Upstate New York weekly editor offers opportunity

I want to pass along this note I received from a close friend, Alex Brooks, who has decided to sell his interest in a rural update New York weekly newspaper. For Alex, it’s a time for change to some undertakings outside the newspaper arena. And it could be a moment for change for a buyer. If you are ready for a change, have reasonably secure finances, and want to move to a place heralded by artists, near Vermont, near the stable government-tech economy of Albany, N.Y., a well-served regional airport, and within a pretty easy drive of the cultural attractions of Berkshire County, Mass. (Tanglewood, museums, etc.) He tells below a story which may surprise a bit, validating the theory that good newsharing is still good business once you get out of the city and daily genre. So if anyone out there is interested in taking over Alex’ paper, e-mail him at goodbrooks@verizon.net.

The Eastwick Press web site is open to all at http://www.eastwickpress.com/ .

Alex wrote me:

“We are in search of someone who would like to take over the Eastwick Press. My reasons for this have mostly to do with the arc of my life and ambitions I've harbored for years to do things outside the community newspaper arena. It’s also a moment in the paper’s development when new energy and perspective could allow it to go to the next level.

“This is my story:

“Some 15 years ago I began publishing a little community newspaper in a small upstate New York town. I began it as sort of a hobby, a 12-page, newsletter-style publication with a dozen advertisers, covering just one town. The enthusiasm with which it was received surprised me. I got letters almost every day praising our paper, including a fan letter from the editor of the closest big-city daily, who happened to live in my town. Everywhere I went people told me they love the paper. They wanted to talk about local politics with me. I was explicitly invited into neighboring towns by political leaders hungry for a little community conversation. A local retired citizen came to me and said he wanted to help, and he spent five years building up my advertiser and subscriber base for pretty meagre compensation, just because he believed in the enterprise. I soon had three partners, and we were a weekly, 16-page tab covering five towns and two school districts. It was very clear that the kind of journalism I was doing was being neglected by everyone else. The hunger for a community conversation is clear and corporate bottom- line journalism isn't responding to it.

“I should say that reports of the death of print journalism are greatly exaggerated. The big-city dailies do seem to be dying, but community weeklies are growing. In New York State, there were under 600 community weeklies in 2002 with total distribution of 7.2 million copies. In January 2007 there were 740 papers distributing 11 million copies each week, and in January 2008 there were 812 weeklies with combined circulation of 13.5 million. These figures are from the New York Press Association's database and do not include “pennysavers” or shoppers.

“When big-media Cassandras come to our conventions and prognosticate about the future of journalism being interactive and hyper-local, we just grin at them, because that's what we've been doing all along. Sure, we're moving more of our activities on-line, but that's not the key thing. The key thing is that people are engaged with what we're doing. The high school kids are interested in our paper because they and their friends are in it all the time. When I write an article about something people are interested in, I know I'm going to hear from a lot of people. Some will e-mail, some will write letters, some will chat me up at the local diner, and some will telephone the office. Most of these people I already know, some may be just joining the civic conversation. My challenge is to find ways to have all these people be heard in some way. Sometimes they are quite articulate and can write a letter to the editor for publication. Others are not too good with language. When they have legitimate concerns and insights, it's my job to find a way to give them a voice.

“It's a noble calling, and it can make a huge difference in the civic life of the community. It's a lot of hard work and the pay isn't always munificent, but you can make a good living at it and you get to call the shots editorially, answering to no one but your readers.”“Basically, the deal is this: we are asking $130,000. We may be able to arrange some financing. We have an extremely loyal readership, the income is pretty reliable, and there are good prospects for growth and expansion. As it is now, this operation is a little small to be a comfortable business unit. With an investment of work and time, it could be grown into a two- or three-flag operation that would be quite a comfortable business.

“It takes a long time to develop a successful and profitable newspaper, and I would say three quarters of the work has been done here. I and my three partners are getting near retirement age (average age over 60) and we feel some new blood is needed to take this business to the next level. Two full-time people could run the paper, but three would probably be more comfortable, and more conducive to expansion. Some of the current partners may be amenable to continued participation.

"There are several directions you could take this project. For some, it might be a fun retirement project; for others, it might be an affordable entry point to becoming a media mogul; for others, it might be a chance to develop a new model for a successful 21st century journalism. If you’re interested in learning more about the paper, I can e-mail you a one page information sheet that has a summary of salient facts about the business (I’m at goodbrooks@verizon.net), or you can call me on my cell at 413-884-4959 if you’d like to discuss it."

