A pair of coincidentally-timed events have sparked a crazy idea in my mind: There is room in Vermont’s news marketplace for a scrappy upstart operation focused on state politics and government.
You know, kinda-sorta exactly what VTDigger used to be.
And if I were a younger man, I’d be tempted to create something that might be called The Blackfly or simply Skeeter: A news operation designed to get under the thin skins of our political class, to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. I leave the idea in a wicket basket on the doorstep, in hopes that someone will raise it as their own.
You probably heard about the baby race at a recent WNBA game. Yeah, the one where all the babies sat unmoving at the starting line until one of them got up and walked, allegedly for the first time ever, all the way to the finish line. It was a heartwarming moment, at least until the Internet trolls started accusing the baby’s parents of cheating.
Well, the Vermont Democratic Party’s competition for the top of the ticket reminds me of that baby race, except it’s been going on for close to a decade. We’re all staring at these babies waiting for one of them to make a move.
And now, suddenly, one of them has made a move. Unfortunately, the move was to walk off the race course.
Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas has announced she’s running for a third term, presumably against H. Brooke Paige, the world’s most elegantly dressed tomato can. (This development was apparently of interest only to WPTZ-TV. I’ve seen no other reports on her announcement. Hell, VTDigger ran a story about Copeland Hanzas today that somehow didn’t even mention her 2026 declaration.) But there are three things more important to us Vermont Political Observers than the fact that she’s running for re-election.
It was a little more than a week ago that Gov. Phil Scott held an unpublicized-until-after-the-fact meeting with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The only notice anyone received of the event was a post on the governor’s Facebook page, which included a bunch of photos and a brief caption. Which is all we know about the meeting, since the press apparently got no advance notice.
But yeah, you might hope that Scott’s dignity would have at least bought him a little breathing room from the Trump administration’s savage and unconstitutional cuts in federal spending, especially where Zeldin himself is concerned.
I regret to inform you that any such hopes were completely unfounded.
The Scott-Zeldin confab was on Sunday, August 3. Well, four days later, on August 7, Zeldin delivered a swift kick in the nuts to our groveling governor: The Trump administration announced a clawback of $62.5 million in already-appropriated federal funds meant for Vermont’s Solar for All program, designed to help lower-income people access the benefits of solar power. (The cut was first reported by VTDigger, um, today.) It was part of a larger, nationwide cut in the program, but that’s one hell of a lot of money we’re not going to get, that won’t help a lot of lower-income people take advantage of the Green Revolution or build out our renewable infrastructure or reduce our dependence on out-of-state fossil fuel.
Accompanying the announcement was a cheery little video message from Zeldin himself, labeling Solar for All, a brainchlld of Vermont’s own Sen. Bernie Sanders, ” as a “grift” and a “boondoggle.”
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.
The Vermont Political Observer. 