Former Patch Editor To Helm Middletown Press

Cassandra Day learned on January 29th that she was out of work -- via conference call.

Patch.com was throwing in the towel.  The system of local news websites, formerly owned by AOL, has been lopping off staff.  For three years, Day had virtually single-handedly made the Middletown Patch one of the more successful sites, and she survived several rounds of closures and layoffs.  But not this time.

Despite the current bleak job prospects for journalists, Day, a Middletown resident, did have something to look forward to.

For the past two years she has been chronicling bits and pieces of the city she loves via her Instagram feed.  A collection of her photos are appropriately enough being featured as part of Klekolo World Coffee's rotating artwork, and Thursday night was the opening celebration.

Day, and her friends and supporters, had a bit more to celebrate than they planned.  Thursday afternoon, The Middletown Press announced via Facebook that Day had been named managing editor, starting February 24th.

"I'm thrilled to be covering my old stomping grounds" Day said.  Not surprisingly, considering Day's work for the past three years, The Press has asked her to focus on their online operations.

It's a familiar work environment for her.  Day was the features editor for the Press for 13 years.

Meanwhile, her photographs will be on display at Klekolo until the end of the month.  The collection includes "sidewalk grates, survey markers, fire sprinkler covers, oxidized meters, weathered signs, ramshackle barns — corroded and dilapidated yet ordinary things we pass every day without consideration." Day framed them herself, and yes, they are available for purchase.

Middletown Would Miss The Press

This is a commentary that represents solely my opinion. It is in no way meant to represent the opinion of The Eye, or any other of its volunteer correspondents.
This opinion follows Ed McKeon's articles on the financial decisions that led to the second bankruptcy declaration by the owners of the Middletown Press, and the related issues in local journalism, as well as Molly Salafia's article, "I Won't Miss The Press".

The Middletown Press continues to play a vital role in the life of our city, and it would be a great loss if it ceased to exist. I say this in part for reasons generally applicable to the press and democracy, but also for reasons specific to The Press and Middletown.

When elected officials know that the voters are, or will be, informed about their actions, their decisions are more likely to be in the best interest of those voters, because votes are more likely to be based on what the elected officials are actually doing. As long as The Press is paying a professional journalist to watch and to report to us what is happening in City Hall, in the Police Department, in Water and Sewer, in the Board of Education, etc, The Press is providing a vital service to our municipal democracy. At the national level, I would make this same argument about Mother Jones and The Wall Street Journal (and if pushed, even about thoughtless and partisan sensationalists).

I won't miss the Press

Opinion piece, not the opinion of the Eye or its other writers, written in response to Ed McKeon's piece :http://middletowneyenews.blogspot.com/2012/09/living-in-no-paper-town-part-one_14.html

    Ed's  great piece was not about the death of print newspaper, but reading it, those questions came to mind. So I hate to be a negative nancy, but I only feel sorry for those who may become unemployed if Middletown Press goes under, not the ending of the paper itself. In fact, I am a little ... relieved? From a perspective of someone who was involved in a variety of charitable activities in the past and trying to get coverage of those events by the Press, all I can say is that the poor response and lack of good communication skills with readers is one reason why I am not surprised this paper is not as widely read as it once was.
     Getting positive events published in print is not about getting self recognition, or feeling the need for the media to blow sunshine in my direction; for me it is a personal matter that the history of Middletown we all leave behind is somewhat all encompassing. If it isn't accurate, if that is not possible, at least all sides will be conveyed from which some semblance of truth can be derived.
    On more than one occasion, I tried to get some mention of a positive event in print only to be told that even though the paper is called The Middletown Press, they did not have adequate coverage of Middletown and were not interested. I used to fax, call and email, months in advance to no avail; and many times given the run around and told to follow up with this person or that instead.

Middletown Press Endorses Mayor Giuliano

Today the Middletown Press posted its endorsement of incumbent Sebastian Giuliano (R) for Mayor.

Read the endorsement here: http://www.middletownpress.com/articles/2011/11/03/opinion/doc4eb2f7168384b927106304.txt

The Press's editor Viktoria Sundqvist wrote an editorial endorsing Democratic candidate Dan Drew in the primary held in August.

Arts in Town as August Rolls Around

Before I get to the events listings, today's Middletown Press (8/03/10) includes 2 fine editorials. One comes from the pen from EYE-ditor Ed McKeon on the lack of locally produced campaign commercials (especially from candidates bemoaning the lack of jobs in the state (read it here) and the other from Chris Powell of the Manchester (CT) Journal-Inquirer on the Connecticut gubernatorial candidates and their "baggage" (read that one here.) Those articles made me think and I appreciate seeing such insightful writing in our local "print" paper.

