BRATTLEBORO — Most other newspapers, when they take the time to celebrate a centennial, do so when they hit a 100-year anniversary.
Perhaps it seems frivolous or premature for The Commons to recognize the mark of not 100 years, but 100 issues, as a legitimate milestone, especially when a few shy of half of those issues were published within the past year.
But when you consider the grassroots origins of this newspaper, the economy, and the sheer uncertainty of all sorts of media in a time of fragmented attention spans and an almost infinite array of ways to get the news, we do have something to celebrate.
And that's not the “we” as in the editorial “we.”
It's “we” as in “all of us.”
It's “we” as in those of us who move heaven and earth to create this newspaper week after week. It's “we” as in the cadre of undercompensated reporters and writers. It's “we” as in our dedicated band of citizen media aficionados who saw the need for an independent voice for Windham County and who made it happen through sheer force of will. (More on that presently.)
Most importantly, it's “we” as in you - our readers, our newsmakers, our contributors, and, increasingly, our members. It's “we” as in you - the early adopters who have made Vermont Independent Media possible. It's “we” as in you - the hundreds of people over the past six years who have participated in our Media Mentoring Project workshops.
It's all of us who have touched this newspaper, and those who have been touched by it.
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The Commons has that connection to community deep in its institutional DNA.
In 2004, staffing changes at the Brattleboro Reformer shook something loose. For a significant number of readers, the dismissal of an editor made them ask some tough questions.
What role can and should a newspaper play in the community?
What is the responsibility of a newspaper to a community?
How does a newspaper and its leadership affect a community, for better and for worse?
How can a community have a stake in its newspaper?
And if we don't create a newspaper that will reflect these values, who will?
Strictly speaking, a newspaper has no obligation to answer to the community in the way these readers demanded.
But to that original group of activist-readers, the issue transcended employment law technicalities. The questions they started to ponder convinced them that a good newspaper is too precious a resource to be a mere commodity. They asked themselves whether a newspaper could be considered so important, and so precious, as to be a public good.
And they challenged themselves to come up with a better way.
So, starting in the spring of 2004, around one disaffected daily news columnist's kitchen table, these committed readers began to meet.
Every week, they talked. They argued. They got to know one another. They went down multiple paths, sometimes at the same time.
They had, I'm sure, multiple false starts. But they kept going. They attacked each problem with their collective wisdom, and knowledge, and professional contacts.
They looked at whether to buy existing newspapers or start from scratch. (There's nothing on file that reflects whether any publications were actually for sale, but that likely wouldn't have stopped the ideological discussions.)
And slowly, a vision took shape, not only for a different newspaper, but also for a different kind of newspaper - one that existed not to make money for its shareholders, but to offer its readers news and food for thought as its dividends.
In 2005, after months of reflection and planning, Vermont Independent Media (VIM) took shape and applied for status with the Internal Revenue Service as a charitable nonprofit organization. That September, the first Media Mentoring Project classes started - a novel component of the plan to help give citizens the skills to create their own professional-quality newspaper content.
By January 2006, the first monthly issue of what then was the Brattleboro Commons emerged. The minutes from the VIM board meeting from Jan. 30, 2006 described that issue as “the concrete reality of a sometimes difficult-to-articulate dream.”
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A group of very politically driven activists started this newspaper, intending from the very beginning to create a neutral community undertaking. Call this truth ironic, call it baffling, call it contradictory, but nobody else could have done it.
After all, it takes activists to pull off something as audacious as creating a newspaper out of thin air.
In this case, it took an activist's tenacity, focus, spirit, and drive - along with a hell of a lot of love, and commitment, and strength, as well as a healthy dose of entrepreneurial spirit - from people, mostly volunteers, who gave enough of a damn to put in thousands of hours doing everything from reporting, to writing, to teaching themselves how to use computer software that it takes professionals years to master.
This paper's vision from the very beginning has been to create a newspaper that all readers can feel proud to call their own.
A good paper always reflects a sense of place and time, and Windham County has a decidedly left-of-center slant to its politics. But we also live or work in a county where 25 percent of voters cast a ballot for John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008. A good newspaper also acknowledges the whole of its readership, and by design, we intend to be here and be relevant to everyone.
A good paper acknowledges and embraces our differences, and tries to find and encourage common ground. It doesn't mean we won't have our own opinions - that's what a feisty editorial page and Voices section is for, and we want to express these opinions unapologetically, with integrity, and with candor.
But we want our opinion not to be the last word, but the first: we genuinely welcome a discussion and a dialogue on our pages from readers who want to engage the issues and create what can and should be a community forum that can resonate and endure.
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A few times over the past few years, I have found that an expansive and accommodating attitude toward our readers has driven a few readers crazy, particularly around the issue of Entergy and Vermont Yankee.