TEXT: Ray Warner letter in Albany Times-Union

Former Willimastown resident Ray Warner is continuing to speak out
following his move last year to Albany:

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=677347&category=OPINION&newsdate=4/2/2008

MGRHS board proposes 5.7% budget hike to towns, shedding science post; FinCom member says 4 positions added; mostly in special ed services

Reported by Bill Densmore

Mount Greylock Regional High School would shed a science teaching positionnext year -- but add four posts overall, including four in special-education services -- under a proposed $9.9-million budget – a 5.7 percent increase over this year -- approved by the school board. The figure includes a proposed $23,000 special appropriation which Lanesborough voters will be asked to approve over and above the town's mandated share of the regional district's budget. The board also welcomed a planned gift of 40-60 computers from Williams College. Two members of the Williamstown Finance Committee comment; saying the MGRHS budget is more than 2-percent above the FinCom's target and includes four new positions. (READ THEIR COMMENTS)

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Other resource: Earlier iBerkshires story by Derek Mong

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At the Wednesday, March 26 meeting where the budget request was approved, 7-0, the board also expressed thanks to Williams College for the planned donation of between 40 and 60 used computers. The special $23,000 from Lanesborough, if approved, will be used to purchase software and other resources for the used machines. While the IBM PC-class computers are three years old when rotated out of Williams, they are considerably newer than the machines they will replace at the high school, said Supt. William Travis.

The science curriculum will lose a teacher as a result of the departure of Peggy Talbot. Board members said a formal layoff will not be necessary because Talbot has planned to leave, but the position will not be filled. The loss will cause a rejuggling of classes and laboratory periods in the sciences. At the same time, a position will be added in Middle School, and four new jobs for special-education services would be added.

Williamstown Town Manager Peter Fohlin said the budget shows total staff proposed of 105 positions -- up from 101 positions in the current year, including 23 special-education paraprofessionals up from 19 and 55.6 teaching full-time equivalents, up from this year's 55.0.

The approved budget now goes to the finance committees and selectmen of each town for a recommendation to their respective town meetings. If approved without change, the Lanesborough’s assessment will rise to $2,157,811 from 2,137,753 -- a 1.0 percent increase. The Williamstown assessment will rise to $4,499,379 from $4,285,355 -- a 5.0 percent increase. A decline in the number of Lanesborough students attending Mount Greylock and a simultaneous projected rise in Williamstown enrollees is the reason for the disparity, which ebbs and flows from year to year. More Lanesborough students are choosing to attend McCann Tech rather than Mount Greylock.

Ron W. Tinkham, long-time board member from Lanesborough, explained that he and fellow Lanesborough board members would be appealing to selectmen to support a special warrant at Lanesborough town meeting for a one-time, special appropriation to Mount Greylock of the $23,000 -- about another 1 percent increase in Lanesborough's overall support for the school. He said such a one-time, non-mandatory, special appropriation would be legal as long as it was "to support a specific task that will improve the school." That task is the technology-improvement program, he said.

The school board voted to include the $23,000 "with gratitude" in its overall budget.

Science department teaching chair Larry Bell expressed concern before the budget approval that losing a science teacher could cause test scores to decline. He worried that parents and the general public watch the schools when they are published and that teachers could be judged negatively. However, members of the school board observed that the school's science test scores are relatively high, and that it was important to continue to focus on -- as board member David Langston said -- "how kids think, not always what they know." In that sense, said Langston, he hopes science faculty will still emphasize laboratory work and as for the score, said, Langston, "If they go down a little bit, they go down a little bit."

Among spending categories, the approved budget shows the largest increase – 11.4 percent -- is in buildings and grounds, followed by employee benefits (up $195,260, or 9.7 percent). The largest absolutely increase -- $150,794, or 4.1 percent, is in regular education instruction – teacher salaries. The district administration budget is set to decline 6.9 percent – or $28,650.

The budget assumes an 11.2 percent increase in state aid to $2,205,472, including a project 67.8 percent ($172,827) increase in school-bus transportation funding. Chapter 70 state aid – the bread-and-butter state aid for schools – is project to rise 2.9 percent, or a $49,661 increase to $1,776,888.

