Category Archives: The media

News You Should View: A Double Pair

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Well hey, not one but TWO of our local newspapers landed a pair of entries each in this week’s news roundup. Some serious stuff, some not so serious, a healthy serving of meat and potatoes. Kind of a well-rounded buffet.

Turns out, short-term rental registries are good for something. The Legislature has tried and failed to enact a registry of short-term rentals, mostly due to opposition from, you will be shocked to hear, the short-term rental industry itself. But the town of Stowe enacted a registry of its own, perhaps because there are roughly 1,000 short-term rental properties in a town of 5,000. Seems like a lot.

Reporters Aaron Calvin and Patrick Bilow of The Stowe Reporter used the registry as a research tool. Their story reveals that the vast majority of Stowe’s short-term rental properties are owned by people who don’t live in town — and more than half are owned by out-of-staters. The story is sure to feed into an ongoing discussion of short-term rentals as part of a broader examination of housing issues in the resort community.

“Internal wrangling” continues to plague southern Vermont school board. The eye-rolling continues for Shawn Cunningham of The Chester Telegraph, whose duties include covering the Green Mountain Union School Board. It has been a great source of unintentional humor of late, or tragedy if you prefer your governmental bodies to serve the interests of the people. The Board is deeply divided on appointing a new trustee to fill a vacancy. If you read between the lines, it seems obvious that there’s a partisan divide on the putatively nonpartisan board. The apparent conservatives are throwing out all kinds of entertaining objections to a nominee who seems to be of the liberal persuasion. The result is a lot of wasted time, and a portion of the district that doesn’t enjoy its full measure of representation.

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News You Should View: We Need Our Local Weeklies

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A whole bunch of community journalism in this week’s media roundup, which is great to see. No matter how strong our statewide outlets are (Narrator: They aren’t), our local weeklies are a vital link in the chain. They provide on-the-ground news and information that no one else will. Got some great stories from the local press to tell you about, but first let’s dip a toe into community access television, shall we?

Becca Balint didn’t have to do this. U.S. Rep. Becca Balint did a half-hour interview with All Things LGBTQ, a weekly news/interview show that airs on community access television outlets around the state (and is posted on YouTube). The interview is a couple weeks old, but (a) I only saw it last week and (b) it’s well worth your time. Balint talks about maintaining sanity in Trump’s Washington, the importance of reading books, and even performs a song. Our Congresscritters have plenty of fish to fry, and Balint didn’t have to take time for community access TV, but I’m glad she did.

A grassroots look at the Copley closure. Last Friday evening, Copley Hospital in Morrisville announced it would close its birthing center. I have decidedly mixed feelings about the move — we’re going to see cuts in our community hospitals, and some will be painful — but it’s a real sign of cowardice to announce it after hours on a Friday. Which just meant that ace News & Citizen reporter Aaron Calvin had to give up part of his weekend to turn out a report on the decision. The story was covered by several larger outlets, but only a local paper will focus on what the move will mean for the community it serves.

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News You Should View: A Great Picture, a New Journalism Org, and Way Too Many Sugar Gliders

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Belated weekly roundup of the best reportage in Vermont, postponed due to the education reform vote and related stuff. Reminder: Although this post is coming out on June 18, it only covers material posted/published/promulgated no later than the 15th.

Glenn Russell strikes again. The best part of VTDigger’s Friday story about Gov. Phil Scott and the Legislature coming together on an education reform bill? Glenn Russell’s photograph. Not reproducing it for copyright reasons, so click on the link and enjoy.

Mmm, that’s the good stuff. In a single image, Russell perfectly captures the House-Senate conference committee dynamics that led us down this prickly path. The three Senate conferees are pictured. Two of them, Sens. Seth Bongartz and Scott Beck, strike identical poses, leaning forward, peering intently over their pushed-down glasses, holding copies of draft legislation, looking more than a bit skeptical of their House counterparts. The third Senator, Ann Cummings, leans away from the table with an expression that says, quite clearly, “I want nothing to do with these jamokes.”

In case you haven’t been reading me lately, Democrat Bongartz and Republican Beck share a common background and purpose. Both have substantial ties to the private schools that hoover up public education dollars, and both repeatedly centered those private institutions in what was supposed to be a discussion of how to improve the public schools. To capture all that in a single image? Chef’s kiss.

