Category Archives: The media

Tweetblocked by a Hero Of Journalism™

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Funny thing happened sometime in the past 18 hours or so. Burlington Free Press deputy editor (and Chief Assistant Gannett Cheerleader) Adam Silverman (a.k.a. @Wej12) blocked me from his Twitter feed.

I guess it was only a matter of time; I smack around the Freeploid pretty regularly, and he’s apparently the touchiest guy in the building. So, what finally broke the camel’s back?

Judging by the chronology, it was a series of replies I made to SilverTweets from the Newspaper Association of America “mediaXchange” conference in Nashville.

(Note the trendy non-traditional capitalization. That’s a sign of a desperate industry seeking new-century relevance. Kind of like when big corporations fill their Tweets with millennial slang like “bae” and “on fleek.”)

Silverman was liveTweeting from conference workshops. I couldn’t help but respond to some of them. First, a harmless jape:

After that, Silverman sent a couple Tweets I found darkly humorous. First:

And second:

A little background there. The Free Press is notoriously stingy with crediting other news organizations for original stories. Especially when it comes to Seven Days, which the Free Press likes to pretend doesn’t exist.

Anyway, I guess I stepped on some tender toes. Since then, I haven’t seen any Tweets from Silverman and I just discovered I’ve been blocked. So disappointing; I was learning so much from him about the joyless, soulless state of 21st Century Journalism.

Gannett honors cashiered Free Press writer

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Ohh, this is sad, even by Burlington Free Press standards.

Last Friday, the Gannett newspaper chain announced its “Best of Gannett” awards for the company’s best journalism in 2014. Among the big winners were the Arizona Republic, the Des Moines Register, the Palm Beach (CA) Desert Sun, and the Staunton (VA) News Leader.

This being a media awards thing, there were dozens upon dozens of winners. (Journalism awards are kinda like participation ribbons. I speak as a past winner of dozens myself.)

So where, oh where, can the Freeploid be?

Scroll down. Keep scrolling. More. More. Keep going. Further. Go on.

Okay, there. The Free Press’ one and only prize is a Third Place award in the category of “Narrative Writing/Voice,” which aims to honor “powerful and tightly written news and feature stories… and any examples of evocative writing regardless of platform.”

And your winner? Oh, this is embarrassing.

Tim Johnson. 

Yes, the Tim Johnson who was abruptly fired last fall after 16 years on the job.

Gee, somehow the Free Press never bothered to report this great victory. And it’s usually so quick to brag about any honor it wins, no matter how trumped-up.

Here’s a final indignity: The awards come with cash prizes. Unfortunately for Tim, the money goes not to the writers, but to their employers. Or, in Tim’s case, ex-employer.

That’s Gannett for ya, giving the prizes to itself and screwing the talent. *Correction; see second Postscript below.

Postscript. I’ve heard through the grapevine that Johnson learned of his award through this blog. Nobody at the Free Press or Gannett bothered to inform him. That’s not just sad; it’s shameful. Even if the Free Press was going to keep the check, they could have at least given him a certificate or something. 

Post-postscript. A commenter notes that I made a mistake in reading the Gannett press release. The newspapers do pocket the cash for the Public Service awards, but the writing and reporting prizes are supposed to go to the individual staff. Presumably the Free Press will be scheduling a nice presentation ceremony for Johnson. Hahahaha.

Not all businesses think alike. Or, Mr. Barlow, your table is ready.

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We have a winner in theVPO’s first-ever giveaway.

In some secluded rendezvous…

In some secluded rendezvous…

As you may recall, earlier this week the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce made an ass of itself: one day, its president issued a clarion call for action on Lake Champlain, and the next, its lobbyist strenuously insisted that the LCRCC would fight tax increases to fund cleanup efforts.

Hypocrisy, thine initials are LCRCC. Anyway, in light of that, I offered a free dinner to the first lobbyist who accepted a measure of financial responsibility for his/her group, industry, or membership.

