Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/tag/missoula-current/)
When I imagined writing this column just a few days ago, before announcing the impending shutdown of Last Best News, I saw myself in a calm, cool frame of mind, making a short and rational case for keeping independent journalism alive in Billings. Well. The past two days have been such a whirlwind of emotions and have seen the dawn of so many new possibilities that I hardly know where to begin. (more…) Continue Reading →
An email was forwarded to me early Friday with a campaign that looked awfully familiar, so familiar I had to take a second look, thinking it was something we at the Missoula Current had produced, unwittingly, in our sleep. (more…) Continue Reading →
Missoula Current, one of our partners on the independent online journalism scene in Montana, celebrated the beginning of its third year by posting a short video about what it does and how it does it. We are honored to be working with the folks at the Current and wish them all the best. Missoula, and the rest of Montana, is lucky to have them. Continue Reading →
Ordinarily, on this last Sunday of the year, I would post a tongue-in-cheek review of the past year, as I had done for more than 10 years at the Billings Gazette and for the past three years at Last Best News. I was inspired to do so by Dave Barry, as were legions of fellow obscure laborers in the vineyards of backwater journalism. We had the temerity to follow the master’s lead by telling ourselves we could get away with it by writing about local events, leaving the national and international scene to Barry. (more…) Continue Reading →
Montana Today added a third contributing news source to its team on Monday when we welcomed Jenn Rowell of The Electric in Great Falls to our daily e-news publication. Rowell, a former reporter with the Great Falls Tribune, was laid off by Gannet—the paper’s owner—last October. As I did after leaving the Missoulian, she would spend her nights, perhaps sleeplessly, considering her next move, which led her to launch The Electric. (more…) Continue Reading →
We are happy to report that our partners in Western Montana, the people behind Missoula Current, are announcing all kinds of good news. In a column by founding editor Martin Kidston, we learn that Missoula Current has launched “a new and enhanced webpage offering a greater variety of stories, images and video.” It was already a good website, but now it’s even better, and easier to navigate. And like the website you’re reading at the moment, it is free of the clutter and maddening distractions one has to endure to read news stories just about anywhere else. Kidston also had this to say: “Last month—in what marked a new Missoula Current milestone—more than 60,000 unique readers logged on for a combined 104,000 pageviews. Continue Reading →
Even if you live in Eastern Montana and have never heard of, much less read, the Missoula Independent, you ought to be worried about the fate of that alternative weekly newspaper. The Indy, which has been around for more than 25 years, has had its ups and downs, but generally speaking it was a worthy successor to the underground and alternative newspapers that came before it, and which made Missoula the only city in Montana with a real tradition of that sort of journalism. (more…) Continue Reading →
Regular readers of Last Best News already know that we have been collaborating with Missoula Current, an independent online newspaper that is filling the same niche in Missoula that we have been filling here in Billings. We have been sharing stories, giving each other advice and talking about other ways we can work together to promote and expand independent journalism in Montana. (more…) Continue Reading →
It’s a Thursday morning at Har Shalom and the children are gathered for play. But the synagogue’s spiritual leader has taken to the library, where she’s thinking of ways to counter the emergence of Nazi-inspired literature in Missoula. Over the past few months, hate-filled leaflets with Nazi propaganda have appeared at area homes. While the drops have been sparse and seemingly random, they are nonetheless troubling in a community that prides itself on tolerance. (more…) Continue Reading →
A well-appointed studio on the seventh floor of the Wilma Building in downtown Missoula went under contract three days after it was listed, never mind the asking price of $368,000. The quick contract punctuates what the unit’s agent described as a hot downtown real estate market, one where the demand for residential units is high but the supply is limited. (more…) Continue Reading →
