From Editor Walt Brickman:
Pat Doherty has been one of The Bricklyn Eagle’s most loyal readers, and has over the years written a number of helpful Letters to the Editor about article we have posted. At this time when she is facing end-of-life challenges, we want to both thank her and let her know that our thoughts and prayers are with her.
May 2, 2026
by Paul B. Macro, Bricklyn Eagle Business & Economics Correspondent
After lengthy negotiations with Bricklyn Eagle publisher Jeff Brickzos, The Bricklyn Eagle’s staff of 20 full-time and 12 part-time employees voted to adopt an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that will transfer ownership and control of The Eagle from the Brickzos Family Trust to the newspaper’s employees. It will be the first ESOP implemented in Bricklyn under the Realm’s “Employee Stock Ownership Plan Review Act” (ESOP-RA) enacted in 2023.
While most Outland readers will only be familiar with the selection of Bricklyn Eagle articles posted here at BricklynVT.com, The Eagle’s primary market consists of the more than 65,000 residents of the Tripartite Realm of Bricklyn.
The Bricklyn Eagle is the only daily paper serving the Realm’s three cities, and currently has a print circulation of just under 11,000, down from a 2015 peak of 13,500. The Eagle, however, has a growing digital subscriber base of over 17,000. This includes print subscribers who automatically receive access to The Eagle’s online edition.
The Eagle also serves as the “newspaper of record” for legal postings made by the League of Inland Cities, which is headquartered in Bricklyn.
The Eagle’s ESOP, as required by Bricklyn’s ESOP Review Act, needed approval from the Federal Council of the Realm of Bricklyn, which the Council gave by unanimous vote at its meeting last night.
The Bricklyn Eagle’s ESOP will, over the next three years, transfer the Brickzos Family’s ownership and control into a new trust held on behalf of The Eagle’s employees.
For the coming fiscal year (starting this July 1st), the Brickzos Family Trust will remain the paper’s principal owner. But over the following two years, the balance will shift until The Eagle is fully owned by its employees.
“I have always said The Eagle is run by a dedicated and talented staff,” Jeff Brickzos told members of the Federal Council, “and now they will also own the paper they proudly work for.”
Both full-time and part-time staff members will begin accumulating ownership stakes through the ESOP trust, without purchasing shares directly. Instead, the newspaper itself will fund the transition over time.
A new board of directors will also be seated on July 1st, including three members selected by the Brickzos Family Trust, and two by vote of the paper’s employees. For the following fiscal year (2027-2028) the Family Trust will hold just two directors’ seats, while three will be filled by Eagle employees. Finally, for FY 2028-2029 and beyond, the board will be comprised only of directors selected by The Eagle’s employees.
Bricklyn Eagle editor Brickman called the employee stock ownership plan “a wager that the people closest to the work will also be closest to the newspaper’s purpose.”
As Brickman added, “we had a vote of confidence when over three-quarters of our staff gave their thumbs 👍👍👍 up to adopting the ESOP.”
“One very important factor behind the strong support for the ESOP,” continued Brickman, “was the solid financial analysis — really a stress test of The Eagle — conducted by a team from Brickwell Financial Services, showing the paper’s capacity to thrive under employee ownership, while highlighting pitfalls to avoid. This analysis was vital to building confidence, and was done very early in our process of thinking through whether the ESOP option made sense.”
While still rare, employee ownership in newspapers has gained renewed attention as local outlets search for alternatives to hedge-fund consolidation and closure.
“This is not nostalgia,” said Professor Nora Tiler Tipton of Bricklyn University’s School of Civic Media. “It’s a forward-looking approach. The question is whether you can successfully steer a local newspaper through an employee-run board.”
“The transition also raises a number of tough questions,” Tipton added, “some brought up during the Federal Council’s hearing, such as whether employee-owners can make difficult budget cuts, for instance those that might result in staff layoffs, and whether the paper’s reporters would pull punches when covering actions of the newspaper they have become part owners of.”
To address these and other concerns, both Walt Brickman and Jeff Brickzos pledged that an “Editorial Independence Policy” will be drafted by The Eagle’s new Board of Directors soon after they are seated.
What will the future hold for The Bricklyn Eagle? It’s too early to tell, but one thing is clear, it will be in The Eagle’s employees’ hands. ✥
We welcome Letters to the Editor. Please email to: bricklynvt@gmail.com
To the Editor: Hey Bricklyn Eagle. How come you didn’t mention Seven Days, that top-notch newspaper just across the border from you in Burlington, Vermont. While I don’t think they have an ESOP, I thought some of their employees were also part-owners of the paper. I double-checked on their website and here’s what they say: “Founded in 1995 by Pamela Polston and Paula Routly, Seven Days is now owned and run by Routly and a group of longtime employees.” Seven Days also says it gets financial support “from grateful “Super Readers” who make one-time or monthly contributions.” — Brandy D., Burlington, VT.
Reply from the Editor: We regret that due to article length constraints we were unable to include mention of not just Seven Days, but the Barton Chronicle, as well as thriving nonprofits (another ownership model) such as VTDigger and Vermont Public, both of which offers excellent local statewide news coverage, as well as the CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, which covers Burlington and Chittenden County. There’s truly a cornucopia of great news reporting being done by nonprofits and small community newspapers in Vermont — and there are many more than those I just named!
To the Editor: Did your reporter use AI to write this story? Sure sounds to me like he did. And how much of an “employee” share will you be giving to Mr. or Ms. ChatGPT, or to their friends Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude? It won’t be long before they end up owning, operating, and writing all the “news” you publish in The Bricklyn Eagle. — Charlie B., South Bricklyn, VT.
