Big Loss for East Greenwich: McNamara Puts Website on Hiatus

A website that covered East Greenwich in great detail for more than a year, East Greenwich News, is on hiatus.

Owner and reporter Elizabeth McNamara said in a April 19 post on the site that after some soul searching, she has decided to stop updating the site after she was unable “to make EG News a financial success.”

McNamara, the former editor of East Greenwich Patch before AOL spun the company off to the turnaround firm Hale Global, was laid off along with dozens of her colleagues last year as Patch entered a rebuilding phase.

It didn’t take long for McNamara to bounce back from the layoff and launch the site. And it took even less time for members of the East Greenwich community to rely on the site for news about the town.

“I believe in local news websites. I believe in a website’s ability to provide timely, relevant, engaging news and information about a community. I just haven’t been able to crack the code to make it doable. It’s crackable. Just not be me, right now,” McNamara wrote.

The demise of East Greenwich News, for now, is a reflection of the difficulty in making local news a profitable business on a small scale. It is not a reflection of the talent, drive or ability of McNamara, who earned a reputation at Patch as being one of the best reporters in the state.

That reputation followed her on her venture with East Greenwich News and she delivered high quality and thoughtful reporting day in, day out. Her work combines a mix of careful attention to detail with pleasant and poignant prose that even made reading about municipal budgets enjoyable.

As a former colleague, McNamara is remembered as a consummate professional. As she launched her site, she never had disparaging words for her former coworkers or employer. Her work speaks for itself. Work that East Greenwich has been lucky to have.

Photo: East Greenwich News logo, via East Greenwich News.