Editorial Mission

It is the stated mission of the South Shore Press to offer the broadest scope of political, community, and economic information available to the public we serve. We will expose hypocrisy and corruption, and provide analysis uninhibited by political constraint.

We intend to do this by employing staff reporters, engaging freelancers across a wide spectrum of subjects and geographies, and allowing individuals to publish under our banner using pseudonyms. In doing so, we believe we can most effectively accomplish the mission of the South Shore Press while living within the confines of a budget appropriate for a local newspaper. It is our stated intention to reinvest all revenue into the editorial process, thereby creating a flywheel of growing distribution and deeper, broader coverage, leading to further distribution, and so on…

On the subject of pseudonyms

Readers will notice that we publish under three pseudonyms: Howard Roark, Gail Wynand, and Henry Cameron. All of these are characters from Ayn Rand’s classic novel The Fountainhead, which we believe exemplifies, in many respects, the ideals we hold dear at the South Shore Press.

It is our view that anonymity, particularly in our modern society, is “a shield from the tyranny of the majority.” It protects unpopular opinions from retaliation — and ideas from suppression — at the hand of an intolerant society. Providing the cover of anonymity offers the South Shore Press access to certain individuals, particularly in the fields of politics and finance, who might not otherwise be willing to share their views publicly.

There is vast precedent for the use of pseudonyms in American history, from Mark Twain to Alexander Hamilton, and the courts have also weighed in on the important place this practice holds. Most recently:

“The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.”

This practice is often criticized, most typically by the same mainstream “media” and political establishment that stifles free speech through concocted narratives without any allowance for dissent, but we believe in the critical importance of anonymity and its role in countering these very people.

The South Shore Press will work diligently to accomplish our editorial objective by engaging the best sources available to us, and present the world to our audience in a form that emphasizes truth above all else.