Well, we have a winner, and it’s just who you might expect: Dan Barlow of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Dan didn’t nominate himself; a friend in the media, who’d just love to see me spend my money, pointed out to me that at a Statehouse press conference yesterday, Barlow (speaking for VBSR) endorsed Gov. Shumlin’s proposal to close the Medicaid cost gap through a payroll tax. I wasn’t at the presser, but Barlow’s statement has been reported by VTDigger, which is good enough for me.

So Dan, if you want to strap on the ol’ feed bag, let me know.

This brings to mind something that’s been bugging me for a few days. On Monday, the usually impeccable Anne Galloway of VTDigger posted a story entitled “LEGISLATIVE MANDATES HAMPERING RECOVERY, BUSINESS GROUPS SAY.” The story recapped the usual litany of complaints about taxes and costs and regulations — and that hoary old chestnut, “uncertainty.”

Which is just bullshit. Life, by its very nature, is uncertain. Potential legislative changes are one of the smaller aspects of it. To cite just one obvious example: the price of oil. Who predicted its nearly 50% drop in recent months? That alone plunged a fatal dagger into Vermont Gas’ pipeline to Ticonderoga. Fuel costs are a much bigger factor in running a business than anything the legislature might reasonably do.

Galloway’s piece could have been written by a functionary in Jim Harrison’s back office, so one-sided was it. The only note of dissent was a brief comment by House Speaker Shap Smith in the very last paragraph.

Now, you could make an argument for this article as part of VTDigger’s ongoing coverage of the legislature: let’s take a look at how business groups are feeling about the course of the session. Other views will get a hearing elsewhere.

But even on that narrow pretext, the article falls short. By focusing on The Usual Suspects, it fails to reflect the range of views within the unmonolithic “business community.”

It doesn’t, for example, quote VBSR. Not even a little bit. It doesn’t quote business types like Small Dog’s Don Mayer or Fresh Tracks Capital’s Cairn Cross, who have much more nuanced views of the potentially positive role of government in economic development. It doesn’t mention former State Rep. Paul Ralston of Vermont Coffee Company, who’s chairing Shap Smith’s working group on improving the economy. It sure as hell doesn’t quote Ben Cohen or Jerry Greenfield.

EVen if you accept the premise that an overview of the business community is a worthwhile use of VTDigger’s media platform, this article was woefully incomplete. A rare FAIL for a diligent and trustworthy news source.

Will the last one off the seventh floor please turn out the lights?

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The institutional memory at the Burlington Free Press, Vermont’s Shrinkingest Newspaper, has taken another big hit. 28-year veteran reporter Molly Walsh is leaving the Freeploid for the friendlier confines of Seven Days.

It’s a body blow to the Free Press’ diminishing ability to cover the news. And the timing couldn’t be worse, since Walsh has been reporting the Burlington mayoral race. Not quite as bad as Terri Hallenbeck and Nancy Remsen leaving on Election Day, but not helpful. It’s also one more indication of Seven Days’ growing dominance in the Chittenden County news market, and its seriousness about positioning itself as a vital news source.

Better days…

Better days…

Walsh was diplomatic about the lifeboat she’s swimming away from:

There’s been a lot of change. I think some of the changes are for the better and some are questionable.

But her actions speak louder than her words. Can you imagine, at any earlier point in history, an established reporter voluntarily leaving an established daily newspaper for an alt-weekly?

Strange but true: Seven Days is a better place to work than the Freeploid, with its reporters expected to write clickbait-friendly articles, produce endlessly, create and market their “brand,” provide video and photography as well as copy, work with the sales department and key advertisers, and live on the high-wire of editing their own stories.

About the last point. One of the Freeploid’s sister Gannett papers, the Cincinnati Enquirer, was inundated by reader complaints about the quantity of mistakes in the Sunday paper. Most of the errors were minor, but every one undercuts a newspaper’s credibility. The Enquirer, like the Freeploid, is an example of Gannett’s Newsroom of the Future, which includes little or no copyediting.

The Sunday foofaraw was so bad, it prompted chief editor Carolyn Washburn to write a memo to news staff emphasizing the need for them to “take full ownership of your own clean copy.” Meaning, “don’t expect the editors — pardon me, Producers and Coaches — to be your backstop.”

