Coastal Point

About Coastal Point

In the beach towns of southeastern Delaware, where the Atlantic meets a string of quiet resort communities, a locally owned weekly newspaper has been telling the story of its neighbors for more than two decades. Coastal Point, published each Friday from Ocean View, Delaware, was founded in 2003 by a group of local newspaper veterans and investors who set out to provide, in their words, a true voice and information source for the Delaware beach community. Independent, locally focused and still publishing in both newsprint and online, the paper has grown from a startup into an award-winning fixture of Sussex County's civic life.

History and Founding

Coastal Point was founded in 2003 in Ocean View, Delaware, by a group of local newspaper veterans and investors. The founders' aim was straightforward: to create a genuinely local paper for the beach communities of southeastern Sussex County, an area whose year-round residents and seasonal visitors alike depended on news that larger regional outlets did not cover in depth. The first edition was published on February 2, 2004, and the paper has published every Friday since, building a run of more than two decades of continuous weekly publication.

The paper marked its 20th anniversary in February 2024, an occasion noted by Delmarva Public Media, whose news director Don Rush interviewed executive editor and co-founder Darin McCann about what it had been like to build a local paper over twenty years. For an independently launched community weekly — a category of newspaper that has faced brutal economic headwinds nationwide — reaching a twentieth anniversary as an ongoing concern is itself a significant achievement, reflecting both the loyalty of its readership and the durability of its local ownership.

Coverage Area and Readership

Coastal Point is distributed across eight communities in southeastern Sussex County: Bethany Beach, South Bethany, Fenwick Island, Ocean View, Millville, Dagsboro, Frankford and Selbyville. This is the heart of what Delawareans call the "Quiet Resorts" — the string of beach towns south of the busier Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach corridor, known for family-oriented vacations, residential neighborhoods and a slower pace than the state's northern resort centers.

The paper's audience is a distinctive blend: year-round residents who live and work in the coastal towns, second-home owners who treat the area as a home away from home, and the seasonal visitors who swell the population each summer. Coastal Point describes its mission as in-depth, locally focused coverage of the events, information and experiences that matter to all of them — town council decisions and land-use debates, school news, community events, environmental issues affecting the bays and beaches, and the rhythms of a resort economy. Sussex County has been one of the fastest-growing counties on the Delmarva Peninsula, and the paper's coverage area sits at the center of the region's most intense development pressures.

Ownership and Organization

Coastal Point is an independent newspaper, founded and still operated by local investors and newspaper veterans rather than a regional chain or corporate owner. Its offices are located at 111 Atlantic Avenue, Suite 2, in Ocean View, Delaware — a few blocks from the town's main commercial corridor and minutes from the beaches it covers. That local ownership structure is central to the paper's identity: in an era when hundreds of American weeklies have been absorbed by chains or closed outright, Coastal Point remains a Delaware-owned, Delaware-operated publication.

The paper's leadership has been stable since its founding. Executive editor Darin McCann has been with the paper since November 2003, serving as both a co-founder and the newsroom's editorial leader for the entirety of its run. McCann is a Maryland native and lifelong Baltimore sports fan who served in the United States Marine Corps and attended Temple University. In addition to his work at Coastal Point, he has served as executive editor of Delaware Seaside Bride magazine, and he writes about Baltimore Ravens football for the Russell Street Report. His tenure — more than two decades at the helm of the same paper — is unusual in contemporary community journalism and has given the publication a consistent editorial voice.

Newsroom and Editorial Approach

Coastal Point's newsroom is small, as befits a weekly, but it has invested in dedicated beats that reflect its community's concerns. The paper employs an environmental reporter, Mike Smith, a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists who came to the paper after a 40-year career in public relations and public policy, primarily in Washington, D.C. Smith serves on the board of governors of the National Press Club in Washington and on its Press Freedom committee, and he is also on the board of the Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, as well as the boards of the Quiet Resorts Charitable Foundation and the Bethany Beach Chamber of Commerce.

The presence of a dedicated environmental reporter at a weekly paper of this size is a statement of editorial priorities: the health of the Inland Bays, the beaches and the coastal environment is inseparable from the economic and civic life of the coverage area. The paper's editorial approach emphasizes in-depth local reporting over wire-service filler, with reporters embedded in the community they cover. Coastal Point reporter Maria Counts, for example, has been a regular presence at the public events of the Ocean View Historical Society, writing pre- and post-event articles and photographs that document the town's civic life — the kind of granular community coverage that defines a successful weekly.