Pearl packs house with her story of triumph over fear, withdrawal, prejudice

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- In the instant when she learned in 2002 that her husband had been beheaded, the widow of Daniel Pearl said she ran from the couple's Karachi, Pakistan, home, where for five weeks she and a team had sought to find the slain Wall Street Journal reporter. She said she grabbed an AK-47 rifle from one of the people who had been guarding the home.

"It's not that hard to kill someone," she said. But she didn't. In that instant, Mariane Pearl realized, "the only act of courage was to put that gun down" and continue on a path which was, she realized, "the only act of revenge that was really possible . . . I had to have this kind of courage facing life."

She said the photographs released of her captive husband, one with a "V" for victory and signal and the other with an obscene finger gesture, showed her that he faced death with courage and defiance, and she resolved to do the same in life after his death.

The free-lance journalist and book author, appearing on Wednesday night in the small city where the slain Wall Street Journal reporter got his professional start, told a story of triumph over fear, cynicism and prejudice in an hour speech to an overflow crowd at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

"You have to go beyond fear yourself if you're going to win," said Pearl, adding that after her captive husband was beheaded by terrorists, "I was already beyond the possibility of finding shelter in hatred of any kind." Instead, she said she resolved not to be silenced and to preserve hope. Terrorism is about manipulation, she said, "what they want is for all of us to survive to live in fear."

The Hardman Family Foundation brought Pearl to MCLA, an 1,800-student state college in a remote city of 14,000 residents where Pearl once worked as a reporter for the North Adams Transcript daily. Her appearance packed a 400-seat hall and required that the school, for the first time in the history of the Hardman lecture series, to set up a downstairs overflow room where another approximately 60 people could watch Pearl on closed-circuit video. The Hardman family once owned The Transcript.

With warmth, almost giddy chuckles, some informal jokes and a thick French accent, Pearl told the story of her life, her marriage to Pearl, their move to the Mideast as fellow reporters, and the five-week ordeal of seeking his fate after his kidnapping, taping a recurring them of tolerance and the avoidance of prejudice. She noted her family heritage. She said her mother was from a poor, black Cuban family. She described her father as a wealthy, Dutch-born "revoluntionary" with advanced mathematics degrees who ultimately committed suicide when she was age 9.
After her husband's death, Pearl recounted visiting world leaders, including U.S. President George Bush, and recounting the heritage of her's and Pearl's family from Iraq, China, France, Holland, Israel, Cuba and Poland. You should have seen Bush's eyes at that list, Pearl joked. The team, depicted in the film "A Mighty Heart," assembled in Islamabad to find her husband after his kidnapping, was part Jewish, part Muslim, part Christian and both men and women, she noted.

"We were all crossing boundaries," she said. "Everyone went beyond their own limitations." But, she added later, "this isn't about heros. We're not talking about heroism here, we're talking about humanism."

The quest for humanism moved Pearl to write her second book after, A Mighty Heart. the book, In Search of Hope: The Global Diaries of Mariane Pearl, saw her travel to 20 destinations around the globe, searching out and interviewing people that she characterized as exhibiting "the exact oppose to terrorism." The book is about woman who are "extraordinary exampls of human resilence," she said, adding: "And I think that is the answer to terrorism."

During a brief question-and-answer question, Pearl commented on the state of the media. She said there is a need for those in journalism "to say, 'What are we doing?' " She added, "I think treating the media like any other business is a big mistake." She called for an effort to use tales of conflict to "create values" because "conflict is part of life."

Pearl's visit brought former North Adams residents from as far as Cape Cod, and many current and retired journalists from the region who had worked with her husband. She joked about sleeping on the couch of former Transcript photographer Nick Noyes' home during a visit with her new husband to the region during the 1990s. Another friend recalled Danny Pearl's periodic returns to the area to play music and party at an annual river festival. Mariane spent the day at MCLA, visiting classes, and was said to have headed back to her New York City home immediately after the evening address.

Tap dancing, choreography featured in "Anything Goes" Feb. 21-23 at MGRHS

MOUNT GREYLOCK RHS THESPIANS TACKLE TAP DANCING FOR FIRST TIME IN DECADES TO STAGE “ANYTHING GOES” FEB. 28-MARCH 1

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – For the first time in three decades, toes will be tapping sharply and in tune as “Anything Goes,” the venerable musical farce scored by one-time Williamstown resident Cole Porter, lights up the stage for three nights next week at Mount Greylock Regional High School.

