The title of this weekly feature is never entirely accurate, since I often include audio content that you really can’t “view.”. But I’m amending the title this week because we have a really great audio piece in the leadoff spot. And, for those monitoring their Trump-related consumption, you’ll find a relatively moderate number of stories about That Manbaby in the White House.

A day in the life. From Vermont Public, a tremendous 20-minute audio documentary about a rare animal in modern times: the do-it-all rural primary care doctor. Producer Anna Van Dine’s voice only appears at the beginning and the end. In between, your narrator is the documentary’s subject: Dr. Bob Primeau, the only primary care doc in the Northeast Kingdom town of Island Pond. This must have taken a ton of time and effort, but it gives you a real sense of what it’s like to be a doctor, and a patient, in rural Vermont.

Also what it’s like to be a cog in a machine. “These days, it feels like the health care system has begun to disregard the most essential part of what it means to be a doctor,” Primeau says, citing ever-more-stringent demands for data entry that takes time away from stuff like talking to your patients. I spent many years working in public radio (never in Vermont), and the opportunity to produce this kind of content is what made the job so challenging and so rewarding.

Vermont’s health care system, teetering on the brink. VTDigger and Seven Days each delivered vital stories about financial troubles in our health care system. They spotlight different aspects of an issue, which is the kind of coverage we’ve largely lost in our teeny-tiny media ecosystem. We used to get a lot more of this when there were several strong outlets competing with each other, and we rarely get it anymore. Digger’s Peter D’Auria focused on Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, which (a) insures roughly one-third of all Vermonters, (b) is the only in-state health insurer, and (c) has spent most of its financial reserves to cover a surge in claims.

Seven Days’ Colin Flanders, meanwhile, took a broader but equally sobering view of our health care landscape.

It begins with a gut punch: Last fall a consultant told the Green Mountain Care Board that the system was a few years away from collapse… but now, as Flanders reports, that estimate is looking overly optimistic. You’ll rarely read a harder-hitting single paragraph than this:

Vermont’s health care system is crumbling at a rate faster than even the most pessimistic predictions. Rural hospitals are hemorrhaging cash, while an unrelenting surge in claims has brought the state’s biggest health insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, to its knees. Pending federal cuts to Medicaid and insurance subsidies are injecting further uncertainty.

Trump Cut Endangers Rural Airports. From WAMC, the public radio station based on Albany, NY, comes a story about how a planned 60% cut in “Essential Air Service” grants could affect small airports in upstate New York. The same story could (and should) be produced for the Vermont market, since the airports in Lebanon, NH and Rutland depend heavily on EAS funding to maintain their facilities. The Trump administration says EAS “funnels taxpayer dollars to airlines to subsidize half-empty flights from airports that are within easy commuting distance from each other,” which is true enough. The ironic thing, from the Trump point of view, is that EAS helps maintain and improve small airports that are primarily used for private aviation. You know, Trump’s kind of people, rich folks and big businesses with their own planes. But if the cuts go through, it’ll mean big changes for rural airports around the country including Lebanon and Rutland.

Burlington besieged. Multiple stories from Seven Days about trouble in the Queen City. Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak is laying off 18 city workers and keeping vacant positions unfilled as she tries to deal with a budget deficit. You know times are tough when a Progressive is cutting workforce. Meanwhile, more than 100 downtown businesses wrote a letter to the mayor seeking help with an “economic crisis” caused by fears about crime, substance use, homelessness, and graffiti that is keeping many consumers from downtown. Finally, longtime music venue Nectar’s is closing for the summer due to “the immense challenges facing downtown Burlington and the music scene in general.” Nectar’s has survived in a tough business for almost 50 years; if it’s pressing pause after decades in business, that’s a sign that things are bad in a new way.

Montpelier water woes. Things may not be that bad in the capital city, but it does face real trouble with its municipal water system. The Montpelier Bridge reports that the city’s water infrastructure is so bad that about 30% of the water produced at the plant never reaches consumers. The city would have to jack up water rates substantially to pay for needed repairs, and that’s not sustainable. A $2 million federal grant was killed by the Republican Congress, and the price of modern replacement pipe “has doubled in the last few years,” according to a pipe salesman. Yikes.

Wolcott’s “woke” bridge abutment. Three weeks ago I spotlighted a story in the Hardwick Gazette about the clawback of a federal grant that would have paid for a flood mitigation project that would have made downtown Hardwick more flood-resilient. Well, now comes The News & Citizen‘s ace reporter Aaron Calvin with a similar story from Wolcott. The feds have claed back a grant that would have paid for removal of an old bridge abutment that’s a chokepoint for floodwaters. Calvin quoted a Trump administration press release calling the grant program “politicized” and “wasteful” and “more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans.” Calvin then wrote,

A spokesperson for FEMA did not return a request to clarify what aspect of the abutment removal project met those criteria.

That’s how you nail a piece of official nonsense within the strictures of journalistic objectivity.

Dartmouth prof targeted by angry gamers. Strange one from the Valley News. Sachi Schmidt-Hori, an associate professor of Japanese literature and culture at Dartmouth College, was hired by gaming firm Ubisoft as a consultant for the new iteration of its mega-popular Assassin’s Creed franchise. The game features a female assassin and a Black samurai, which triggered the kind of aggrieved young men who (a) do a lot of gaming and (b) believe they are ever and always the real victims. “I became the face of this backlash,” she said. “People wanted to look for who to yell at, and I was kind of there.” Schmidt-Hori got little help from Ubisoft. So she started reaching out to her online harassers, and has actually had productive conversations with some of them. A real “bad news with a bit of good news” story.

I’ll end this week’s roundup with a housekeeping note. I’ll be out of town next weekend, and may not be able to produce the usual installment of NYSV. I’ll give it a shot, but no promises. At worst, I’ll have a fresh installment two weeks from now.