Cape Cod Wave
Cape Cod Wave is an online magazine based in Falmouth, Massachusetts, publishing long-form journalism and features about the character and culture of Cape Cod. Launched on May 16, 2013, by journalists Laura M. Reckford and Brian Tarcy, it covers the people, music, art, science, environment and everyday life of the Cape's fifteen towns, from the bridges to Provincetown, in long-form stories, slices of life, scenic slide shows and music videos of local bands playing original music. It publishes at capecodwave.com and describes itself not as a news magazine, but as a magazine about Cape Cod.
Founding
Cape Cod Wave launched on May 16, 2013, with a story about a sunrise at Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet that opened with the thought that morning in America starts there — a line the founders have returned to at every anniversary since. Reckford and Tarcy explained at the magazine's eighth birthday that they launched because they believed the Cape could benefit from more local journalism, especially as local newspapers, many owned by one national corporation, were cutting staff. Their goal was deep-dive, informative journalism about interesting and important topics that were not being covered elsewhere.
The founders described their ambition as creating, over time, something like a painting built up brushstroke by brushstroke: a cumulative portrait of the beauty, music, art, science, sometimes the politics, and especially the people that make Cape Cod what it is. Both founders were what Cape Cod calls washashores — people who moved to the Cape from elsewhere. Laura arrived in 1994 and Brian in 1982, a status they acknowledge with humour, noting that while they may always be considered newcomers by those born on the Cape, the magazine itself was born there.
Founders
Brian Tarcy is a co-founder of Cape Cod Wave and a longtime journalist who has written for the Boston Globe, Boston magazine and the Cape Cod Times, among other publications. He is the author of the Cape Cod novel You Can't Sell Right Field and the author or co-author of more than a dozen mostly nonfiction books, including works with athletes Cam Neely, Tom Glavine and Joe Theismann, and Almost, an account of chasing a Silicon Valley venture with North Face founder Hap Klopp. He also writes a long-running column connecting weekly events to the fortunes of his favourite football team, the Cleveland Browns.
Laura M. Reckford is the magazine's other co-founder, signing its anniversary and appeal messages jointly with Tarcy as Laura and Brian. Together the two form the magazine's small core staff, writing, photographing and filming across the peninsula. Their bylines and their joint editorials give the magazine a recognisably personal voice, including the self-deprecating description of themselves as a couple of knuckleheads who believe in journalism.
Editorial mission
The magazine's About statement sets out an unhurried philosophy: because it is online, it hopes to post often, but it aims for quality, not quantity. It seeks to engage, surprise and perhaps enlighten readers by talking to the smartest and most interesting people its journalists can find on Cape Cod — on the stated premise that anyone on Cape Cod is smart and interesting. At its tenth anniversary, the founders restated the distinction that defines the publication: Cape Cod Wave is not a news magazine, but a magazine about Cape Cod. It sometimes covers news, but always tries to shine a light on subjects, places and people that deserve it.
That mission produces a characteristic mix: profiles of Cape personalities, investigations of issues such as the affordable housing crisis told through fresh perspectives, science and nature writing, food stories, and reported features that other outlets have not attempted. The founders have noted with satisfaction when other media followed their stories, and equally when stories remained exclusives. A reader's description of the magazine as a Cape Cod equivalent of The New Yorker was quoted by the founders on its third birthday as a compliment they were pleased to accept.
Music coverage
Music became one of the magazine's signature undertakings. The founders have joked that their original goal was simply to see the Incredible Casuals at the Wellfleet Beachcomber and call it work; within two weeks of launch they had posted their first music video, of that band at that venue. The project grew into a sustained effort to travel the Cape documenting local talent, song by original song, from Woods Hole to Provincetown.
Before the pandemic, the magazine filmed local bands in all fifteen Cape towns and built an archive of more than 100 live music videos of Cape bands playing original music, which it celebrated in an essay collecting the videos. The founders credit musicians including Cat Wilson and Chandler Travis with teaching them about original music on the Cape, and the archive stands as one of the magazine's stated contributions: documentation and promotion of a local music culture that commercial media largely ignore. A Falmouth bar's dismissal of local music on social media, and the musicians' pushback, was one of the episodes that deepened that commitment.
Long-form stories and access
Cape Cod Wave's long-form stories are its centrepiece, and its anniversary reflections describe the labour honestly: the stories are large jigsaw puzzles that take a long time to assemble, with never just one way to put them together. Some long-form stories are sold individually or through membership — the site has offered a single long-form story for $3, or membership at $5 per month or $50 per year — while the founders have repeatedly insisted that most stories are meant to be read for free, because journalism expected to be free is a reality they chose to accept rather than hide their work entirely behind a paywall.
The magazine is supported by sponsors, advertisers and reader donations, with a donation button at the top of its pages and periodic appeals in which the founders thank the relatively few readers who donate and ask others to consider it. Sponsored features, such as book recommendations from the Eight Cousins bookstore in Falmouth, appear alongside editorial content.
Range of subjects
Across its years the magazine has written about fishermen, surfers and musicians — admitted weaknesses of its founders — and held long conversations with scientists, teachers, builders, chefs, rangers and protesters. It covered the COVID-19 pandemic from its arrival on the Cape, including an ongoing series of exclusive interviews with a Cape Cod Hospital intensive care nurse describing conditions inside the hospital. It has addressed shark attacks, the enduring lack of affordable housing, winter life on a summer peninsula — summed up in a musician's description of the Cape as like Jamaica four months of the year and like Soviet Russia the rest — and local institutions from herring runs and model boat builders in Woods Hole to pickleball in Wellfleet and the wild turkeys of Falmouth, whose saga in 2016 became one of its best-known stories.
Regular features include the film column Play It Again, Tim, reviewing new releases, music stories organised by town, slide shows of Cape scenery and events such as Election Day across the peninsula, and seasonal essays marking the rhythms of Cape life, from frozen Buzzards Bay in winter to Christmas in Falmouth.
Writing and photography services
Beyond the magazine itself, the founders' journalism is offered as a service: the site advertises writing, photography and video services, reflecting the founders' professional backgrounds and the economics of a small independent magazine whose principals also work as freelance journalists and authors. The magazine's pages likewise carry individual book recommendations from its sponsor, the Eight Cousins bookstore in Falmouth, integrating a local independent business into the magazine's literary coverage rather than treating advertising as separate from its subject matter.
Anniversaries and outlook
The magazine marks its birthday each May 16 with an essay taking stock. At three years, it celebrated being called the New Yorker of Cape Cod. At six, it asked readers, as a birthday gift, to support its competitors by buying a newspaper, arguing that local journalism matters whoever produces it. At eight and nine, it noted how much worse the Cape's media landscape had become since 2013, and catalogued a dramatic period of shark attacks, housing crisis and pandemic. At ten, in 2023, it restated its purpose and asked readers who believe the work matters to donate.
More than a decade after launch, Cape Cod Wave continues from Falmouth as a small, independent, founder-run magazine. Its founders' assessment of their own project is consistent: a different kind of magazine, painting a true picture of Cape Cod story by story, for year-round residents and for everyone whose attachment to the peninsula began with a visit.
