It’s been a bad month for “print” media between the abrupt shutdown of Sports Illustrated, the purchase of the Baltimore Sun by a right-wing rich guy, mass layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, and the assimilation of music review site Pitchfork by GQ. There are signs that the already parlous state of journalism in America is about to get a whole lot worse.

Here in Vermont, we are relatively blessed on that front. We have robust nonprofits like VTDigger and Vermont Public and a reduced but still energetic Seven Days, plus a number of daily and weekly newspapers that are battling to produce meaningful reportage on a shoestring. A lot of energetic, smart people are doing their best to keep us informed.

But over the past couple of weeks, our media have repeatedly failed us. I feel compelled to point this out because the worse they do, the less informed we are. In the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

There’s pretty much nobody in the mainstream media covering Vermont politics on a consistent basis anymore. As a result, a significant dispute at the most recent meeting of the Vermont Republican Party state committee went unnoticed except at the right-wing Vermont Daily Chronicle.

As the story goes, Windsor County party chair John MacGovern (name misspelled by the Chronicle) was confronted at the meeting by a group of disaffected county Republicans who had voted to remove him as chair in an unsanctioned meeting. MacGovern’s sin? He doesn’t support Donald Trump.

MacGovern is no Phil Scott. He’s a very conservative fellow who’s been active in the VTGOP for more than two decades, and took on the thankless task of running against Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2012. The question of whether or not he will continue in his post isn’t all that important outside of the Upper Valley area, but the dispute is quite revealing about the fractured status of the VTGOP, its alienation from Vermont’s electorate, and the ideological Grand Canyon that separates party activists from our governor. That’s kind of important as we enter a campaign year where Democrats and Progressives will try to protect or even expand their legislative supermajorities.

There ought to be somebody, somewhere in the Vermont media, paying some attention to party politics. But there isn’t, as the MacGovern affair abundantly proves.

Onward. There have been two occasions in the last week where I broke news about major developments in the Legislature. I was first to report on the House Human Services Committee’s plan to extend emergency housing programs through the end of June, and I was first — and so far the only — to report that that same committee was working to remove menthol cigarettes from a bill to ban flavored tobacco and tobacco substitutes.

Now, I know my limits. I’m an observer, not a reporter. I can’t spend all day at the Statehouse. In these two cases, I came across relevant documentation on the Legislature’s website. It was there for anyone to see. This was especially egregious on the housing issue, a potential crisis that warranted a thorough follow as House lawmakers were formulating their plan. Instead, all we got was a story posted Tuesday (the day after I posted my account) on Vermont Public.

My final entry is kind of a quibble, but it reveals a shallowness in Statehouse coverage. There were stories aplenty about the Senate’s failure to override Scott’s veto of the “bottle bill” that would have expanded our beverage-container deposit program. Accounts posted by VTDigger and Seven Days reported the vote tally — 17 to override, 13 opposed — but neither pointed out that the Democratic/Progressive majority lost six votes on the attempt. That’s a hell of a lot of votes, and it ought to raise questions about the unity of the Senate majority, the power of caucus leadership, and the health of House-Senate relations, considering that the bill passed easily in the House.

Neither article listed the apostate Democrats. For the record, they were Thomas Chittenden, Jane Kitchel, Dick Mazza, Dick Sears, Bobby Starr, and Irene Wrenner. Only one senator was quoted in each story — Chittenden in Seven Days and Republican Richard Westman in Digger. That’s right, the latter piece did not quote a single Democrat.

The two publications dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s, but both stories were sadly lacking in depth and context.

My expectations are high. So are the stakes. Even in an age of shrinkage and transition toward an unknown future, our media play a vital role. They cannot be immune from criticism.