They say daily journalism is history’s first draft. The idea is that impact and context often take time to emerge, and so truly understanding what happened isn’t possible in the moment.
So what draft of our coastal and island history is contained in Island Journal, Island Institute’s annual publication, whose first edition was published in 1984?
A few years ago, I received an email from Robin Alden, co-founder of what is now the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries in Stonington and a former commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources (and founding publisher of Commercial Fisheries News. She was looking for a story she remembered from a long-ago edition of Island Journal.
I think we then spoke by phone and when I told her we didn’t have most of the Journals in digital form, she gently scolded me, noting that the publication contained important history about our communities and should be more accessible.
She was right. And that prodded me to action, however slowly.
We hired a young woman I know, Danielle Weaver—a part-time fisherperson, from a fishing family on the St. George peninsula—to take each page of every Island Journal, from the first edition in 1984 through the early 2000s when the content began to appear online, and scan them at our office.
Our Jack Sullivan, whose photos and stories began appearing in the Journal in recent years, took over integrating those scanned pages with our website.
It was a slow, arduous process, but all those stories and photos are now saved as PDFs and available to view on our website: islandinstitute.org/stories/island-journal/.
When I arrived at the Institute 12 years ago, I was excited about having my writing appear in of the Journal. What a privilege, to have my work presented in such an esteemed publication, accompanied by such beautiful photography.
Going back farther, I remember, as editor of the weekly newspaper in Belfast in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Island Journal would appear in the mail each year and I rather selfishly took it home before anyone else could spy it. Many a Saturday morning, I’d sit with a cup of coffee and immerse myself in these offshore worlds.
And those stories did transport me to what was, especially then, a different world. Peter Ralston’s photos rendered a spare, sometimes monochromatic scene that matched the struggles of an endangered way of life explained in the text.
Rob Snyder, a former Institute president, would say Island Journal aimed to capture island life and culture. Culture, he would explain, was not what artists and writers were up to (though it’s included in the publication), but, having an anthropological background, he meant the Journal was immersed in what made island life different from that on the mainland.
Ideally, you should be able to pick up an Island Journal from 15 years ago and find something interesting to read. Early in my tenure editing the magazine, I leaned too heavily on stories that were newsier, and I heard from some readers that this was not their preference. I hope in recent years that timeless standard is being met.
On the 20th anniversary of the publication, the editors noted that Island Journal had shaped the organization. It was a daring venture, they admitted, with half the Institute’s annual budget devoted to the first edition.
“Island Journal … would be a meeting place for ideas, a forum for discussions, a venue for poetry and literature, a showcase for photography and the visual arts,” they wrote. It would represent “a new way of thinking about the isolated communities that stretch along the Maine coast” by telling their stories.
Click the “View and Download” option for an individual issue. But a warning: it’s very easy to begin reading and then look up to realize an hour or more has disappeared.
Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront and Island Journal. He may be contacted at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.
