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The Marblehead Independent, the town’s reader-powered online newspaper, has added three contributors to its newsroom as it approaches its first full anniversary on Sept. 15.
The new members are concert photographer Steven “Stevo” Rood, reporter Marc Grazado and business adviser Joanna Shellenberger. They join a growing masthead that includes reporter Chris Stevens, contributing photographer Paula Muller, photographer and columnist Katie Ring, garden columnist Colleen Connor, Beneath the Blue columnist Ryan Park, Computers 101 columnist Theresa Milewski and founder and editor Will Dowd. The additions mark the paper’s growth from a one-person operation into a small but expanding newsroom in its first year.
Many readers will have noticed Rood’s work in the frame-by-frame series that ran during Fourth of July weekend, which captured the model sloops, the horns at Crocker Park and the harbor illumination going up in a ring of red fire. His photography this summer also documented the return of the Gerry No. 5 handtub to Redd’s Pond, where the 1845 Hunneman pumper sprayed water in public for the first time in eight years.
Rood has been a professional concert photographer for more than 40 years. His interest began at Glover School in the 1970s and continued through the town’s junior high and high school newspapers and yearbooks before he spent 38 years in Los Angeles working in film and real estate and photographing concerts. He has shot local artists including the Nervous Eaters, the Fools, Barrence Whitfield and the Dogmatics, along with international acts including the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Phish and the Grateful Dead. He has worked for Live Nation and Goldenvoice, and his images have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Variety, Relix, Forbes, Los Angeles magazine and People. His work hangs in the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas. Rood recently returned to Marblehead to assist his parents.
Grazado joins as a general assignment reporter. He got his start at the Marblehead Current as a reporting intern in the spring of 2025, while still a senior at Marblehead High School. Now a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying communication and media studies, he will cover the town year-round and take on a fuller load between breaks. A Marblehead kid from a Marblehead family, Grazado knows the town he covers.
Shellenberger joins as business adviser. She brings more than 25 years of experience across financial services and fundraising operations, with past employers including Harvard University, Salem State University, Longwood Collective and Vanderweil Engineers. At the Independent she works outside the newsroom, with no role in coverage decisions; her first project, underway since June, is a financial and operational assessment of the paper. She lives in Berwick, Maine.
The additions come alongside a new column from Ring, who has documented the town’s arts and civic life for the paper for several months. “Marblehead Morsels,” which debuted in July, pairs her photography with first-person reporting from the table. Its first installment followed the soft opening of Le Petit Comptoir, a wine bar at 118 Washington St.
The Marblehead Independent will mark its first anniversary Sept. 15.
Readers are invited to be part of the newsroom. The Independent welcomes letters, tips, announcements, essays and questions about the town’s government, neighborhoods and culture; details on how to contribute are at marbleheadindependent.com/submissions.
Readers can also follow the paper’s reporting by signing up for the free weekly newsletter. To sustain the work, the newsroom aims to reach 175 recurring contributors by summer’s end; 122 readers are already signed up. Memberships start at $10 a month, with 95 cents of every dollar going directly into local reporting — visit marbleheadindependent.com/ways-to-support to sign up.
About The Marblehead Independent
The Marblehead Independent publishes independent, daily reporting for 01945, built on intention, context, clarity and care. Founded on the idea that local news should be steady, present and rooted in the community it serves, the newsroom focuses on helping neighbors understand their government, their schools, their history and the place they call home. Every story is free to read, and the paper carries no corporate owners, no national ad networks and no paywall. The paper is open to all and funded by many, sustained by members, its Founders’ Circle and local sponsors.
For more information, visit marbleheadindependent.com.
