Tag Archives: Manchester Journal

News You Should View: Manchester Journal FTW

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This week’s crop was looking a little thin until I visited The Manchester Journal’s website and found not one, not two, but three stories worthy of note. One of them was actually published on September 4, and I managed to miss it last time. But it remains relevant, and The Journal has since published a meaningful follow-up.

The Journal is one of three southern Vermont newspapers owned by Paul Belogour, an international financier type who originally hails from Belarus, one of the most corrupt and press-unfriendly dictatorships this side of Kim Jong Un. His 2021 acquisition of The Journal, The Bennington Banner and The Brattleboro Reformer raised many an eyebrow at the time, including mine. So far his stewardship seems to be fairly benign, at least by contemporary oligarchical standards. (Although I doubt that The Reformer will be doing any more overviews of Belogour’s wide-ranging acquisitions like it did before he bought the papers.) And this week, at least, one of his outlets occupies the top spot in Vermont’s incredible shrinking news pantheon.

ICE detainee whisked out of state. The Journal’s Cherise Forbes and Michael Albans were first to report that Davona Williams, the Manchester resident seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, had been secretly moved to the North Lake Processing Center in rural Michigan. This story ought to reverberate in Montpelier’s corridors of power; last spring, when leading lawmakers were looking to limit Vermont’s cooperation slash complicity in the ICE crackdown, the Scott administration successfully argued that people detained in Vermont were better off in Vermont prisons than elsewhere. Huh, turns out that ICE can move people around willy-nilly no matter where they live or where they were first detained. Which puts us back on the “complicity” side of the ledger.

There’s also a fascinating little Vermont connection with the North Lake facility itself, but that’s beyond the remit of this post.

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The Return of News You Should View: Mostly Community News Group Edition

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Apologies for the unannounced two-week absence of this feature. I’ve been out of town a lot lately. Had time to crank out the occasional blog, but not to do a survey of News Content from our state. But, just when you thought it was safe… I’m baaaaaack.

Most of our honorees this week hail from the Vermont Community News Group, which includes several weeklies in Chittenden and Lamoille Counties. Its newspapers routinely punch above their own weight in creating solid content on a shoestring budget.

It can’t happen here. Oh wait, it just did. The good folk of Manchester just discovered that Donald Trump’s unconstitutional ICE crackdown is no respecter of affluence. As the Manchester Journal‘s Michael Albans and Cherise Forbes report, ICE swooped down on a notorious den of iniquity, oh wait, “a small housing development in Manchester” and arrested two unrepentant criminals, oh wait, “Jamaican mothers of school-age children who worked as Home Health aides, as their families looked on.”

Right, a small housing development in frickin’ Manchester, the front line of America’s war on brown people. You know, the thing about the ICE crackdown — well, one of many things about the ICE crackdown — is that they’re not targeting the real criminals or gang members. Those people are too hard to find. ICE is going after people with jobs and responsibilities, people who keep a schedule and have a routine, people who may not have their papers in order but who are assets to our society and our economy.

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News You Should View, Local Hijinks Edition

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This post is a bit later than usual* because it’s taken me a while to get my feet back under me after an exhausting but rewarding trip last week. I attended a conference organized by the Institute for Nonprofit News, one of several organizations dedicated to fostering a new wave of nonprofit journalism.

*I’m only including items published on or before Sunday, June 8 in hopes of returning to my usual schedule with the next installment.

It was intense, and I’m still processing what I learned. But my single biggest takeaway is that there’s an amazing amount of talent, energy and dedication in this relatively brand-new field. People all over the country are creating nonprofit news outlets at local, state, regional, and national levels, and coming up with novel strategies for achieving sustainability. (There are also a lot of organizations and foundations eager to promote and invest in this new, nonprofit model of journalism.) It’s not easy and success is not assured, but I was blown away by the quality of the people involved in this effort. Made me more optimistic about the project.

INN’s membership includes about 500 organizations. More than 400 people gathered in Minneapolis for three days of panel discussions, workshops, and one-on-one meetings with experts. I was there as a board member of the Hardwick Gazette, and I was determined to bring back as much information and as many ideas as possible. That meant taking full advantage of everything I could fit in. Let’s put it this way: I’d never been to Minneapolis before, and I still feel like I haven’t. Almost all my time was spent within a couple blocks of the conference hotel.

Coincidentally enough, this week’s edition of NYSV is heavy on content from Vermont’s own local outlets, many of which are now nonprofit. Some of the stories are about the local repercussions of state policy debates, while others are about the vagaries of small-town politics. These are services that only a grassroots outlet can perform, and Vermont is lucky to have as many small “papers” as we do.

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Some Rich Guy is Buying Up Southeast Vermont

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Until today, I’d never heard of Paul (nee Pavel) Belogour, a native of Belarus who’s made a fortune in international investing and related software. Now, he’s the incoming owner of three newspapers in southern Vermont: the Brattleboro Reformer, Bennington Banner, and Manchester Journal. The big prizes are the Reformer and Banner, the only two daily newspapers south of Rutland.

This is either a really good thing or a really bad thing. When an oligarch swoops in and buys media outlets, it may be out of a true sense of obligation to support journalism. The owner’s deep pockets can counter the effects of the news business’ decline. Or it might just be a matter of collecting trophies and buying influence with little regard to the health of the publications. On the rich-guy scale, this purchase amounts to spare change.

Oh, and his native country is a corrupt dictatorship which ranks… let’s see… 158th on Reporters Without Borders’ ranking of 180 countries. RWB noted that Belarus is “the most dangerous country in Europe for media personnel.” Let’s hope Mr. Belogour doesn’t practice his homeland’s approach to the press.

The Reformer and Banner have been circling the drain for some time. How they’ve survived the pandemic on top of all that, I have no idea. But it’s not surprising that Massachusetts-based New England Newspapers, which bought the papers a few years back with an eye toward enhancing the bare-bones operations, has now decided to sell out.

There is another dimension to this. Belogour has been buying up properties in southeast Vermont at a rapid clip. He’s well on his way to becoming a real economic force in the region. And now he’s going to control the daily newspaper? That’s troubling.

So let’s look at the available Google trail on Mr. Belogour, shall we?

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Southern Vermont: Journalism-free zone?

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A while ago I was chatting with somebody from Seven Days, and I half-jokingly suggested that Vermont’s only financially healthy print publication should think about launching a Southern Vermont Edition. Or at least, including some southern Vermont content within the existing paper. (The Rutland Herald and Times Argus share stories, but what’s front page in one is often on page 5 in the other.)

Well, it might just be go time.

New England Newspapers Inc., has laid off 10 editorial employees in Vermont and Massachusetts.

The company laid off three newsroom staffers at the [Brattleboro] Reformer. Tom D’Errico, the manager of content marketing, Mike Faher, senior reporter, and Pat Smith, the newsroom clerk, were given notice on Friday. On June 12, Michelle Karas, the managing editor of the Reformer and the [Bennington] Banner left earlier to take a job at The Colorado Springs Gazette. The Banner laid off newly hired reporter Jacob Colone, and the [Manchester] Journal let go of Brandon Canevari.

Leaving two papers with “skeleton crews”: three reporters at the Banner and only two at the Reformer, whose coverage of Vermont Yankee has been invaluable to the entire state. And at the Journal, they’re facing a Zen question: what do you call a newspaper with no reporters? That’s right: zero.

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