We interrupt our somewhat-regularly-scheduled feature, News You Should View, to bring you some sad tidings on the local journalism front. As related in the above headline, the nonprofit Brandon Reporter has announced it will cease publication in early October. Ironically, its self-proclaimed last gasp will take place the day before the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News begins its first national conference on university-led efforts to foster and support local journalism.

A bit too late for The Reporter, as it turns out. Although really, the conference is aimed at a much higher level and, even if The Reporter still existed on October 2, would have had little relevance to the struggles of a small, local journalistic nonprofit. But more on that in a moment.

As described in Steven Jupiter’s story, The Reporter had been owned by The Addison Independent, but in 2022 it was sold (or given, it’s unclear) to a group of Brandon residents determined to reinvent The Reporter as a nonprofit. They did their level best, but have now decided to call a halt. Jupiter and his colleagues are painfully aware that, absent a local newspaper, the Brandon area will become a news desert — a place where there is effectively no real coverage of local events. So they’ve thrown a bit of a Hail Mary, hoping that The Reporter might continue in some form.

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