North Avenue News bills itself as a “goodnewspaper,” and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future, though it has recently changed hands. On January 8, Phoenix Books co-owner Michael DeSanto closed the deal to purchase the outlet from longtime owners Cliff and Ellen Cooper.
Burlingtonians may be familiar with the free, 20-page paper, which arrives in many of their mailboxes monthly as a source for community news. It’s where to look for info about Little League tryouts or news from the Fletcher Free Library and Burlington Electric Department. The mayor, a city councilor and the Burlington School District superintendent contribute columns. Readers who find all five seahorses representing the Burlington High School mascot can clip out and mail in a form to be entered for a prize drawing. The paper’s tagline is “News Good for the Whole Month.”
The Coopers produced the 55-year-old paper for the past 25 years, originally going in on it with a friend who then backed out. They grew its circulation from about 4,000 readers primarily in the New North End to 17,000 across all of Burlington. Now the couple are ready to travel, spend more time with their kids and grandkids, and enjoy, as Cliff emphatically stated on a phone call from Florida, “no deadlines!”
DeSanto and his wife, Renee Reiner, own Phoenix Books in Burlington, Essex and Rutland, as well as the Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock and local publisher Onion River Press.
“Preserving bookstores as independent community resources has been effectively a lifelong ambition,” DeSanto said. His father ran a printing press that he’d go visit as a child. He has “a physical memory of great big presses rolling and printing magazines and books and things,” he said, which he recalled recently at Denton Publications in Elizabethtown, N.Y., where North Avenue News is printed. “I’ve always had a romantic notion about that.”
In purchasing the newspaper, DeSanto wants to preserve everything it does for Burlington. The name will change to Burlington Community Newspaper, he said, reflecting its reach, and he will probably update the website. Other than that, “I might change the typeface. I might change the header on the front page, and we may put a piece of poetry in and an occasional book review, but those are the dramatic changes that I’m planning.”
Rachel Fisher, print and production director at Onion River Press, will head up the paper as editor and publisher. She has worked with the Coopers on the past two issues to ensure a smooth transition. Ellen Cooper said she had full confidence in the new ownership. In terms of the paper’s identity, DeSanto’s “beliefs are the same as ours,” she said.
DeSanto said that while much of the news landscape is trending toward clickbait, he values the community paper’s informative, “good news” tone and the way it kindles neighborly conversations. In buying the outlet, he said, “I wanted to make sure that it didn’t go away.”
Look for Burlington Community Newspaper on February 6. Learn more at northavenuenews.com.
This article appears in January 21 • 2026.
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