Despite the newspaper's founders' close ties with the antinuclear movement, I've been accused personally of accepting money from Entergy, of acting as a corporate shill, and of having an inappropriate conflict of interest because, as a freelance book producer, I designed a local history book written by an Entergy spokesman's mother, years before I even took this job.
Sore nerve, anyone?
To me, I can't think of a better illustration of the promise of - and the need for - a good community newspaper than the Vermont Yankee saga.
There is really no common ground on this issue. I doubt it's possible that we could write an editorial that would change someone's mind about nuclear power. I doubt anyone's letter, pro or con, would convince someone on the other side to reconsider.
I've grown up and lived in small towns where you have to work on civic projects and on town boards with people you don't agree with or maybe even like.
That necessity engenders an attitude of common sense, of civility, and of personal integrity. But here, with few exceptions, I've all too often heard people from each side speak bitterly, derisively, and dismissively of people who disagree with their respective positions about nuclear power.
The tension over this nuclear power plant for the past 40 years - from its concept, to its construction, to its sale to Entergy, to the uprate, to the endless federal and state hearings, to the tritium fiasco, to the Senate vote, and now to the company's federal lawsuit - has served to polarize a community exhausted with the issue.
The real value of what we're doing at The Commons comes not from changing people's minds, but from treating the whole of our readership with respect, as thinking human beings, whose perspective is welcome in our pages.
Over and over, in the minutes of the countless meetings of VIM's board of directors in the days before ink hit paper, the phrase “have a voice” shows up, over and over. The quality of a good newspaper that gives it its heart and soul its ability to offer its readers that voice.
And maybe sometimes that's just enough.
Maybe if we can all feel we have a place for our individual and collective voices to be heard, we can agree to disagree, or at least disagree more agreeably. The very presence of multiple points of view can collectively say a huge amount about the multiple truths of a large, messy, sprawling, overwhelming issue.
With the changes that will likely come to our area in 2012 - or the legal consequences of resistance to those same changes - Windham County will have to pull together as it never has, for the sake of its economy as well as its community.
The first part of the task at hand is simple: beginning to talk with one another, not at. Beginning to listen, not demanding to be heard. Having our voice in order to understand those of others. Being the best people we can be to our neighbors in much the same way that the devastating Brooks House fire has brought an outpouring of community support and in so doing has brought out the best in us.
Over time, our Voices section can become even more inclusive, and can expose our readers to new people and new ideas that both challenge and affirm everyone's presumptions.
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I was flipping through the past couple of issues looking for something the other day, and it struck me just how much about The Commons has changed since I first walked into our tiny office three years ago.
The newspaper we publish now is very different in form and in content from the black-and-white tabloid that first hit the streets on a cold January day in 2006. It's much more colorful, with a broadsheet size and a broader appeal.
For all The Commons has changed, every single underpinning of those first efforts, every value that drove a dedicated handful of newspaper readers to become newspaper publishers, remains in these pages today. These values always will be here.
An editorial in our second issue pointed out that the name of the paper was inspired by “the intrinsic nature of this venture, which is to establish a vehicle for our common cause, to give voice, across the broadest possible spectrum of interests and concerns, to all the citizens of Brattleboro and our surrounding towns.”
The founders of this newspaper envisioned it as “the print equivalent of our town common, a meeting place to exchange diverse views, a weekly gathering in which each of us can discuss the issues that affect our lives.”
The paper is growing in readership, size, scope, and reach, and each week, with your participation, it gets closer to realizing that vision of an engaged and engaging force for good in Windham County, a vehicle that can inform, provoke, inspire, question, enrage, console, and improve.
There is no limit to what we can do - it just takes you to make this paper part of your busy lives.
The more our readership supports our efforts, the more pages we can publish, and the better and more comprehensive our news coverage can become.
The fact is, whether you are a reader, an advertiser, a contributor of writing or photography, or one of our many volunteers (without whom, as we've acknowledged for 100 issues, this newspaper would “live solely in our imaginations”), we cannot create this paper without your help, your enthusiasm, and your participation.
And when you offer that help, enthusiasm, and participation, we can become the newspaper that Windham County needs on every level.
The economics of what we are doing can sometimes terrify us, but more and more people have begun to join VIM as members. Our advertising has blossomed from buy-an-ad-to-help-our-worthy-cause support to bona fide commerce, and it is on the rise. Every reader who loves the paper should be indebted to several major donors and the phalynx of VIM members who have quietly made it possible for us to bring you this paper week after week.
We use the word “improbable” a lot to describe our paper (too often, one board member thinks), but it's absolutely true. And it's no more true than this week, as you hold in your hands this issue, the largest issue of the paper we've produced.
So we pause a moment this week to say thanks to all who have had a hand in this improbable journey. We look back on the success and the struggles of our first 100 issues, and we invite you to feel a sense of pride in what we have accomplished here, because it's your newspaper, too.
And if it isn't yet, it should be.