A Letter From the Publishers

To the Swarthmore community and our Swarthmorean subscribers:

We are saddened that a conversation we had with our editor about the paper’s editorial balance is being misinterpreted as an effort to limit coverage of matters of social justice. Our Editor Rachel and our Associate Editor Satya have chosen to resign. We have counted ourselves among their biggest fans throughout their tenure and are grateful for their efforts to help make the paper what it is today. 

Our paper has embraced important conversations about race, injustice, politics, education, the environment, and other topics, and it will continue to do so. We didn’t purposefully choose to pursue this path only to abandon it, and we strongly disagree with any assertions to the contrary. We have reached out to Rachel and Satya personally to rectify any misunderstanding regarding this issue. 

Over the past two years, we have worked hard to revitalize the Swarthmorean by providing more relevant, meaningful, and timely content. Our readers have appreciated the changes we have made. We are proud of our staff and the bold direction in which the paper's content has taken since we became publishers.

Carrying this progress forward, we will continue to serve as a forum for all that is happening in our community and highlight the perspectives of all of our residents. Each of us is personally involved with causes that help our community and neighbors, including social justice, inclusivity, and the protection of the natural world. The content in our pages is a reflection of our core values and, we believe, those of our community.

We will continue to devote time and energy to sustaining the Swarthmorean because we believe it is part of what sustains our community and fosters inclusivity. Nurturing a community newspaper is a different mission from building a following on social media. We consider the Swarthmorean to be a public service project, and we are honored to play a role in its 128 year history. In a time when local print journalism is experiencing an existential threat from social media, we’re grateful to be able to keep publishing the newspaper. We are humbled by the responsibility that entails to carry forward the tradition of small town reporting and also to embrace major systemic and global issues head-on. That work would be impossible without the support we receive from our subscribers and members of our community. 

We thank Rachel and Satya for their leadership and contributions, and will continue our quest to publish a newspaper we can all be proud of. 

Rob Borgstrom
Greg Hoy
Todd Strine
Co-publishers