The 100th, 200th. 300th, 400th, 500th and 600th editions of The Commons on display at the 20th anniversary party for Vermont Independent Media/The Commons on Oct. 6, 2024 in Brattleboro. Photo by Randolph T. Holhut/The CommonsThat Vermont Independent Media, the organization behind the Windham County newspaper The Commons, is celebrating its 20th anniversary may be most surprising to the team operating behind the scenes. It was in 2004 that community members began to explore what an alternative, independent news source might look like, though The Commons did not begin publishing until 2006.The Brattleboro-based nonprofit and its weekly newspaper have faced an uphill battle since its founding, from the small kitchen table meetings that launched the first issue to navigating a changing print media landscape.“I’m still wide-eyed and astonished,” said Barry Aleshnick, co-founder and board member of Vermont Independent Media and distribution manager for The Commons.Today, the free paper has a circulation of 8,300 and reaches over 20,000 readers throughout southeastern Vermont. Last week, in its 784th issue, the paper covered the area’s housing crisis, a community bike project’s new home and a controversy over political banners at a local school.Back in 2004, changes in the local news landscape — including the firing of the editor of the Brattleboro Reformer, the area’s daily newspaper — led to growing concerns about the future of news in town.“That alarmed us quite a bit, of course,” Aleshnick said. At the time, the Reformer was owned by MediaNews Group, a Denver-based newspaper chain. (It’s now owned by Paul Belogour, a financial software entrepreneur who lives in the area and has bought up local companies and real estate.)“Newspapers and journalism are so important to the fabric of our community,” Aleshnick said. “And Brattleboro is such a unique community.”So a group of community members decided to do something about it.Staff members of The Commons march in the Strolling of the Heifers parade in Brattleboro in 2015. Photo by Randolph T. Holhut/The CommonsAleshnick was a stay-at-home dad and a homesteader who had the flexibility to explore what an alternative news source in Brattleboro might look like. Another partner was a musician, artist and teacher.“We were a widely disparate group,” members of which knew each other through local civic activism organizations, Aleshnick said. “There were probably five of us, and we said, ‘What can we do?’”Each recruited more volunteers, and the group met every Friday to explore possibilities with financial and media experts, former editors and community leaders. They considered several options, including partnering with other regional news outlets or buying small newspapers that were up for sale.But after a year of meetings, they came up with a bigger idea: The Commons.“We decided to start our own newspaper. How improbable is that?” Aleshnick said. “And with almost no capital. We had a lot of vision. We had a lot of grit. We had a lot of feelings of urgency.”The group always envisioned a weekly newspaper, but after some delays, they started publishing issues of The Commons monthly in January 2006.“To start a new business takes a lot. I certainly was not a professional,” Aleshnik said. But he said he still believes the journalism in those early issues “was quite good.”Aleshnik said he flipped through the first issue again recently, for the first time in years, and it brought back memories of the people who contributed as writers, advertisers and volunteers.“We were psyched about that support. But I’m sure many people were skeptical,” he said. Although The Commons had a lot of community support early on, he said, it took months to get to a place where people realized the paper was there to stay.The Commons started publishing weekly in June 2010, under the leadership of editor-in-chief Jeff Potter, who has helmed the paper since 2008 — for much of that time alongside news editor Randolph Holhut. Over the next decade, it would face issues common for local news organizations across the country, including economic struggles.In 2023, the United States lost a newspaper every two-and-a-half weeks, according to Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative. The country has lost almost a third of its newspapers since 2005. As readers prefer to access news online, the share of Americans who follow their local news “very closely” has dropped 15% since 2016, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.Against that backdrop, it would be unusual for a small community such as Brattleboro to have more than one print news source.Aleshnick is careful not to criticize the Brattleboro Reformer. “We’re very fortunate that we have two newspapers for our community,” he said.But by 2019, The Commons was facing an uncertain future.“It was a newspaper that could have closed at that point,” said Lynn Barrett, Vermont Independent Media’s unpaid consultant turned board president.The Commons was still being printed — it never missed an issue — but the paper was struggling financially, and it did not have a functioning board, Barrett said.Over the next few years, Barrett took over operational duties from the paper’s editorial team, and they worked to stabilize its financial state, navigate the Covid-19 pandemic and revive the organization’s Media Mentoring Program. Looking ahead, Barrett said the paper is working to expand its community-oriented programming, data tracking and work with technology.“We couldn’t have a better team … We go above our weight class in terms of being a local paper,” Barrett said. “It’s a lot of work, but it feels good to be doing it.”“I’m still astonished at what we did and how widely embraced it is by our communities,” Aleshnick said. “Our vision was to create something with real journalism”Disclosure: VTDigger has a media partnership with The Commons.Read the story on VTDigger here: Founders of The Commons, Windham County’s nonprofit newspaper, celebrate 20 years.