Introducing the North Fork Sun

Dear Readers,

Thanks for your support of my Substack account. I appreciate you subscribing. Now I’m going to shut my Substack down and ask you to subscribe to my new platform.

It’s with great pride — and no small amount of excitement — that I introduce you to the North Fork Sun, a new independent news outlet dedicated to serving Long Island’s North Fork.

This place we call home is as complex as it is beautiful. For every sunrise over the Sound or stroll through a vineyard, there are local stories and debates unfolding that deserve to be told with honesty, depth and care. That’s where we come in.

Our mission at the North Fork Sun is twofold:

First, to bring you factual, fair and thoughtfully-reported journalism on the issues that matter most to our communities. We aim to provide context, not just content, and to serve as a reliable and dispassionate source of facts and clarity in a noisy world.

Second, we want to celebrate the North Fork. Through our ‘A Closer Look‘ profiles, feature stories, guest essays, drone videos and photo spreads, we’ll spotlight the people, places and traditions that make this stretch of Long Island not just a destination, but a home that we all cherish and want to protect and preserve.

Whether you’re a lifelong local, a recent transplant or a weekend wanderer, the North Fork Sun is here for you — curious, independent, open-minded and always ready to listen.

I’m a veteran journalist with more than three decades in the news business, mostly working for national news outlets in New York City. I got my start in the early 1990s at the Southampton Press West, back when the great Michael Pitcher ran the paper and it was still called the Hampton Chronicle.

Michael used to tell my friend Tim Motz and me that “the only real journalism is local journalism, because you run into the people you write about in the deli in the morning.” I’ve never forgotten that. Tim hasn’t either.

This new enterprise is just getting started. Like any start-up, our new outlet is a work in progress, and will evolve as we grow.

We intend to move to a modest subscription model in the coming months and explore advertising opportunities. But first, we want to give our readers the chance to evaluate our work for free. If we earn your trust, please sign on for a subscription when the time comes.

Please email your letters to the editor to letters@northforksun.com and your event listings to events@northforksun.com.

You can reach me directly at chris@northforksun.com.

Thank you for reading, sign up for our newsletter, bookmark the North Fork Sun in your web browser and visit us regularly! Many thanks for your support.

Sincerely,

Chris Francescani

North Fork Sun Publisher