The musical – featuring choreographed tap-dancing, a 20-member student cast and about 20 of the best-known and most beloved songs in American theater – will be staged Thursday-Saturday, Feb. 28-March 1, at 7 p.m. at the regional high school. Tickets at the door are $8 for adults, $6 for students and admission is free for children six and under accompanied by parent or guardian. The show runs a little over two hours, including an intermission, during which baked goods and refreshments will be sold.

“I don’t want to use the world wholesome because it makes it sound kind of square,” says history teacher Jeff Welch, who is directing the musical with the help of chorus teacher Marlene Walt and band teacher Lyndon Moors. “But it’s certainly a family show – and it’s the first time we’ve had tap dancing is at least 30 years, I think.”

Walt called the show in one interview “peppy, fun, American classic . . . it’s very memorable, very singable.”

To undertake the “more intriquet choreography than anything we’ve done in a long time,” said Welch, MGRHS senior Sofia Brooks wrote a grant application to the school-support “SEE Fund” – part of the Berkshire-Taconic Foundation – to fund the hiring of choreographer Anne-Marie Rodriguez and rental of tap-dancing equipment.
MGRHS – Anything Goes
Feb. 18, 2008
Page 2 of 2

Cole Porter scored “Anything Goes” for its original 1934 Broadway debut. It’s a farce set below decks on an ocean liner bound for London from New York. The plot features a lovesick Wall Street broker Billy Crocker (played by Chris Densmore), who stows away, hoping to win the heart of his beloved Hope Harcourt (Lizzy Fox). But his boss is also on board, along with an array of other characters, including an English nobleman Harcourt is slated to marry, a gangster and his mistress, (disguised as a minister and missionary) and an evangelizing nightclub singer.

“Anything Goes,” was revived in 1962 and 1987. The 1934 debut featured a 30ish Ethel Merman as evangelizing nightclub singer Reno Sweeney (played at MGRHS by Anna Swann-Pye). The original script was a collaboration of Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, as revised by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse. It introduced such songs as "Anything Goes", “Blow Gabriel, Blow,” “Friendship”, "You're the Top", and "I Get a Kick Out of You.”

A Jan. 24 appeal for a pianist to help with the production resulted in Williamstown resident Laurie Brenner, parent of MGRHS senior Torrey Brenner, volunteering, said Welch.

Cole Porter was born in Indiana in 1991, son of wealth parents. As a boy he took lessons in piano and violin, and began writing songs while at Worcester Academy. He attended Yale College (Class of 1913), where he composed still-used football fight songs. After graduating, he went on to Harvard Law School, but began studying music instead.

In the 1930s he became famous and prosperous with the success of his musicals. In 1937, however, Porter's life took a tragic turn when both of his legs were crushed by a horse, leaving him unable to walk and in chronic pain. Porter and his wife purchased a home on Buxton Hill in Williamstown in 1940. He died in Santa Monica, Calif. on Oct. 15, 1964.

The complete cast includes (males): Collin Delano as Elisha Whitney, Chris Densmore as Billy Crocker, Ryan Erickson as bishop/captain/purser, Mitch Galli as Moonface Martin, Patrick Madden as Sir Evelyn Oakleigh. Also, (females): Lizzie Fox as Hope Harcourt, Anna Swann-Pye as Reno Sweeney, Olivia Tousignant-Pienkos as Bonnie andGwendolyn Tunnicliffe as Ms. Wadsworth T. Harcourt.

The ensemble includes Amanda Burdick, Dakota Garrity, Molly Hynes, Krista Mangiardi, Sarah Robinson, Cassandra Sherman, Johanna Tremblay and Tori Wonderlick. Angels are played by Ally Allen, Isabel Kaufman and Petra Mijanovic.

For more information or to order group tickets, contact Jeff Welch at 458-9582 ext. 109, or Lyndon Moors at ext. 167 or email jpwelch@mgrhs.org.

TEXT: Williams, MCLA, Bennington and high-school students staging political-action weekend

Stuart Burns (sburns@williams.edu -- 597-4849), Williams College coordinator of community engagement and special academic programs, has sent around to high schools and news organizations in the Berkshires and southwestern Vermont this news release:

HEADLINE: Willimas announces weekend for change

This weekend (Feb. 23-24), Williams, MCLA, and Bennington students intend to show that it is not only up to presidential candidates to bring about social change. Citizen activists have an equally vital role to play.

