The southern Vermont based weekly newspaper The Messenger will be renamed The Green Mountain Outlook following the threat of a lawsuit from Pennsylvanian publishing company the Sample Media Group.
The Messenger was the successor of the weekly paper Message For The Week, which folded when its owner, the Twin Sate Valley Media Network/Eagle Times, went bankrupt in July. Recently, the defunct Eagle Times was purchased the Sample Media Group, which subsequently made plans to return the Message For The Week to publication. The Sample Media Group requested through a Pittsburgh-based lawyer that the Messenger desist from using their name or face legal action.
The Messenger was launched just two months after the Message For The Week ended publication, staffed by most of the same writers, editors, and sales representatives who originally worked for the Message Of The Week. The paper was started with the aid of the New Market Press, a Middlebury-based publisher of independent weekly newspapers in Vermont.
The Messenger name was registered with the Sate of Vermont and approved by the Secretary of State prior to launch. The Sample Media Group claimed that the name would create “confusion and mistake” in the news marketplace when The Message For The Week resumes publication.
In a piece that ran in a recent issue of the new Green Mountain Outlook, editors Robert F. Smith and Joe Millikin said that the name change was carried out in a desire to continue with business as usual. “We have no desire to waste time, energy and money entangled in a lengthy legal battle with a large, out-of-state publishing company,” they wrote. “The staff here at The Outlook is dedicated to producing the best possible product for the dozens of communities we serve, and that's where we want to put our energy and efforts.” According to the newspaper, the name Green Mountain Outlook was chosen to reflect a “positive, community-orientated publication.”
Currently, the Green Mountain Outlook has a distribution of 20,500 direct-mailed copies and another 5,000 dropped copies.