29 March 2021 — 2223 mdt
Updated
After 16 years of blogging for social justice,
Don Pogreba pulls the plug on The Montana Post
Montana’s leading independent liberal blog, The Montana Post, published by Don Pogreba, shut down suddenly Friday. In his farewell post Time to Turn Out the Lights, Pogreba said:
5,743 days is a long time to do anything in this life, and I think 5,743 will be enough for me to run this blog. That first story, about Karl Rove in the Bush Administration, feels like it was written a lifetime ago. In many ways, it was, as politics in the United States and Montana have changed beyond what I could have ever guessed back then.
I know the timing is terrible, in the midst of the legislative session and the Republican takeover of Montana political life, and I am sure that I am letting at least a few loyal readers down, but the truth is that I am exhausted. And I think some of you know this is a transition I have been eager to make for years.
And three nights ago, when I found myself getting checked out at the ER with chest pains, I realized that I’m not only tired, but that life is short. I’m fine, but it was a big wake-up call that I needed, and I intend to take the doctor’s suggestions about stress, exercise, and diet seriously.
It’s time.
And then the lights really did go out. His farewell post and all other pages were replaced by a holding page. The URL www.themontanapost.com now redirects you to www.themttimes.com. The Montana Times is a place where former TMP writers can continue posting. It’s too early to tell what they will make of it, but they’ll have a tough time measuring up to the gold standard for blogging that Pogreba set.
Most recent TMP posts are still online, either as Google caches or at Pogreba’s page at authority.com. At Google, the search term site:themontanapost.com yields hundreds and hundreds of TPM articles. Clicking on the three vertical dots brings up a dialog box with a cache button.
Pogreba, an English and debate teacher who taught high school students in Helena for many years, launched his website in 2005, naming it Intelligent Discontent to honor Eugene Debs, the legendary labor leader and five-time Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, who said:
If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.
Pogreba changed the website’s name to The Montana Post a few years ago in honor of Mike Mansfield. But Intelligent Discontent better captured the essence of the website.
Pogreba, believing Montana’s news media could and should do better, was a fierce critic of the state’s mainstream newspapers:
With a group of hungry reporters at competing outlets in Montana, it’s probably fair to say that this site no longer serves the purpose it once did, too. Let’s be honest, as well. No number of tweets and posts will get them to cover Matt “The Oath Keeper” Rosendale, anyway.
He’s wrong that TMP no longer serves the purpose it once did. The value of independent political bloggers as media critics cannot be understated, even when the criticism is overwrought, as it sometimes was when Pogreba’s determination to make the media better resulted in love that was too tough. Now that TMP is gone, who will watch the watchdogs?
A run for governor
Pogreba didn’t just write about politics. He practiced politics, in 2008 running for the Democratic nomination for governor against incumbent Gov. Brian Schweitzer. It was a soapbox candidacy, according to Charlie Johnson, the Lee newspapers’ legendary political reporter:
Democrat Don Pogreba of Helena is running for governor primarily because he doesn’t think the state has lived up to its constitutional responsibility to fund quality K-12 schools.
The mixed school mill levy election results in larger districts last week show the need to find an adequate, stable source of school funding, he said.
“That illustrated the difficulty with the funding formula the way it is now with the heavy reliance on property taxes,” Pogreba said. “When (people) get nervous, they vote against the one tax they get to vote on.”
Despite some additional spending, Montana hasn’t complied with the 2004 and 2005 District and Supreme Court decisions that declared the state funding unconstitutionally inadequate, Pogreba said.
“There were some increases, but it wasn’t enough to offset some years of underfunding and the difficulty of enrollment problems in small schools,” he said.
Pogreba received 3.1 percent of the Democratic primary vote for governor (download returns), but received 8.4 percent of the vote in Lewis and Clark County, enough to be heard.
As Montana reddens, there’s not much blue left in its blogosphere
The Montana Post’s demise leaves Montana without an established independent liberal blog that publishes at least five times a week. The Flathead Memo is working toward a return to daily blogging. The other major independent political blogs are The Western Word, published by political independent J.M. Brown, and the Missoula centric Reptile Dysfunction, published by the gifted writer Travis Mateer. There is room for more, and a need for more.
Aloha
Last year Pogreba accepted a position with Hawaii’s Parker School, where he teaches history, English, and debate. Given his liberal politics, and Montana’s lurch to the Trumpestian right, Democratic Hawaii is a natural fit for him. I expect he'll finish his teaching career there, and after time find a place in the island state’s political and intellectual firmament. Aloha, Don. All who admired and benefited from your efforts to improve Montana wish you peace, laughter, prosperity, and a long, long, life under the Hawaiian sun.