Then I turned the page and saw this headline - "Obama: The End is Near." I laughed quite heartedly. The prophetic statement was atop a national news article about President Obama's speech on the United States withdrawal from the war in Iraq. Think if pundits such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Andrew Breitbart or any of those who choose to misinterpret many of the Administration's actions to feed the maw of the 24-hour news cycle got ahold of that headline. Well, they just might stop calling the President a Socialist and tar him with the tag of "Mayan Prophet" (those who believe the world will end on December 21, 2012.)

Enough of that.

Today August 3:
The Summer Sounds Series on the South Green welcomes the Sam Vinci Band for a 7 p.m. concert.  The long-time bandleader plays a delightful variety of musical selections so grab your beach chair and head for the Green.  In case of rain, the fun moves indoors to South Church.

Wednesday August 4:
It's "Kids Arts Creative Arts Reveal!" day in Middletown.  The Buttonwood Tree hosts this event at 5:30 p.m., an opportunity to see what many of the children did on their summer vacation.  Anne-Marie Cannatta is your guide and the kids are the stars. For more information,  call 860-343-6620, ext. 201.

The Cypress Grill & Restaurant, 1265 South Main Street, presents a "Wednesday Night Blues Jam" at 7:30 p.m.  Providing the musical refreshments will be Steve Hatch and The Redliners - bring your guitar, your "harp" or voice and join the fun.  For more information, go to www.cypressgrill.com.

Thursday August 5:
Bob Gotta hosts the monthly Acoustic Open Mike at 7 p.m. at The Buttonwood Tree.  Sing a song, play guitar, be part of the action.

Friday August 6:
It's time for the 22nd Kids Arts' Children's Circus Performance - "Eats All Good" takes place at 5 p.m. on the grounds of Macdonough School, located on Pease Avenue, Stack and Spring Streets in Middletown.  Acrobats, jugglers, tumblers, clowns, unicyclists and more, all under the supervision of the Oddfellows Playhouse Circus crew, will dazzle and delight you.  In case of rain, the program will take place on Saturday, same time and place.

This week also features the Podunk Bluegrass Music Festival in East Hartford (go to www.podunkbluegrass.net/ for more information) as well as the Litchfield Jazz Festival in Kent (go to www.litchfieldjazzfest.com/ for more information.)

This is Journalism? A Commentary.

Commentary by Ed McKeon

While the Middletown Press has returned to a handsome broadsheet layout, the paper has sunk to new depths in tabloid journalism.

Monday's paper featured a banner headline about a set of flyers that have been posted around town accusing city political leaders of illegal and corrupt activity. These accusations are nothing new, and in fact, not news at all to anyone who has attended a public meeting, or walked down Main Street in the past five months. The author of the flyers has been making these charges for months, and has often been thrown out of city meetings where he has displayed placards with identical messages.

(For the record, these accusations have been offered to the Middletown Eye for months, but we have refused to post them without substantiation.)

Since when is it front-page, 80-point-type, banner-headline, top story when a flyer filled with unsubstantiated accusations is distributed around town? Does this mean that the Middletown Press will make it a point to feature all such flyers, all such accusations and all such rumors as front-page news?

Imagine what the paper would be like if every rumor around town was given this kind of prominence.

Certainly, it's the first-amendment right of the flyer author to make such accusations, as it is the first-amendment right of the Middletown Press to reprint them.

However, with real journalism comes real responsibility. Printing rumors is not news, and in fact, is one of the many reasons that modern journalism has lost so much respect. A real newspaper would investigate the accusations to determine if they have merit before printing them. Perhaps these charges have some merit, but the reader wouldn't know because the Press printed the charges without checking very far to see if there's any validity. If the charges are true, you've got yourself a story. The kind of story a real newspaper would love to print. But without digging, all you've got is a rumor. There's a real danger in printing rumors. And an even more urgent danger in not investigating a rumor properly.

Apparently, the Middletown Press is no longer a real newspaper. And Monday's edition makes that clear.

