About Us
Our Mission
The Monitor serves the people of East Helena, Montana, reflecting their reality, informing their ambitions, and helping them to navigate their shared future. It endeavors to provide authoritative, fact-based reporting that surfaces and explains issues at the heart of our community — exploring both urgent challenges and the responses to those challenges.
It will hold power to account, by demanding transparency, investigating wrongdoing and revealing how what’s broken could be fixed. The Monitor fairly represents the community’s diverse range of perspective, not beholden to one path or another or to any politicians, political parties, or special interests.
A Community at a Pivotal Juncture
As it faces the prospect of order-of-magnitude growth over the next two decades, East Helena is at a pivotal juncture. Decisions made now will determine the sort of community it becomes for future generations. Who will move here? Who will stay? Where will their jobs come from? Where will they shop, dine, and find services? Will the young continue to enjoy good schools? Will the elderly get the care they deserve? Will all stay safe from crime, violence, and the ravages of substance abuse?
And most of all: How can this place preserve the quality of life that its citizens have come to enjoy?
The Monitor is taking on these central questions. We are committed to reporting on the many challenges facing our community, explaining what’s wrong and why – and, when merited, who’s at fault. We believe that understanding what’s broken is the first step toward fixing it, and that our leaders must be transparent and accountable.
But we also know that, if people only read about what’s broken, citizenship and democracy suffer. Faced with a constant barrage of bad news, many people retreat into disengagement, cynicism, polarization, and dysfunction. They begin to think that problems are insurmountable, that change is too difficult, and that they’re powerless to make a difference.
The reality, of course, is quite different. That’s why the Monitor also reports on the individuals and institutions working to fix those problems, here and elsewhere. We hope that this solutions-focused coverage helps bridge divisions, providing a platform for constructive discussions about the city’s present and future. We also hope it strengthens agency, providing encouragement for more people to get involved in working for change.
Our History
Founded in 1907 after combining two predecessors, the Monitor has served Jefferson County for more than a century. It was purchased in 2018 by Response Media LLC, owned by Keith Hammonds and Jackie Dyer, and is now part of the Monitor Montana group.
We launched the East Helena Monitor in 2025, and we’ve been grateful to you for welcoming us to your community. We look forward to meeting and hearing from everyone: Tell us what’s important to you and how you think the Monitor is doing at covering that.
East Helena is very much its own special place. It deserves its own local news, and we’re privileged to bring it to you.
Join Our Community
Subscribe to The Monitor today and stay informed about what matters most in East Helena.
Team
DAVID LEPESKA, Editor-in-chief
david@boulder-monitor.com
David Lepeska is an award-winning journalist and author who has reported from more than a dozen countries and written for many of the world’s top news outlets. Raised in the Chicago suburbs and rural Wisconsin, he has overseen multiple news outlets yet still fondly recalls his first full-time reporter’s position in conflict-torn Kashmir, surrounded by stunning mountains and warm, generous locals — much like in Jefferson County. As The Monitor’s editor-in-chief, he embraces the newspaper’s core principles of accuracy and community, while keeping a close watch on the many issues that determine the county’s health and prosperity. New to Montana and Jefferson County, he’s mostly listening and learning for now. Feel free to email him any time with your thoughts, concerns, news tips.
PIPER HEATH, Lead reporter
piper@boulder-monitor.com
Piper joined The Monitor in October, 2025. Her reporting focuses on rural mental health and education access, local government and business, affordable housing initiatives, and more. A graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno, with dual degrees in journalism and political science, Piper previously interned with the Los Angeles Times and contributed to The New York Times as an election stringer during the 2024 presidential election. She developed her skills in community-focused reporting at The Nevadan, a regional news publication in Nevada. Piper moved to Montana from Reno, Nevada, with her cat Mabel, who provides story advice when she needs it most — often in the form of a meow or a purr. When not reporting, she can be found hiking and rock climbing, or cozied up inside with good coffee and an even better book.
ELIZA DUBOSE, Lead reporter
eliza@boulder-monitor.com
Eliza joined The Monitor in November, 2025. She earned her degree in Foreign Language and Communication Media at American University, with concentrations in Journalism and German. Eliza reporting covered homelessness and gentrification in D.C., and rural education and environmental policy in Colorado, as well as music and culture. She has participated in two fellowships: the Fulbright Berlin Capital Program in 2024 and the Higher Education Media Fellowship with the Institute of Citizens and Scholars. A Colorado native, Eliza cultivated her passion for local reporting while working at her hometown paper, The Mountain-Ear in Nederland. Eliza fell in love with Montana while working as a crew lead in the Conservation Corps in Bozeman, leading her to look for jobs in the Big Sky state. When she’s not reporting, Eliza is an avid hiker, reader and enthusiastic (if very amateur) line and swing dancer.
JACKIE DYER, CFO
jackie@boulder-monitor.com
Jackie heads up finance at the Monitor. Her experience with journalism is limited to being married to Keith Hammonds, but her finance experience includes derivatives trading, risk management, and non-profit financial management. When not paying the Monitor’s bills, she provides financial consulting services to non-profit organizations.
KEITH HAMMONDS, Publisher
keith@boulder-monitor.com
Keith has been a journalist since high school and has spent much of his career writing and editing for national publications. He is former president of the Solutions Journalism Network, a non-profit organization that works with news organizations to do rigorous reporting on the responses to social challenges. He also worked at Ashoka, where he founded the News & Knowledge initiative to identify and support social entrepreneurs whose innovations better inform, connect, and engage people around the world. Before that, he was executive editor at Fast Company magazine; a bureau chief and editor for BusinessWeek in Boston and New York; a writer for The New York Times in London and Johannesburg; a consultant to New Nation in Johannesburg; director of an emergency food distribution program in Namibia; and coach of the Firebolts, a fearsome girls’ soccer team.
ALISA SMITH, Office Manager & Advertising sales
alisa@boulder-monitor.com
Alisa is the Monitor’s office manager and sales representative. She keeps our ship sailing, managing circulation and making sure the paper get to subscribers and vendors every week. She also serves display and classified advertisers across the county. If you have a problem, she’ll fix it. Alisa moved to Boulder in 2021 with her husband Tom from Williamsport, Maryland — making her the Monitor’s third employee with a Maryland connection. She worked for 26 years at the Hagerstown Herald-Mail, mostly in circulation management. In other words, she knows how to get a newspaper out the door.