The Brattleboro Reformer's Managing Editor Melanie Winters has been a
professional journalist for over 35 years now, but her connection to
the newspaper industry goes back even further than that.
As a six-year-old on her bike in the mid-1970s, she often helped with
her older brothers’ paper routes, delivering The Hartford Courant
house to house in her hometown of Windsor, Connecticut. She took over
one of the routes on her own at age 13, delivering newspapers seven
days a week in the rain, sleet or snow.
Four years later, as a senior at Windsor High School, she was editor
of the school newspaper. “We won second place that year in the
American Scholastic Press Association's national annual review for
high school newspapers. Also, one of my seniors won first place for an
editorial cartoon and another won first place for an editorial cartoon
titled 'Homework. Homework. Give Us a Break!'” She also worked part-time as a playback operator for the local community access station during her high school years and occassionally helped cover government meetings as a camera operator. "I just loved being part of something important, something bigger than
myself," she said.
She went on to attend Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to study
Communications Arts. "I looked into broadcast news for a while —
including a semester internship at a TV station in Kingston, N.Y. —
but print journalism was always my first love."
In her junior year - 1987-1988 - she spent a year abroad in northern
England, attending Trinity and All Saints College outside Leeds. She
also spent some time in London doing an independent research project
on hospital radio stations for patients: how they operated, what their
programming was... and then returned to Marist to finish her senior year.
“I got my first journalism job as a staff reporter in December of 1989
working for Imprint Newspapers, a group of community weeklies based in
West Hartford, Connecticut. I stayed for seven years. By the
mid-1990s, media conglomerates arrived on the scene. They saw
newspapers as cash-cows waiting to be milked. They bought up small
papers, sold what real estate they could, trimmed staff down to the
bare minimum, consolidated papers and sometimes even closed them down.
Newsrooms started to look like ghost towns. I remember after one
buyout, about the third of the reporters had to pack up their
belongings on the spot."
Discouraged by the shifting winds in the newspaper industry, Winters
considered switching careers at this point and started looking into
opportunties in public relations, mostly in educational settings like
public universities and a few private schools. But in 1996, a help
wanted add for Soundings Publications in Essex, Connecticut kept her
in the print journalism field, this time for Soundings Publications, a
group of trade magazines covering the recreational marine industry and
fine woodworking.
"Fortunately trade magazines were somewhat insulated from the
newspaper buyout craze," said Winters.
For the next 13 years she traveled all over the country to cover
everything from lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C. to large boat
shows in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
"Traveling around the country was a lot of fun, especially the
cocktail parties, all the great swag at the boat shows, and meeting
some pretty fascinating people - including Tim Allen and former
president George H.W. Bush.
"My favorite memory was meeting Jean Michel Cousteau at a private
dinner party with Mercury Marine. He's the son of famous ocean
explorer Jacque Cousteau. I remember somebody asking him what his next
project was going to be and he said he wanted to go somewhere he's
never been before. I told him I couldn't imagine anywhere he hasn't
been. He smiled, pointed downward and said, 'deeper.'"
It was during that time that Winters met and married Bob Mosher from
Old Saybrook, Conn. They had two sons — John, born 2005, and Jerry,
born in 2007 — and in 2008 moved to Vermont after purchasing some land
and building a house in Whitingham. Winters continued working for the
trade magazine remotely from Vermont, but then the Great Recession
spread to the marine industry as people stopped buying boats. She was
laid off in September of 2009 and remained out of work for over a year
and a half.
"There just were no journalism jobs to be found around here. So once
again I started looking at other career options like pubic relations,
but I didn't have any luck there, either. It was a pretty tough job
market all the way around back then.
"It was a relief to finally land a job as night editor with the
Reformer in the spring of 2011, after about 20 months of being
unemployed." Today as managing editor Winters oversees a newsroom staff of six that
covers all of Windham County and parts of southwestern New Hampshire,
publishing six days a week under parent company Vermont News & Media.
There's her night editor Bill LeConey, sports editor Alejandro
Cornman, photo editor Kris Radder and reporters Bob Audette, Susan
Smallheer and Chris Mays.
“One of the first things I do every day is have a morning Zoom meeting
with my news staff to discuss what everyone is working on that day,
what the priorities are for the next day's paper, what is coming down
the pipeline the next day or two after that. I also sit in on the Zoom
meeting for the Bennington Banner, our sister newspaper, to see if
there's any content we can share back and forth. In between all of
that I go through all of the submitted copy that comes in steadily
throughout the day, always ready to react to any breaking news.
"It's a lot of work, and it can be pretty stressful, but in the end I
think it's worth it. I still get excited about the idea of doing
something important, something bigger than myself. But it makes me sad
to think of the still shrinking newspaper industry and the growing
news deserts all over the country. Local newspapers help keep a
community connected. Communities with a strong local newspaper are shown to have more civic involvement, less corruption and lower taxes."