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News You Should Have Been Able to View But Weren’t Given the Chance

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My weekly roundup of the best of Vermont journalism will again be posted late, most likely Wednesday. The delay in posting is because of the Legislature holding its final vote on H.454, the education reform bill, on Monday. Had to leave the decks cleared for that. And before I can get to the best of Vermont journalism, I have to begin with a massive media fail that reflects our sadly depleted news ecosystem.

Last week, a House-Senate conference committee was meeting to try to hash out a compromise education reform bill. The six conferees (three Senate, three House) met multiple times. Every meeting was warned in advance and was open to the public. And we got virtually no coverage at all of their highly impactful deliberations.

Now, I know legislative hearings can be a big fat drag. You can spend hours on an uncomfortable chair, sharing a tiny room with too many people, and wind up with nothing at all to report.

But this wasn’t your average legislative hearing, not at all.

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News You Should View, Local Hijinks Edition

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This post is a bit later than usual* because it’s taken me a while to get my feet back under me after an exhausting but rewarding trip last week. I attended a conference organized by the Institute for Nonprofit News, one of several organizations dedicated to fostering a new wave of nonprofit journalism.

*I’m only including items published on or before Sunday, June 8 in hopes of returning to my usual schedule with the next installment.

It was intense, and I’m still processing what I learned. But my single biggest takeaway is that there’s an amazing amount of talent, energy and dedication in this relatively brand-new field. People all over the country are creating nonprofit news outlets at local, state, regional, and national levels, and coming up with novel strategies for achieving sustainability. (There are also a lot of organizations and foundations eager to promote and invest in this new, nonprofit model of journalism.) It’s not easy and success is not assured, but I was blown away by the quality of the people involved in this effort. Made me more optimistic about the project.

INN’s membership includes about 500 organizations. More than 400 people gathered in Minneapolis for three days of panel discussions, workshops, and one-on-one meetings with experts. I was there as a board member of the Hardwick Gazette, and I was determined to bring back as much information and as many ideas as possible. That meant taking full advantage of everything I could fit in. Let’s put it this way: I’d never been to Minneapolis before, and I still feel like I haven’t. Almost all my time was spent within a couple blocks of the conference hotel.

Coincidentally enough, this week’s edition of NYSV is heavy on content from Vermont’s own local outlets, many of which are now nonprofit. Some of the stories are about the local repercussions of state policy debates, while others are about the vagaries of small-town politics. These are services that only a grassroots outlet can perform, and Vermont is lucky to have as many small “papers” as we do.

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Oh No! The Scrappy Little Dyke Said a Bad Word!

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I really wish that U.S. Rep. Becca Balint had said something short, sweet, and sacrilegious when VTDigger called to ask her about her recent deployment of the word “ass” in a public setting. I really wish she hadn’t taken the politic route and apologized.

Honestly, I don’t know why Digger even pursued this story. Well, that’s not true. I do know. It’s low-hanging fruit. But sometimes you need to leave that apple on the tree. Seriously, we’re talking about an organization that, so I’ve been told, hasn’t bothered to report on Lt. Gov. John Rodgers being a right royal asshat to his small-town neighbors, threatening to close access to a public road and take his town to court if they don’t accede to his wishes, because Digger doesn’t have the capacity.

And yet they had the capacity to publish a story on this ridiculous, trumped-up “controversy.” Ugh.

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In Lieu of News You Should View

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My usual Sunday roundup of noteworthy journalism is taking the week off, as I prepare to head out of town for most of this week. I’m attending INN Days, a conference for nonprofit news organizations organized by the Institute for Nonprofit News. This is a still very new but immensely consequential field; it’s really the best option we have for a vibrant journalistic future.

I serve on the board of the Northeast Kingdom Public Journalism, the nonprofit operator of The Hardwick Gazette. The “paper” (now a digital weekly) is very successful in terms of journalism, but struggling to achieve financial sustainability.

Not unlike just about every other nonprofit journalism organization besides public radio and television. Well, the broadcasters have their own struggles, but for nonprofit “print” reporting on paper or digital, the challenges are very much existential. We still don’t know if this model actually works.

So I’m traveling to Minneapolis in search of ideas, answers, and connections. No pressure, though.

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News You Should View: Pre-Summer Slump

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Not gonna lie, it’s a bit of a thin crop from our ever-diminishing media fields. Maybe it was the runup to the first big holiday weekend of the season? Maybe it was the amount of MSM attention lavished — rightly — on the education reform debate in Montpelier? Whatever the reason, I had less than usual to choose from. Still, there’s definitely stuff worth consuming. Also, apologies for posting this a bit late; I was out of town for nine days, and I’m still in catch-up mode.

