About the Ledger

The Alden Ledger was founded in 1962 by a group of Port Alden dockworkers and a printer who thought the city needed a paper that covered the harbor as closely as it covered City Hall. It has been printed continuously since, and it has been independent since a 1978 buyout kept it out of the hands of the regional chain that owns most papers on this coast.

The newsroom has fourteen full-time reporters and editors, split across City Hall, the harbor and port, business, science and the environment, culture, and the podcast desk. We do not have a wire service subscription; if it is not in this paper, one of our own reporters wrote it.

The Ledger is owned by a nonprofit trust set up by the original staff in 1978. The trust has one rule: no single owner, family, or company can hold a controlling stake. Ad revenue and reader subscriptions fund the newsroom; neither the city nor the port authority buys advertising here.

We correct our mistakes in print and online, and we say so plainly. The corrections policy is on this site. If you think we got something wrong, write to the editor named on the story.

Most of the paper is free to read. Some reporting, mainly the long investigative pieces, is for subscribers only, because it takes weeks or months of a reporter's time to produce and someone has to pay for that time. A subscription costs less than a cup of coffee a week.