I hate to unload on the same struggling media outlet twice in one week, in this case the formerly respected Burlington Free Press, but this is outrageous.
Notice anything funky about the byline?
Yeah, “Reporter Assisted by AI.”
It’s one of TWO articles on Tuesday’s front page attributed to Beth McDermott “assisted by AI.”
That’s two out of three stories on the front page, the third being a national story from the USA TODAY content farm.
I hadn’t noticed this before, because I can’t remember the last time I picked up a print copy of that rag. But apparently it’s been going on for a few months at least, and it’s deeply disturbing on two significant levels.
Gov. Phil Scott continues to tiptoe the line when it comes to the rank berserkitude of the Trump administration. He got a lot of press coverage for his refusal to approve Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s request for Vermont National Guard personnel for administrative assistance. Since then, it’s been pretty much prudence slash appeasement.
Frankly, I don’t give him much credit for the ICE decision. They only wanted 12 people to basically do secretarial work. (I guess someone’s got to fetch the coffee.) It was such a small-stakes request that I wondered why ICE even bothered. Were they trying to get a foot in the door for bigger asks down the line? Or were they doing Scott a favor by making a request he could safely refuse?
Whatever, Scott’s subsequent actions make it clear that we shouldn’t be giving him a membership card in The Resistance anytime soon. In context, the ICE decision looks more like a brief tactical pivot than a sign that he takes Trump seriously as an existential threat to democracy.
OK, having delivered some extra-credit rants about the successes and missteps of Vermont news media, it’s time to get back to basics. Here’s my weekly roundup of content worth your attention.
Well, someone cares about ethics. I don’t know how this is a scoop, but congrats to WCAX-TV’s Calvin Cutler for reporting the latest in Vermont’s lack of commitment to ethics in government. (And brickbats to the rest of our media for ignoring a pretty important development.) The dismaying news is that the state Ethics Commission has paused on giving advice to local governments because, shocker, it doesn’t have the resources to handle the task. See, the Legislature expanded the Commission’s remit to include advising municipalities. Not enforcing, good God no, why would we need that? But at the same time, the Legislature (as always) failed to provide adequate funding for the expanded responsibilities. So when the Commission experienced “a big spike” in local-government ethics complaints and requests for guidance, it simply couldn’t handle the workload. Great!
Trump’s impact on Vermonters, part eleventy-billion. From The St. Albans Messenger, a story about how cuts in federal food aid are likely to resonate in Franklin County. The news is bad, of course. But what made me sit up and take notice are the striking statistics on food insecurity in the county. As the Messenger’s Aidan Schonbrun reports, 11.6% of Franklin County households were on food assistance as of 2023 — and that figure is above 30% in Richford, the county’s most food-insecure town. Does that not strike you as disconcertingly high? It really drives home the potential impact of federal cuts. Well, that and the failure of our economy to provide decent incomes for working folk.
See previous post. This week brings us so much media news that I didn’t try to make it fit into a regular edition of “News You Should View.” The first installment of the News You Should View Extended Cinematic Universe featured bad content; this one features a small newspaper trumping the big boys.
The Addison County Independent is one of Vermont’s best local newspapers. Unfortunately, its content sits behind a rigorously-enforced paywall and I choose not to subscribe to every paywalled content farm in the state. But over the weekend I was driving through Addison County, and picked up a print copy of The Addy Indy at the redoubtable West Addison General Store (complete with well-aged and uneven wooden floors).
And there on the bottom of the front page was a significant story about Vermont politics that I have yet to see in any other outlet. It informs us that Gov. Phil Scott is treading into the gray area when it comes to naming a replacement for former state representative Mari Cordes of the Addison-4 district, who recently relocated to Nova Scotia.
I’m not linking the article because rigorous paywall, but since I paid two bucks for the physical paper (which is impressively thick, their sales department must be doing something right), I figure I can spill a few beans.
Sheesh, you go out of town for a weekend, and the media beat goes a little bit haywire. Lots to get to, so much so that we’ve entered the News You Should View Extended Cinematic Universe. The customary edition of NYSV will follow, but we have a couple of special editions to get to first.
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The Burlington Free Press needs to die.
I say this reluctantly, because it does still employ a handful of hard-working reporters. Nothing more than a handful, to judge by its Newsroom Directory, which lists six — count ’em and weep — SIX reporters laboring in the corporate-owned sweatshop of a formerly great newspaper.
Six. [Shakes head, mutters under breath]
Which means that in order to fill the Free Press’ greatly-reduced news hole, they have to rely heavily on “content” cranked out by Gannett functionaries spread far and wide. These pieces of Hamburger Helper “journalism” are disposable clickbait at best, an insult to the reader’s intelligence at worst. And boy howdy, I have rarely seen a piece as insulting as this one.