Just like the good old days. We’ll start with the comprehensive coverage given to the education reform issue. It was front and center in the Statehouse, and our major outlets delivered solid, blow-by-blow reporting. If you followed my personal Big Three (VTDigger, Vermont Public, Seven Days), you got a very good sense of what was going on. It was like we were suddenly transported back to the year 2010, when multiple outlets competed for the big stories.

My only complaint: As a whole, the coverage didn’t much question the fundamental assumption of the debate: that the rising cost of public education is the result of shrinking student population and Balkanized governance. Not addressed, or not enough anyway: the fact that Our Betters are failing to address the real cost drivers in the system: (1) the skyrocketing cost of health insurance, (2) the slow-motion crisis sparked by the state withdrawing its traditional support for school infrastructure almost 20 years ago, and (3) social services for schoolchildren being paid for by schools instead of the Agency of Human Services. Our Betters aren’t trying to solve the problems with the cost of public education; they’re just shifting the burden onto the schools.

A new podcast from the Democratic mainstream. Former state senator Andy Julow and Chittenden County Democratic Committee chair Joanna Grossman have teamed up on a podcast whose title they may come to regret: “There’s No ‘A’ in Creemee.” Cutesy, kind of an inside joke, doesn’t roll off the tongue. But hey, whoever thought “Amazon” was a good name for an online bookstore? Well, Jeff Bezos did.

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News You Should View: Worth a Thousand Words Edition

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I’m starting this post with a tip o’the hat to Glenn Russell, ace photographer for VTDigger. His thankless task is to get good images out of the Statehouse, that notorious den of tiny rooms and bad lighting. Seriously, it’s a terrible place to be a photographer. But Glenn got one hell of a shot for Digger’s story about the state Senate’s unfortunate education reform bill passing a key committee. For those in the know, the image was a masterful piece of reporting. It showed Gov. Phil Scott’s right-hand man Jason Maulucci talking to Senate Education Committee chair Seth Bongartz on a bench in the hallway. Not that I’m saying Democrat-in-name Bongartz colluded with the Republican administration on a bill that seems to lean decidedly to the right, but Russell’s image definitely paints that picture. Fair or unfair, I loved it.

Not that our next entry doesn’t deserve top billing. Journalist David Goodman devoted his latest edition of the “Vermont Conversation” podcast to an interview with freed detainee Mohsen Mahdawi. Apparently, Mahdawi consented to the interview only if Goodman conducted it during a walk in the woods near Mahdawi’s home in the Upper Valley. You come away from the hour with a clear picture of this alleged threat to national security as a devout Buddhist whose activism is purely nonviolent. Also with a clear picture of a real Vermonter — a person with a deep love for, and profound connection to, the Vermont landscape. Beautiful piece of work, not to be missed.

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The Wheel Spins Again at VTDigger

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Last week, VTDigger announced a handful of “key hires and promotions.” Which sounds like progress, but these kinds of stories never mention that income also means outgo. Some people either left or were let go. It’s a familiar tale at Digger. But before I get to that, a necessary caveat.

VTDigger is a remarkable success story, and an absolutely indispensable outlet for news about Vermont policy and politics. Journalism jobs in Vermont have plummeted by more than 75% in the last quarter-century. With the demise of enterprises like the capital bureaus of the Burlington Free Press and the Times Argus/Rutland Herald, the near-demise of the Associated Press’ Vermont bureau, and the partial withdrawals of Vermont Public and Seven Days, VTDigger is the only outlet providing daily coverage of the Statehouse and state government. If you’re interested in Vermont news, you should be tossing ’em a few shekels as your resources allow.

That said, the organization is not without its flaws, and its financial future is not exactly secure. A July 2024 story in Seven Days reported that Digger’s corporate parent, the Vermont Journalism Trust, had lost a combined $1.7 million in the preceding two years, which led to staffing cuts and pressure to find even more savings. Its finances largely depend on reader support, which is still not a proven strategy in this brave new shrunken industry. A three-year, $900,000 grant from the American Journalism Trust was supposed to give Digger the resources to fully develop its business and fundraising operations. The grant award coincided with the onset of the Covid epidemic, which surely had a substantial effect on VJT’s development plans. But now the money is gone and financial development remains very much a work in progress.

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