Brattleboro Reformer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
|---|---|
| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Broadsheet |
|
|
|
| Owner | MediaNews Group |
| Publisher | Martin Langeveld |
| Editor | Sabina Haskell |
| Founded | 19 August 1876 (weekly); 3 March 1913 (daily) |
| Headquarters | Brattleboro, Vermont, U.S. |
|
|
|
| Website: www.reformer.com | |
The Brattleboro Reformer is the third largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Vermont. With a weekday circulation of just over 10,000 [1], it is behind the Burlington Free Press and the Rutland Herald, respectively. It publishes six days a week, Monday through Saturday, with its Weekend Reformer having the largest readership; the offices of the paper are in Brattleboro, Vermont and it has a market penetration (weekday sales per 100 households) of 62.8 in its home zip code.
The newspaper covers all of Windham County, Vermont, as well as some towns in neighboring Cheshire County, New Hampshire.
The Reformer is owned by the Denver-based MediaNews Group, which counts the Denver Post as its flagship. It was bought by the chain in 1995. The Reformer is run by New England Newspapers, a MediaNewsGroup subsidiary that also runs the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Contents |
[edit] History from 19th to mid-20th century
The Reformer has a long history. It published its first issue, under the name Windham County Reformer, in 1876. The publisher Charles N. Davenport, and a prominent lawyer and supporter of the Democratic Party, founded the paper in part due to dissatisfaction with what he saw as a Republican bias in the coverage of the Vermont Phoenix, the main political paper in the state. The presidential campaign at the time, between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden prompted the Vermont Record and Farmer, the third paper in the state, to describe the new paper as dedicated to "Tilden and reform."
While local historians believe that the original conception of the paper was for it to last only for the duration of the 1876 campaign, Davenport's son, Charles H., ran the paper for twenty-five years after which it was passed on to editors unconnected with the Davenport family. The paper went from a weekly to twice-weekly publication schedule in 1897. While the paper had financial troubles for many years, it managed to maintain a continuous publication schedule.
In 1903, it was bought by the Vermont Printing Company, and its new editors turned the paper away from its partisan Democrat emphasis. The Phoenix and Reformer were merged in 1913 under the management of the Brattleboro Publishing Company, with the Phoenix serving as the Reformer's weekly companion and the Reformer going to a daily publication schedule. The Phoenix weekly was discontinued in 1955.
The 1913 merger was considered by some to be the "true" founding date of the paper; according to an article in the 4 March 1925 issue, "Daily Reformer Now 15 Years Old":
- The Brattleboro Daily Reformer celebrated yesterday its 15th anniversary as a daily. As a weekly publication The Reformer dates back to the dim and distant date of 1876, but its debut as a daily – with that word ‘Daily’ in emphatic black-face letter-spaced Gothic type on its first page – came on Monday, March 3, 1913.
Records at the Brooks Memorial Library, the main library of Brattleboro, list the publication history of the paper in 2006 as
- Windham County Reformer, 1876-1897
- Semi-weekly Windham County Reformer, 1897-1901
- Windham County Reformer, 1901-1912,
- Brattleboro Daily Reformer (after merger with Vermont Phoenix), 1913-1955
- Brattleboro Daily Reformer and Vermont Phoenix, 1955-1973
- Brattleboro Reformer, 1973-present
Much of the historical information in this section comes from a special 1981 section of the Reformer, published on the occasion of the paper's moving from downtown Brattleboro to its headquarters on Black Mountain Road.
[edit] The Reformer in the late-20th and 21st centuries
The Reformer was possibly the first newspaper in the United States to run same-sex union announcements in parallel to the usual wedding notices [2], beginning the practice in 1989, well before the state of Vermont legalized civil unions.
In the past the paper has been controversial for running letters to the editor that many have found offensive [3]; in 2003 it ran an anti-semetic letter whose publication the then managing editor Kathryn Casa defended, saying that "only by bringing [bigoted opinions] into the open can we expose and eliminate them."
Residents of Brattleboro founded iBrattleboro, a community news portal, in February 2003 in response to what they saw as gaps in the Reformer's coverage of local and community issues [4].
[edit] Staff and union controversies
The paper was involved in a number of controversies in the years 2003-2004. Many Brattleboro residents protested when the parent company fired managing editor Kathryn Casa without giving a reason in 2004 [5]. Critics asserted that her firing was in part connected to her liberal politics [6]; on the other hand, Casa was accused of intimidating staff into voting against a union drive [7]. Judith Gorman, a columnist for the paper, resigned in protest following Casa's dismissal; about 150 people protested Casa's dismissal outside the Reformer offices on April 25 of that year [8].
Casa was replaced by Kevin Moran, who was recruited from the North Adams Transcript in Massachusetts, which is also owned by MediaNews Group. In November 2005, the Reformer announced that it had hired Sabina Haskell as its new editor [9]. She had previously been assistant editor at the Rutland Herald and had also run the Bennington Banner. Moran moved to work as managing editor at the Berkshire Eagle [10].
There was also protest in the year prior to Casa's dismissal, when reporter Eesha Williams was fired. The newspaper said Williams was let go because of an ethical violation, but Williams disputed the allegation; Williams went on to work as a reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio [11] and the Valley Advocate [12]. Critics of the Reformer suggested that the reporter's support of a union at the paper was connected to his dismissal [13],[14]. Reformer employees voted against joing the union in 2003; the Paper Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against MediaNews Group concerning Williams' dismissal [15].
Union drive aside, Williams was a sometimes controversial figure at the paper; he was the author of a book titled [16] Grassroots Journalism: A Practical Manual for Doing the Kind of Newswriting That Doesn't Just Get People Angry, but Active -- That Doesn't Just Inform, but Inspires. In January 2006, the 31-year-old Dummerston, Vermont resident was among 11 anti-nuclear protestors arrested when he participated in a rally at the power plant's corporate offices in Brattleboro.
[edit] References
- Kevin O'Conner, “The Reformer: From a Campaign Sheet to a Daily Newspaper.” Brattleboro Reformer, 17 November 1981, supplement: Then and Now: The Brattleboro Reformer, pp.18-21.
