BRATTLEBORO — Two independent nonprofit media organizations in Vermont have teamed up to hire a seasoned reporter to report on a broad range of news in Windham County, including the ongoing decommissioning of Vermont Yankee nuclear power station.
On Aug. 24, Mike Faher began reporting and writing for both VTDigger (vtdigger.org), a nonprofit state news organization, and The Commons (commonsnews.org), a weekly newspaper based in Brattleboro covering Windham County.
Faher has worked as a daily newspaper journalist for 16 years, most recently as lead reporter at the Brattleboro Reformer, where he was laid off in June during a round of nationwide budget cuts by the newspaper's parent company, Digital First Media.
At the Reformer, he covered several towns and schools as well as the Vermont Legislature and Windham Superior Court.
Faher previously worked for 13 years in his native Pennsylvania at The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat, where he covered municipal, city and county government; business, environmental and educational issues; courts; and politics at the local, state and federal levels.
His work there included coverage of the 2001 crash of United Flight 93, the 2002 Quecreek Mine rescue, and the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign in Western Pennsylvania.
VTDigger is a statewide news organization that publishes in-depth news reports on matters of public interest that impact Vermonters' daily lives. VTDigger reaches 145,000 individual readers a month and posts daily news stories about state government, politics, consumer affairs, business and public policy. VTDigger was founded in 2009 and merged with the Vermont Journalism Trust, a nonprofit organization based in Montpelier in 2011.
The Commons, published by Vermont Independent Media, began publication in 2006 as a monthly community newspaper covering the news and views from Windham County. It accelerated to weekly publication in 2010. In its short history, the newspaper has won 33 state and regional journalism awards, and its distribution reach has doubled in three years to approximately 9,000 copies a week.
Faher will be based primarily in The Commons newsroom at 139 Main St. #601A, Brattleboro. He can be reached at (802) 246-6397 or at either mfaher@vtdigger.org or mike@commonsnews.org.