BRANDON — Significant changes are coming to The Reporter in ways that publisher Angelo Lynn hopes will strengthen the newspaper’s ties to the communities it serves. The goal, by the start of Jan. 2023, Lynn said, is to transition the newspaper from a subsidiary of the Addison County Independent into a community-based nonprofit.
“To create a sustainable future for The Reporter the newspaper will have to increasingly rely on the support of its business community through growing advertising dollars, as well as individuals stepping forward to support the newspaper through subscriptions, individual donations and community support in supplying news and leads to advertising dollars,” Lynn said. “All of this is more likely if the paper is in the hands of a strong nonprofit supported by the community than it is under a private corporation.”
Lynn purchased the Brandon Reporter from Roy Newton in 2004. The Reporter grew in popularity and quality over the ensuing years, but like other businesses has had difficulty hiring staff during the pandemic. Housing shortages in Vermont have made it increasingly difficult to hire experienced editors or anyone outside the immediate market area. After editor Lee Kahrs left her job in May 2021, Lynn took on the task of editing and reporting for The Reporter for a year through May 2022. Lynn hired Mat Clouser as editor/reporter in May 2022.
“Mat’s done a great job revitalizing news coverage for these past six months,” Lynn said, “including writing and covering some very difficult stories involving threats to one of the Brandon librarians from an unruly Rutland County mental health patient living in Brandon, as well as the controversial replacement of a selectboard member in Brandon. He’s done those stories and many others, especially his features of area residents and more recent stories about Otters sports teams, with terrific writing and style.
“But being the editor of a newspaper is not for everyone, even when they’re good at it,” Lynn said, announcing that Clouser had recently submitted his resignation for the post with this issue being his last as editor.
“Mat took on a big task and did a great job,” Lynn said, “but ultimately decided it was not what he wanted to do for years to come. The good news is that he elevated The Reporter’s quality and made it ever more important to the community. The challenge now is to maintain that quality during the transition to a nonprofit.”
Lynn noted that the move to a nonprofit was essential in a market as small as the Brandon-Pittsford-Proctor area because business advertising, the main revenue source for the paper, won’t support the paper on its own. Lynn said he had operated the newspaper on a break-even basis for the past two decades largely because it provided a good service to the area communities and, as a sister paper to the Independent, they could share some common stories, advertising sales and services.
The past three to four years, however, have presented more challenges in a challenging time and have prompted the need for a new direction.
NONPROFIT IN THE WORKS
To that end, Lynn began a conversation with Brandon resident Steven Jupiter about six months ago pitching the idea of creating a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and the two have continued pursuing the idea with more vigor over the past several weeks with a goal to make that happen in early 2023.
Jupiter has created the core of a nonprofit board of directors (a minimum of three are required by law), which will be comprised of himself, George Fjeld and Barbara Ebling.
In comments about the nonprofit, Jupiter said the board “intends to add members to represent the varied communities we serve. We intend to feature primarily the writing and photography of community members, as well as staff that we’re able to hire. We intend to develop cultural, civic, and educational programs. In sum, we intend to operate as a true community resource, run by community members, for the communities in which they live.”
Jupiter outlines ways that area communities can help strengthen and sustain The Reporter as well as the risk of seeing the newspaper falter and close if community support is not adequate. As a way to get the community involved, Jupiter, Fjeld, Ebling and Lynn have set a Town Hall style meeting for Dec. 2 at the Otter Valley Union High School at a time to be announced closer to the event. How the newspaper will operate as a nonprofit and how residents can help make it thrive will be among the topics of discussion.
Current plans are for the Addison Independent to continue to support and provide services for the newspaper, even after it becomes a nonprofit, by partnering to provide advertising sales, distribution and mailing, and front office accounts receivable and billing — all of which are services that require dedicated computer programs that are inefficient for a small operation to provide.
Between now and the end of the year, Lynn will resume editing the paper and will help Jupiter and others learn the tools of the trade to produce a quality newspaper of their own.
“It’s an exciting time for The Reporter,” said Lynn, who recently stepped down as president of the New England Newspaper Press Association that serves over 350 New England newspapers. “Community-based nonprofit newspapers are springing up all across the country to replace lost papers or to bolster ones that are seeking new revenue models. It’s no secret that we’re in a disrupted industry and we need to rethink how we build and sustain a reliable revenue model for small town community newspapers.
“What we know,” Lynn said, “is that communities have shown a strong desire to keep their local papers and support them. That’s 90% of the battle. Now we just have to tap into that support and develop a newspaper that serves the community better than ever.”
