About The Modern Yankee

What this is

The Modern Yankee is a New England digital magazine. Recipes, weekend trips, the outdoors, heritage, and the makers who still build things the right way. Five departments. One editor. Posts you can actually use.

Who’s writing

I’m Bill (JW) Raymond. I grew up north of Boston, on the kind of family routine that makes leaf-peeping a known weekend, the Wentworth a known hotel, and Joe Froggers a known cookie. My grandfather taught me most of what I know about cooking, and most of what I think I know about New England started in the back seat of a station wagon on a Sunday afternoon.

By trade I’m a Geospatial Systems Engineer — Cartography and GIS out of Salem State, a decade-plus working with government and commercial clients in Boston and DC. The day job means I read maps for a living, which turns out to be useful when you write about places.

I started writing about New England in 2015 as a side project. The Wall Street Journal picked up one of those early posts, the one about taking a workation at Walt Disney World, which made it clear there was an audience for the things I cared about written the way I’d want to read them. The blog went quiet for a while. I’m bringing it back, properly this time, as the magazine I wished existed when I was looking for it.

Who it’s for

If your parents read Yankee Magazine on the coffee table and you didn’t, but the recipes and the cottage and the Sunday drives still mean something to you — this is the publication for you. It’s for the generation carrying New England forward. Not the parents. The kids of the parents.

How it gets made

Every post on The Modern Yankee is written or edited by me, with a small AI editorial system handling drafts, fact-checking, and the kind of busywork that used to require a junior editor on staff. The voice, the opinions, and the final polish are mine. The standard is: every piece reads as written by a New Englander who lived the subject. If a piece doesn’t clear that bar, it doesn’t ship.

Get in touch

Newsletter goes out weekly. The best new piece, the next weekend trip worth taking, and one good thing made in New England. Sign up here or reach me at hello@themodernyankee.com.