Now, you’d think an average reporter would be capable of producing literate copy, but it’s not nearly as simple as you’d think. This former copyeditor can tell you that mistakes are like cockroaches in a New York City apartment: no matter how hard you try, it’s almost impossible to stamp ’em out. And it gets harder with every re-reading of a story: after two or three scans, your eyes inevitably start to glaze over. That’s why media outlets have traditionally had copyeditors: the more eyes you have on a story, the more likely you are to weed out the errors.

In sum, the Free Press has got to be a really hard place to work these days, and it’s only going to get worse. Walsh’s departure is one more signpost on the Free Press’ road to irrelevance.

Ethics, shmethics

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Riddle me this, Batman: How is a political blogpost like a roadkill skunk?

The apparent answer: At first their stench makes them unfit for polite company, but after three weeks or so the smell goes away.

See, way; back on January 19, I wrote a piece about a bill before the legislature to establish a Latin motto for Vermont. Over time, the story went viral; it appeared on the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, Reddit, Fark, and Gawker. It was shared on Facebook more than 10,000 times, and I literally got over 100,000 pageviews out of it.

But nobody else in Vermont media picked up on the story.

That is, until now. The Associated Press’ Dave Gram wrote a piece about it. The Burlington Free Press posted it on their paywalled website; here’s a link to the story on a non-paywalled site.

Nice of Dave to finally notice the story. Don’t know why it took three weeks.

Not so nice: he didn’t credit the Vermont Political Observer as the original source. Maybe the story’s blogorrific stench has dissipated, but the smell still permeates the dread name “theVPO.”

Gawker, that irresponsible gossipmonger, credited me; the local media, I guess, chooses not to.

Now I realize that (a) this is a trivial story, a sidebar to our coverage of politics and policy, and (b) nobody outside of the room I’m sitting in cares whether I get fair credit. But I do. And the giving and receiving of credit is always a lively topic whenever journalists gather; my salaried colleagues are quick to complain when they are slighted by another media outlet.

So here’s my complaint. For the vast majority of you who don’t care, my apologies and I promise something more relevant next time. Just needed to get that off my chest.

Well, at least the Free Press dumped its political reporters BEFORE the list came out

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A big oopsie from the Montana province of the great Gannett Empire.

On Jan. 28, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza released a (deeply flawed and incomplete) list of the “best political reporters” in each of the 50 states. One of the four Big Sky nominees was John Adams of Gannett’s Great Falls Tribune.

Unfortunately for the Trib, only two days after the list came out, Adams declined to go through the mandatory re-interviewing process for all Gannett journalists. He balked because his position — capital bureau chief — was being eliminated, and he didn’t want any of the jobs on offer.

After serious thought and consideration I opted not to apply for any of the positions. I have been very happy in my role as the capital bureau chief for the Great Falls Tribune and would have liked to have continued in that role, but I did not feel any of the available openings in the Tribune’s new “newsroom of the future” were a good fit for me.

Bad timing, Tribbies. By contrast, our local Gannett House O’ News ‘N’ Stuff, the Burlington Free Press, had the sense to jettison its two best political reporters (Terri Hallenbeck and Nancy Remsen) a couple months before Cillizza posted his list. The Freeploid still suffered the lesser embarrassment of having Cillizza name Mike Donoghue and April Burbank as two of Vermont’s top four state political reporters, when Donoghue’s beat is only partly political and Burbank had been on the beat for less than two months.

Well, it ought to be an embarrassment, but the Freeploid is actually proud of its reporters’ “achievement.” But then, it long ago established its reputation as Vermont’s Most Shameless Newspaper Media Organization. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cillizza’s source wasn’t someone inside the Free Press and/or Gannett; he depended heavily on reader nominations for states he wasn’t familiar with, and he clearly hasn’t a clue about Vermont. It’s hard to imagine an objective reader nominating Burbank (Donoghue maybe, just on seniority) for the honor. Nothing wrong with Burbank, she hasn’t been covering state politics long enough.

 

… and a child shall lead them.

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About a month ago, a journalism class at Bennington’s Mount Anthony Union High School posted a video on YouTube in which they systematically dismantled the integrity of Fox News “journalist” Jesse Watters. The video’s gotten 370,000 hits, and is well worth watching.