Reply from the Editor: I discussed your concerns with Paul B. Macro, our long-time business correspondent who authored this article. He indicated that he used ChatGPT AI as an aid in conducting research, while also independently verifying sources noted by ChatGPT. This is in keeping with Bricklyn Eagle, as well as Realm of Bricklyn, policies for dealing with AI. For more on this, see On the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence by The Bricklyn Eagle (Dec. 8, 2025) and Preliminary Guidance on the Use of Generative AI by Media & Government Agencies (Mar. 1, 2024).
I should note that prior to publication we also run all articles through an AI detection check by Pangram. Here is a screenshot of the summary we received for Mr. Macro’s 726 word article (note the final word count varies from this due to some changes in my editing of his article).
April 7, 2026
From Editor Walt Brickman: First of all kudos to the Michigan Wolverines and the U Conn Huskies. Have to acknowledge, however, that their NCAA championship game did not compare to the Bricklyn University’s “BRU Crew” stunning win over Brickover University in the 2024 Inland Sports League finals. Now that was quite a game!
But that’s not the point of the investigative reporting you’ll read about below in an account that raises some interesting, and perhaps troubling, issues.
Bricklyn Eagle investigative reporters have learned that Duane Sandville — avatar for Wayne Senville, who is the Outland liaison to Bricklyn — had a helping hand from Bricklyn University Assistant Basketball Coach Ray Redbricks in completing his winning entry in the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Family Tournament.
The Eagle has obtained a photo purportedly showing Sandville receiving a copy of Coach Redbricks’ NCAA tourney picks.
When we questioned about this, Sandville replied “who cares what sort of help you get in filling out your brackets,” adding that, “I’d bet more than half of the millions of bracket entries used AI, or relied on other so-called experts in making their choices!”
See “57% of Fans to Use AI to Build Their March Madness Bracket This Year.” See also “Can AI create a winning March Madness bracket? Experts say probably not.”
Coach Redbricks told The Eagle that he was unaware that Sandville would be relying on his tourney picks for use in a family bracketology contest.
“I don’t want to get in the middle of a family competition.” Redbricks said, adding that “while I’m surprised to learn that Sandville used all of my picks, instead of doing his own research, at least he recognized that my picks were darn good ones — though they sure didn’t look that way in the early rounds of the tourney.”
Photo, perhaps, of the real Wayne Senville, or is it a previously unknown photo of Albert Einstein? Some say the two bear an uncanny resemblance. While Einstein disliked organized sports, he apparently enjoyed levitating basketballs to demonstrate the four-dimensional fabric of “space-time.”
Was it ethical for Wayne Senville / Duane Sandville to rely on Coach Redbricks’ picks?
We asked long-time (and long-winded) Bricklyn University Professor of Philosophy & Ethical Conundrums, Bernie Bricktoe for his thoughts.
“What Senville did was certainly not unlawful, but was it unethical?” noted Bricktoe.
“Should Senville [through his Sandville avatar] have told Coach Redbricks why he was accepting tournament-related picks from him, and for what purpose? But shouldn’t it have been up to Redbricks to ask?
“Could Redbricks not have reasonably guessed that it would be used for bracketology purposes?” opined Bricktoe.
“But does not the real ethical fault lie in Senville not informing his family that the picks he made were not truly his own?,” continued Bricktoe. “Yet, they were ultimately Senville’s picks, regardless of whether they were also Coach Redbricks’ picks.”
“Let us also consider the following: is it not true that everyones’ picks are based on information they have gained from others? How many can say that they have attended games of all 68 teams that participated in the tournament? And how many have attended the games of even one of the teams this season? Don’t we have to rely on information that we do not personally experience?
“But does any of this really matter,” continued Bricktoe, “given the threats to democracy that we are facing? Does basketball tell us anything about democracy, or is it simply an escape from reality? And what is reality, really? Perhaps Einstein was right in using a levitated basketball as a descriptor of the universe, though what that has to do with Senville’s actions I have no idea. And finally, was it unethical of me not to inform you at the start that in addition to my being a Bricklyn University Professor of Philosophy, I serve under the pseudonym of David Bricks as Bricklyn’s farseeing Chief Prognosticator?”
We will leave it to our readers’ to ruminate on this matter, and on whether or not the actions of Wayne Senville / Duane Sandville were in keeping with bracketology ethics.
We welcome Letters to the Editor. Please email to: bricklynvt@gmail.com
To the Editor: Bricklyn Assistant Basketball Ray Redbricks appears to be part of your Bricklyn civic-world storytelling universe — not a real-world analyst with a track record like Joe Lunardi or Jerry Palm. I couldn’t find any real-world bracketology data, rankings, or prediction accuracy tied to him.” — ChatGPT, a Cloud Server, Somewhere on Earth
To the Editor: I heard that Federal Councilor Bob Senbrick is really into basketball, and runs a NCAA and ISL bracket competition every year. Was he also involved in this? — David Tiler Dawson, Bricklyn Jct., Vermont
Reply from the Editor: We asked our investigative reporters about this. As Bricklyn Eagle readers probably know, Senbrick is a Council Member and an attorney who, among other things, has taken a lead role in advocating against the permitting of data centers in Bricklyn. Senbrick is also an avid basketball fan and “bracketologist,” but one with only a middling track record in that domain. Apparently he also claims to be a skilled Scrabble player, which we were unable to verify. However, we were unable to reach Senbrick for comment as the message on his answering machine said: “Don’t call us. We will call you.”