Outlet profile

Island Free Press

U.S. local/community independent

Owned byPrivately owned by Donna Barnett, co-founder and sole owner since co-founder Irene Nolan died in 2017

FundingMix of local advertising, free and paid premium subscriptions, and voluntary reader contributions

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

Island Free Press launched on September 5, 2007, making it the first online-only newspaper to serve the southern Outer Banks — specifically Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands in North Carolina. It was co-founded by Irene Nolan, who had previously spent 16 years editing The Island Breeze (a monthly print publication), and Donna Barnett, who had worked as the Breeze's graphic designer for a decade. Nolan brought significant journalism credentials to the outlet: she had been managing editor at The Courier-Journal in Kentucky, where staff won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of a church bus crash, and the Island Free Press's photographer Don Bowers received a Pulitzer nomination in 2012 for feature photography. Nolan died on March 3, 2017, after a brief illness; Barnett continued the publication as sole owner. By 2016, the site was drawing more than 1.5 million visits per year, and since 2019 it has won more than 53 North Carolina Press Association awards. The outlet covers local governance, coastal erosion, Cape Hatteras National Seashore policy, hurricane preparedness, and community affairs. Its reporting on Trump administration actions — including DOGE-related staffing cuts at Outer Banks national parks and federal land-acquisition policy changes affecting coastal communities — is framed around local impact rather than national ideology, consistent with its community-journalism mission.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-07-18; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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