This has received quite a bit of notice outside Vermont, but not much within our borders. Probably something to do with Vermont media’s northern orientation; Bennington is a virtual black hole because it’s far away and not easy to get to.

A while ago, Watters ran a piece on “The O’Reilly Factor” in which he visited Vermont to confirm its reputation as a liberal hotbed. His visit was as pro forma as it could have been; he went to Bennington, the closest town to his NYC base, and did a handful of “man on the street” interviews with questions designed to prove his prefabricated point that Vermont is a haven of the far left. Questions like, “Why do you think the President has allowed terrorists to take over a third of Iraq?” (Pronounced eye-RACK.) His interview subjects were stereotypically flaky young people. (I doubt he considered asking anyone in a business suit to take part.)

Mr. Integrity.

Mr. Integrity.

The MAUHS students compared Watters’ report with the ethical standards of the Society of Professional Journalists, and found him guilty of “too many violations to count” resulting in a “wholesale distortion of truth.” As one student concludes, “By watching Fox News, we have learned buckets about journalism: what to do, and more importantly, what never to do.”

The conclusion isn’t a surprise, but what’s notable is the diligence and thoroughness of these students. Their work is worth noting and celebrating. Fox News didn’t see it that way, naturally; Bill O’Reilly referred to the students as “pinheads.” Stay classy, Loofah Man.

Oh, and just in case you want to stereotype these kids as loony liberals, the same class has taken the New York Times to task for its overheated reporting on drug abuse in Vermont, particularly the Times’ assertion that “the hallways of Mount Anthony Union High School… were littered with bags of heroin.”

Tweaking the noses of the powerful: one of the core functions of real journalism.

Tomorrow’s Burlington Free Press might be a bit thinner than usual

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Today’s a Big Day for Gannett’s Newsroom of the Future initiative. See, Gannett has signed a big-ass contract with the Poynter Institute to provide virtual re-education camps for its rapidly dwindling cadre of newsies.

Shiny happy journalists.

Shiny happy journalists.

The Gannett-Poynter Training Partnership has its official kickoff today at 1:00 with an Employee Town Hall Webcast featuring Gannett President/CEO Gracia Martore “highlighting recent company news and a discussion about what’s ahead.” Expect a load of happy talk about how recent transitions (read: layoffs) have repositioned the corporation for a bright future.

Attendance, I suspect, is mandatory. I hope there’s no big news this afternoon.

After the launch party, staffers will undergo “four to seven modules that address a specific training need,” all with a goal of enhancing Gannett’s digital footprint and engaging the audience (they used to call us “readers”).

Poynter’s “training opportunities” include a bunch of courses in audience analytics, “building your brand,” “developing your social media voice,” promoting content online, and effective Tweeting. (I strongly suggest Michael Townsend sign up for that one.) Other notable “content modules” (they used to call them courses) include…

“Business Models and Strategies” — “innovative ideas that can bring new streams of revenue to your operations.” Which means partnering with sales staff and working with advertisers.

“Best practices for working with citizen journalists” and “How to Tell Great Investigative Stories with Dwindling Resources.” Meaning, we can’t afford reporters anymore.

“Cleaning Your Copy: Grammar, Style and More.”  Meaning, we can’t afford editors anymore.

“The Camera With You: How, and When, to Shoot with a Smartphone.” Meaning, we can’t afford photographers anymore.

Modules for the newly minted position of Content Coach include Managing Creative People (those damn crazy reporters), Dealing With Difficult Conversations (I’d think Gannett managers would already be experienced at this), and Language of Coaching (please stop yelling at the reporters).

Some of this is cringeworthy, and reflects a desperate industry making a last-gasp effort to maintain some sort of relevance. Or at least keep the profit streams flowing as long as possible. But to be fair to Gannett, a lot of this will help journalists and editors adjust to new realities being forced upon them. And when, sooner or later, they find themselves jettisoned by their corporate masters, they’ll be better equipped to bushwhack their way through our brave new media landscape where Content is King, but Content Providers are peons. And where salesmanship is at least as important as quality.