On Monday, the paper leads with the "flyer" story, and then features another front page "story" about Senatorial candidate Merrick Alpert reading from his biography at Broad Street books. The Press obviously sent a photographer to the event (a stringer whose work has appeared in the Eye), but the "story," credited mysteriously to "Press staff" appears to have been cobbled together from a press release that the Merrick campaign released last week (and which appeared here, labeled as such). Inside the paper, in a news section, we have Middlesex Chamber of Commerce president Larry McHugh, with a corporate endorsement of a dialysis center on Main Street (an issue that will come before the Planning and Zoning Commission on Wednesday). With a local election crowded with candidates here in Middletown, the only real news in the MIDDLETOWN Press is a story about the East Haddam first selectman race.

Local news in the Press seems to be relegated to the reporter assigned to the Middletown Court House reporting the lurid details of murder and divorce trials.

What's worse, with it's reporting on the flyer, the Press may have opened itself up to slander charges, featuring some of the worst accusations in a kicker headline, and on its website comments section about the story, where you can find a set of the most vile and unsubstantiated charges one could imagine, on both sides of the issue.

Not a good strategy for a newspaper chain which is reported to be struggling for its financial life.

Slam We Am

(photo by Tia Ann Chapman - Hartford Courant)

Following up on the earlier posting, both the Middletown Press and Hartford Courant were in attendance last night at the ART FARM Shakespeare Sonnet Slam.

Click here to read Julie Ann Rancourt's article in the Press.

Go to www.courant.com/sonnet to see the rest of Ms. Chapman's photographs.

A splendid time was had by all! And who knew The Eye-meister was so funky?!

"Puffin" D'Oench

The Hartford Courant, on its Obituary page, had the following announcement:

Ellen Gates D'Oench
D'OENCH, Ellen Gates Ellen Gates D'Oench, "Puffin," died at her home on Coleman Road in Middletown on Friday, (May 22, 2009) at age 78. She was Curator Emerita of the Davison Art Center, Adjunct Professor of Art History Emerita, and a former trustee of Wesleyan University. Mrs. D'Oench attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, and interrupted her education at Vassar College to marry Russell "Derry" D'Oench and to raise their family, Peter, Ellen "Dodie," Russell "Toby" and Jennifer D'Oench. She completed her education at Wesleyan in 1973, graduating magna cum laude in the same class as her son Peter. She received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1979 with her doctoral dissertation, Arthur Devis: Master of the Georgian Conversation Piece, She organized or co-organized nationally traveling exhibitions, and wrote catalogues on various artists, including Arthur Devis, Jim Dine, and Sylvia Plimack Mangold. Her book, 'Copper into Gold': Prints by John Raphael Smith (1752–1812), was published in 1999 by the Yale University Press. Her courses at Wesleyan focused on topics related to the university's 20,000 works on paper. Aided by gifts and by Friends of the Davison Art Center funds, she added about 5,000 photographs and important prints to the collection. She was a member of the Print Council of America. Mrs. D'Oench was the first woman to be elected to the board of an area bank, City Savings. In the '60s she served as treasurer of Homesteads, Inc., an organization that facilitated mortgages for low-income homeowners in the greater Middletown community. She was a trustee of Miss Porter's School, a board member of the Middlesex NAACP, and of the Greater Middletown Community Corporation, and a corporator of Middlesex Hospital. Many volunteer organizations sought her intellect and vision, and she served as residential chairman of the United Fund; on the Mayor's Committee for the Children's Library Annex of the Russell Library; and on the boards of the Middletown Family Service Community Council of the United Fund, the Junior Matinees in Middletown, and the Independent Day School in Middlefield. Puffin was one of the founders and a co-chairman of the Friends of the Davison Art Center and a devoted supporter for more than 40 years. She is survived by her children, Peter G. D'Oench of Cooper City, FL; Ellen D. Ruimerman of Higganum; and Russell G. D'Oench, III of New York City; as well as daughters-in-law Connie D. D'Oench and Tani H. Takagi; and Paul E. Ruimerman, son-in-law. She was predeceased by her daughter, Jennifer. Mrs. D'Oench is also survived by siblings Peter Gates, Arthur A. Houghton, III, Ada G. Patton, and Jonathan Gates; five grandchildren; a great grandchild; and her devoted dog, Arthur. There will be a Memorial Service at the Chapel, Wesleyan University, High Street, Middletown, on Sunday, May 31 at 1 p.m. Donations in memory of Ellen D'Oench may be made to the Friends of the Davison Art Center, 301 High Street, Middletown, CT 06457; and Middlesex County Community Foundation, Inc., 211 South Main Street, Middletown, CT 06457. Messages of condolence may be sent to the family at: www.doolittlefuneralservice.com. The Doolittle Funeral Home, 14 Old Church Street, Middletown is handling the arrangements. Puffin and her husband, Russell "Derry" D'Oench, were an integral part of the Middletown community from the day they moved here. Both of them believed in the possibilities and capabilities of the people who live and worked in this town. Derry, as most know, was co-owner/publisher and editor of The Middletown Press and made the paper a true community asset. As you have read above, Puffin also was a difference-maker, helping to grow the Davison Art Center into a major collection, most of which is stored away for the day the DAC gets a bigger home. She was an intellectual who never talked down to anyone and, in her own quiet way, helped make this area become a better place to live.