On Sat., Feb 23, the Williams Center for Community Engagement will host the second annual Berkshire Institute for Student Activism (BISA) Leadership Conference, on the Williams campus. The theme is "Framing a Second Bill of Rights."

During World War II, President Roosevelt called for a "second Bill of Rights" to free all Americans from fear and want. A generation later, Martin Luther King Jr. launched a human rights movement to
secure an economic and social Bill of Rights to end poverty and propel prosperity. The student organizers of the BISA conference believe that in 2008 the time is ripe to move toward this goal, with poverty worsening, but with hopeful political opportunities opening up.

The multi-college BISA conference is comprised of morning workshops on leadership skills such as presentation and negotiation skills and creating community coalitions, and afternoon workshops on pressing issues such as health care, immigrant rights, climate change, food security, violence against women, and promoting college access. The goal is for each student to leave the conference committed to work on one of the specific campaigns explored in the afternoon workshops.

The workshop leaders are experts from western Mass., as well as from Boston and Connecticut. Featured presenters are Randy Kehler, an organizer of the Safe and Green campaign to close the Vernon, Vermont, nuclear power plant; Chip Joffe-Halpern, director of Ecu-Health Care and an architect of the Massachusetts health reform; and Jo Comerford, program director of the Western Mass. Food Bank.

The day-long leadership conference, starting at 9 am, is open to all college and high school students and is free, with lunch provided. For more information or to pre-register, visit williams.edu/resources/commservice/bisa.

The BISA conference is sponsored by the Center for Community Engagement and the Schumann Program in Democratic Studies at Williams.

TEXT/NEWS: Sole local radio station in Bennington, Vt., goes on the block

Contact: David Scribner, SVC Communications, 802-447-6389, or
Marion Whiteford, 802-447-6388

College seeks community partnership to take over WBTN 1370-AM radio station

(BENNINGTON, Vt. -- Citing a fresh focus on new academic programs, the Southern Vermont College Board of Trustees concluded last week that the College can no longer underwrite the losses at WBTN 1370-AM, the local
commercial radio station that the college has owned since 2001. As a result, the college is now considering a series of options for the venerable community station that include sale or lease.

The college must focus on its main mission and must concentrate its efforts and resources on educating students with exciting new academic initiatives,. explained Trustee Jon Goodrich. “Unfortunately, we cannot continue to subsidize a commercial radio station. If in some way we can partner with a radio entrepreneur and help further the education of our students, it is a win-win.""

Among the new programs the College is introducing is “Build the Enterprise," a cross-disciplinary initiative wherein teams of students plan, implement and manage their own businesses. The student-created businesses will be able to tap into a $100,000 Venture Fund for capitalization. In addition, this spring the College is inaugurating a "roving professor" faculty position which would initially provide instructional expertise in the field of pharmacology for a variety of courses but eventually will be expanded to instruction in the areas of communications, visual arts and sustainability across different academic divisions.

The college is also planning to expand its popular nursing and radiologic technology programs with a new health care leadership major.

In September, the trustees began to examine whether, in face mounting losses at WBTN, the College should retain the radio station, donated to the college by trustee Robert Howe, and what other options for station ownership there might be. The Board of Trustees determined that the College should eliminate the losses generated by the station by the end of the spring term in May.

In the meantime, the college is eager to entertain proposals from community groups and others to take over station operations. The college is also considering the retention of the broadcast license for future use as a college and community nonprofit station.

"We take seriously and respect the role we have played in maintaining a community radio station as stewards of a broadcasting license, Board Chairman Wallace W. Altes said. "Whatever the configuration of WBTN's ownership in the future, we would hope that it would maintain its commitment to true community programming as well as
affording our communications students and members of the community the opportunity to produce local broadcast content, as it does now. An ideal outcome might be for a local group to take over this local media resource with whom we could partner."

Should an operator not come forth, the College might consider moving the station to the SVC campus, while using the existing WBTN facilities for other academic programs, Altes added.

Founded in 1926, Southern Vermont College offers a career-enhancing liberal arts education with 19 academic degree programs for approximately 450 students. Southern Vermont College recognizes the importance of educating students for the workplace of the twenty-first century and for lives as successful leaders in their communities. The college is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.