A little shameless, and ironic, self-promotion by the Freeploid

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Okay, so the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza puts out a list of the best political reporters in each of the 50 states. He describes the list as a combination of reader recommendations and his own knowledge. It’s fair to assume that the farther away he gets from Washington, the more dependent he is on his readers.

Take Vermont, for instance. Cillizza’s list was sadly incomplete and, in two instances, ironically off-target.

He names four reporters. Paul Heintz of Seven Days; no problem there. Kyle Midura of WCAX; he does a fine job by TV standards.

The other two: Mike Donoghue and April Burbank of the Burlington Free Press.

Hahahahaha.

Nothing against either of them; they’re perfectly cromulent reporters. However…

— Neither is primarily a political reporter. Both are on the Freeploid’s vaguely-named Accountability Team. The Free Press draws heavily on the Associated Press for its political coverage.

— It was only a couple months ago that the Free Press jettisoned its political reporters, Terri Hallenbeck and Nancy Remsen. Both would be better choices for Cillizza’s list than Donoghue and Burbank.

The thickly-laden irony isn’t stopping the Free Press from celebrating its dubious honor. Three Freeploid functionaries have Tweeted the big news; here’s one of them.

Nice, Aki. I’m sure your former colleagues are sharing a bitter laugh.

As for Cillizza, he clearly doesn’t know much about Vermont media. He completely ignores VTDigger and VPR, two of the three best outlets for state political news. The Digger diss isn’t surprising, since he named it the Best Political Blog in Vermont two years ago. Small problem there: VTDigger isn’t a blog. It’s a professionally staffed news operation.

Cillizza does acknowledge the possible incompleteness of his list, and he has added people to it since he first posted it. I’ve sent him an email with my suggestions, and perhaps he’ll include them.

My top three noms: Anne Galloway of VTDigger, Peter Hirschfeld of VPR, and Neal Goswami of the Vermont Press Bureau. If I expanded things a bit, I’d include Dave Gram of the AP, Stuart Ledbetter of WPTZ, Bob Kinzel of VPR, and Mark Johnson of WDEV. Mark doesn’t report as such, but his daily radio show is the best single platform for discussion of state politcs and policy.

On the subject of Vermont’s true Best Political Blog, modesty forbids me.

Sharks in the water, Vermont papers in the lifeboat

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Further developments in the selloff of Digital First Media, the corporation that owns more than a hundred newspapers — sorry, media properties — nationwide, including the Brattleboro Reformer and Bennington Banner. And it’s not happy news.

Capital New York is reporting that a couple of slash-and-burn private equity giants have emerged as the front-runners. Apollo Global Management and Cerberus (ooh) Capital Management have similar investment strategies: buy up troubled companies, engage in ruthless cost-cutting, goose the profit margins, and then sell within a few years.

Previous reports had two newspaper chains involved in the bidding: Gannett and Gatehouse, discussed previously. Apollo and Cerberus have an edge, in that they are interested in buying all of DFM’s properties in one go, as DFM would like to do. Other bidders, it’s believed, want to buy bits and pieces.

DFM is the creation of a private equity fund, and has already engaged in round after round of cuts. As Capital New York puts it:

What could a P.E. purchase mean for the papers—and their “digital-first” operations—themselves? By standard practice, Apollo and Cerberus quickly apply reorganizations to find cost-cutting efficiencies. Layers of management and staffing are taken out, centralization of processes are put in place and technology is used to cut the costs of pesky humans.

… All newspaper companies have seen massive cuts… [but] the papers in this deal have seen more than their share of efficiency-wringing. Peer publishers will tell you tell that DFM looks “wrung out.”

Maybe we’ll get to find out if the three-headed helldog has a tighter grip than DFM. Which would be bad news for southern Vermont news readers, who are already underserved.

By the way, DFM itself is less than two years old. Its CEO, John Paton, sought to encourage journalism’s (supposed) next wave by pushing into multimedia digital content. The experiment hasn’t gone well; Paton’s primary backer, Alden Global Capital, has run out of patience with him. So much for the digital future; its only legacy at papers like the Reformer and Banner is shrunken papers and empty newsrooms.

The future: more of the same, at best.

Will somebody please hurry up and invent the future of news already?