More context:
I worked for a daily newspaper called The News-Times of Danbury from 2003 to 2009, minus a 7‑month stay as part of The Hartford Courant’s web staff. During my time in Danbury, the paper published a ton of stories on Jimmy Galante and the Danbury Trashers.
I was a peripheral player in the coverage, doing stories on the Trashers’ infamously rowdy ‘Section 102’ fans, a story looking at whether city government played favorites during an arena renovation, and, later, stories on some of the sentences handed out to defendants scooped up in an organized crime indictment.
At one point I spent an hour talking with Galante in his Danbury office, where the lights were low and some random guy sat behind me. During the interview Galante kept asking me, in a light-hearted manner, about my paper’s editorial writer, who carried a lot of weight in greater Danbury because she wasn’t afraid to tongue lash local leaders or newsmakers, including Galante, who, during our conversation, seemed to really like the attention — and talking to reporters.
Anyway, I’m strolling down memory lane because last week Netflix released an episode of “Untold,” its new docuseries, all about Galante, his son AJ, and the old Danbury Trashers.
The documentary flashes a lot of newspaper clippings across the screen, as documentaries tend to do, and a bunch of the images are stories from my former colleagues from The News-Times, many of whom worked their butts off trying to scrape the surface of a very complicated situation. They eventually won a bunch of awards for their hard-charging community journalism.
So, for this very special of “Navel Gazing: The Valley Indy Podcast,” I gathered a bunch of my former co-workers — and former Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton — to react to the documentary and to reflect on their time connected to the Galante hockey dramedy. One of the guests lives in Seymour, so there’s even a hyperlocal connection!
Please press play to watch the conversation, which is also available as an audio-only podcast below.
Some corrections to the record:
Guest Brian Koonz says the Trasher’s salary cap was $250,000: he emailed me after the interview to say it was actually $275,000. Mayor Boughton mentions a documentary titled “Wild Wild West.” It’s actually “Wild, Wild Country.” In the audio only version, I misstate the year of reporter Ethan Fry’s award-winning Galante coverage as 2018. It was 2008.
