BACK STORY ENCORE
Ben Lando
Founder & Publisher, NowKalamazoo
In 2009, Kalamazoo native and journalist
Ben Lando was living in Baghdad, Iraq, when he launched Iraq Oil Report, which became a leading daily online source for news and information on the oil and energy industry. With 12 full-time reporters and thousands of subscribers, Iraq Oil Report is an award-winning, financially successful news enterprise that Lando still oversees as publisher and editor-at-large. But now, 10 years after launching that news enterprise, the 40-year-old Loy Norrix High School and Western Michigan University graduate is back living in Kalamazoo where he has launched a new journalistic venture that’s closer to home called NowKalamazoo.
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38 | ENCORE MAY 2020