Why? Three reasons, as explained by Carly Berlin, the housing reporter shared by VTDigger and Vermont Public. First, the PIT count happened on a very cold night in January, when the city of Burlington was operating an overnight warming shelter that gave dozens of people a very temporary place to stay. Second, the PIT count should always be considered an undercount because, well, homeless folk can be hard to find. And third, this is especially true of the unsheltered; they might be anywhere, and the state makes no effort at all to keep track of where they are or how they’re doing. No matter how diligent the counters are, they’re not going to find everyone.
Also, it must be said that if the PIT count were conducted now, the number of unsheltered would doubtless be even higher because of cuts in the General Assistance Emergency Housing program, a.k.a. the motel voucher system, imposed in the last couple of months.
Well, this is a new twist on the old “Friday Newsdump,” the storied tradition of minimizing the impact of bad news by pushing it out on a Friday afternoon or early evening. I guess we can call this a “Monday morning newsdump.”
I’m referring to the sudden announcement, with absolutely no explanation given, that Nicholas Deml is resigning as commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections, effective less than three weeks from now.
The announcement came in the form of a press release from Gov. Phil Scott’s office, which included the naming of Deml’s replacement: Fformer Burlington police chief Jon Murad will step into the roleon August 15, the day Deml officially departs. No reason for Deml’s resignation was offered.
And apparently, there was little effort to find out by the Grey Gardens of our Fourth Estate. The stories posted by VTDigger and Seven Days essentially barfed up Scott’s press release with no indication of much additional effort. Not even a line saying “Deml was not immediately available for comment.” Vermont Public‘s story did include one line from am emailed statement in which Deml wrote of launching “an advisory practice to continue the work I care about most.” That’s the only hint I could find, anywhere, of a reason for leaving or plans for the future.
Other media outlets, including the comatose Burlington Free Press and WCAX and WFFF/WVNY, led their stories with Murad’s appointment. Deml’s resignation didn’t even warrant headline placement.
That’s awfully thin coverage for a significant departure, likely thanks to the weekly rhythms of the newsroom. Monday is for gearing up to full operations after a weekend of little to no activity. You’re trying to get some news out there ASAP, and often starting from scratch. Which means that Monday morning isn’t quite as good a time to bury news as Friday afternoon, but it’s not a bad second choice. The administration got the kind of minimal, incurious coverage it probably hoped for.
Note: My weekly media roundup, “News You Should View,” has taken the week off. I’ve been very busy with non-blog-related work lately. In particular, there’s been a lot of activity around my duties as a board member of The Hardwick Gazette. This post reflects that involvement and broader thoughts about the importance of local news, which is the bread and butter of “News You Should View.”
Local news has always mattered. It’s the only way we can keep in touch with our town and city governments, school boards, high school sports, arts, and community events, not to mention road construction, floods, fires, crashes, and crime. But it matters even more now, at this moment, than it ever has before.
That’s because larger media outlets, such as daily newspapers, radio and TV, have shrunk to an alarming degree. Local outlets, including weekly newspapers and digital-only operations, occupy what would otherwise be “news deserts” — places with little to no news coverage at all. These “deserts” would include most of Vermont if not for the valiant efforts of our local papers and digital outlets.
Strange doings up in Milton, where a longtime volunteer member of various town committees has gotten the boot from all his official duties for purely political reasons.
As reported by VTDigger’s Charlotte Oliver, Henry Bonges has served his town “for forty-some years.” And then he made the mistake of publicly criticizing members of the town Selectboard, three of whom happen to be Republican state representatives. (A fourth, Rep. Chris Taylor, just resigned from the board when he was hired as town manager.) In response, the Select Board has refused to reappoint him to his volunteer posts.
(The story has yet to be reported by the local Milton Independent, which appears to be highly risk-avoidant in its coverage of local politics. The paper has yet to be featured in my weekly “News You Should View” roundup because its content is generally bland and uninteresting. It’s a sorry state of affairs, when the town has had more than its share of political firestorms of late. The Independent is shirking its duty.)
It’s been obvious since January (if not before) that Gov. Phil Scott has adopted a very different tone when it comes to That Man in the White House. It used to be that Scott felt no qualms about openly criticizing Trump. Lately, his approach has been decidedly more circumspect. I used to chalk this up to a new realpolitik in which the November election gave him many more Republican allies in the Legislature, most of whom are avid Trumpers. In response, Scott had to be more careful.
Now? I think Phil Scott is bending the knee, taking the coward’s way out, keeping his head down, sacrificing principle in favor of expediency. He doesn’t want to join the likes of Harvard, UPenn, immigrants, transgender folk, Stephen Colbert, the Washington Commanders, and Rosie O’Donnell in Trump’s crosshairs.
Two points. First, Scott’s transportation secretary refusing to cooperate with Attorney General Charity Clark’s lawsuit over cutbacks in federal funding for electric vehicle infrastructure. Second, his staunch defense of state cooperation with Trump’s immigration regime despite the fact that his own Department of Corrections is having a hard time dealing with the feds’ extraconstitutional thuggery.
Also this: A carefully worded statement from Clark that hints at a broader Trump-avoidant stance by the Scott administration.
The Vermont Political Observer. 