Love Letter

For Valentine's Day, I'd like to share a column that I wrote for the Middletown Press back in the Fall of 1997 (it's minus a ripped corner of the clipping...that paragraph is lost to history.)

It's a love letter to Middletown -- past, present and future.

When I wrote it, I had three children, ages 5, 3 and six months, and my husband and I had just moved to an old house just off Main Street. Kidcity was still a year away from opening.


Much time has passed: Kidcity has now passed its tenth birthday, and we're about to start looking at colleges for my tall, long-haired MHS junior, but I can't think of anything in this column that I don't feel just as strongly as I did that day:

From "Mainly Main Street"

One of the wonderful things about Middletown is the collective memory that longtime residents have of a thriving Main Street and vibrant community life.

I've heard it expressed hundreds of ways: remembering the taste of a sandwich from one of those long-gone South End delicatessens, catching a 2 a.m. breakfast at O'Rourke's Diner, shopping for a new Fall coat at Bunce's, or growing up on Center Street. It couldn't have been just the recipes or places that make those memories special -- I think it must have been the feeling that you were known in your own town, that even if there were several different Middletowns, they all met on Main Street.

When I came here 14 years ago, I felt those restless ghosts moving up and down Main Street and it made me want to stay...

...I still often have what I've come to call a "Middletown Moment." It's when, after living here for months, years, or decades, you try for the first time a Vecchitto's Lemon Ice, or find your way to Harriet Amanda Chapman's or step into the garden behind Main Street's Mansfield House. It's when you say "I can't believe this was here all along."

We need to sing our own praises, and pull each other to our favorite spots and treasures. Did you know there is a book art studio in town? Has every parent taken their kid to our incredible children's library? Have you seen the view from CVH?

I've put down roots here, and we're raising a family -- I'm looking at Middletown and thinking of the kind of place that I want my kids to come from. I want to see neighborhoods where old houses are cherished and people use their front porches; I want to see families riding their bikes along our beautiful riverfront; I want to see the old and the new get all mixed up with each other on our Main Street. I want my kids to know that it matters what kind of people they become, because the community is watching them grow. That happens when the crossing guard and the person who sells us newspapers learn our faces, as an imperceptible web ties them and us together every day.

I've been busy, the last couple of years, with lots of other people working to open the Kidcity Children's Museum; we're going to make it a place that reminds us what's special and fun about Middletown, and gives families a second living room where they can meet and weave that web of community. I hope it will be a place where my kids and yours make memories together.

Our natural resources are what makes us special -- our river, our Main Street, the university, and our people. Nowhere else is like here, and if we could first bring ourselves to appreciate all that's here, I think we'd be mobbed by tourists looking for a place that feels like home.


So it's back to 2009 -- and there are so many of us that love Middletown and want to be here with all our hearts -- celebrate that and have a Happy Valentine's Day.

What Some Folks Would Do to Get Ahead

There is a fine article in The Middletown Press's "W" section today about Middletown resident Jenny Lecce's new play opening this Friday at the Hole in the Wall Theater, 116 Main Street in New Britain. Read what Diane Church has to say about "HeAVEN" by clicking here.

The playwright tells the story of 3 men who enter a contest to win a free mobile home. They have to live on a scaffold in front of a billboard and the one who lasts the longest wins the prize. Set in uncertain economic times, no one gives in and the contest drags on for months. And, although the idea has been germinating in Lecce's mind for some time, the story is prescient. With many people out of work and skilled laborers being especially affected, one knows that people would do anything to help better their situation.

The cast, directed by Ted Guhl, includes JoAnne DeWind, Regina Erpenbeck, Tony Palmieri and, as the 3 contestants, Michael Eck, Steve Kelly and Matthew Pollack. Performances are Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m. starting January 16 and running through February 14. There are Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. on January 25 and February 8. For more information, call 860-229-3049 or go to www.hitw.org.