Print and Digital Presence

Coastal Point publishes in both newsprint and online, with the print edition appearing each Friday and the website, coastalpoint.com, carrying news, archives and reader services. The paper maintains an active opinion section, including letters to the editor — Delaware civic guides list the paper's letters policy with a 500-word limit and an online submission form, reflecting an opinion page that remains a lively forum for community debate.

The paper's digital presence extends to social media and email alerts, and its content is indexed by news aggregators that republish its headlines. The combination of a weekly print rhythm and a continuously updated website allows the paper to serve both its traditional print subscribers — many of them longtime residents — and newer, digitally native readers. The paper's offices are open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and it can be reached at its Ocean View headquarters.

Notable Coverage and Investigations

Coastal Point's environmental reporting has been one of its distinguishing features. Environmental reporter Mike Smith's work for the paper has included coverage of Earthjustice's demands for the preservation of female horseshoe crabs, a planned protest over a biogas plant in Seaford, Delaware's low marks for air quality, the announcement of $15.8 million in watershed funding, the growth of the oyster industry in Rehoboth Bay, and conservation groups' demands for transparency on a horseshoe crab proposal. Together, these stories map the central environmental tensions of coastal Delaware: the balance between development and conservation, the health of the bays that sustain both ecology and economy, and the accountability of the agencies that manage them.

Beyond the environment, the paper's bread and butter is the unglamorous but essential work of local journalism: town council meetings, planning and zoning decisions, school board actions, public safety, and the community events — from historical society programs to church fundraisers to storm-preparedness seminars — that make up the civic fabric of the beach towns. In a region where development decisions can reshape a town's character in a single vote, the paper's meeting coverage serves as the primary record for residents who cannot attend in person.

Community Role and Impact

As the only newspaper dedicated specifically to the Quiet Resorts communities, Coastal Point occupies a civic role that no regional daily or television station can replicate. Its reporters are fixtures at municipal meetings, school events and nonprofit fundraisers across its eight-town footprint. The Ocean View Historical Society has publicly thanked the paper — and reporter Maria Counts in particular — for attending nearly every public event the society has offered and for writing generous pre- and post-event coverage, a relationship that illustrates how a community weekly functions as both chronicler and participant in local civic life.

The paper also serves as a connector between the area's year-round and seasonal populations. For second-home owners and summer visitors, the weekly edition and the website offer a way to stay connected to the community even when they are elsewhere; for year-round residents, it is the authoritative source on the decisions — about growth, infrastructure, beaches and bays — that shape their daily lives. The letters page, with its 500-word limit, gives residents a direct channel to debate those decisions in public.

Awards and Recognition

Coastal Point's journalism has earned recognition from its press association peers. According to the professional profile of executive editor Darin McCann, the paper was named News Organization of the Year twice in the previous four years by the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association, the regional press association serving Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia. For an independent weekly competing against larger dailies and better-resourced newsrooms, repeated recognition as the region's top news organization is a significant professional achievement and a validation of the paper's investment in original local reporting.

Recent Developments

The paper's 20th anniversary in February 2024 was both a celebration and a statement of intent. In his interview with Delmarva Public Media, co-founder and executive editor Darin McCann reflected on two decades of building a local paper — the challenges of launching an independent weekly in the early 2000s, the economic pressures that have shuttered hundreds of similar papers nationwide, and the editorial choices that kept Coastal Point rooted in its community. The anniversary coverage underscored a paper that has not merely survived but earned peer recognition for the quality of its journalism.

Looking ahead, Coastal Point faces the same questions confronting every community newspaper: how to sustain print while growing digital, how to cover a rapidly developing region with a small staff, and how to remain financially independent in a difficult advertising market. Its answers so far — local ownership, a stable editorial leader, investment in beats like the environment that matter most to its readers, and deep embedding in the civic life of eight beach towns — have carried it through twenty years. For the residents of Bethany Beach, Ocean View, Fenwick Island and their neighboring towns, the Friday paper remains what its founders intended: a true voice and information source for the Delaware beach community.