all things cultural and environmental as well.

While we will not be updating material on the The Forum pages after October 14th the site will remain live for an as of yet undetermined period of time while the board evaluates different archiving possibilities.

We hope everyone has enjoyed this hyperlocal foray into journalism as much as we all have.