Tag Archives: Addison Independent

News You Should View, Belated Edition

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This edition of NYSV features content posted last week by Vermont media outlets. I did most of the groundwork last weekend, and then other stuff intervened — a pair of more timely items and a bit of semi-elective surgery, to be specific. So here it is, finally. And once again, these pieces were posted in the last full week of September. Mostly.

Hey look, another local newspaper! Somehow I had never heard of The North Star Monthly, published in Danville, Vermont. That is, until it won a big fat award from the New England Newspaper Association. The Monthly took home NENPA’s “Newspaper of the Year” award in the Specialty Publications category. I will definitely add it to my list of Vermont media sources.

Other Vermont publications receiving hardware included The Vermont Standard of Woodstock, which will feature a bit later in this post, and Usual Suspects VTDigger and Seven Days. Vermont dailies were shut out of the awards for Daily Newspaper which, considering the quality of most of ’em, isn’t much of a surprise. The closest dailies to get NENPA recognition were The Keene Daily Sentinel (Keene, NH) and The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, MA).

The Old Guy’s Still Got It. If Mike Donoghue did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. The former Burlington Free Press fixture is now a freelancer who focuses mainly on cops and courts, and has a knack for swooping in and grabbing scoops from under the noses of established outlets. This time he scored a pair of stories about Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer, commissioned and published by The Vermont Standard.

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Welcome to the N.Y.S.V.E.C.U. Part 2: The Addy Indy Gets the Scoop

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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.

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Counting the Costs of Leadership Failure

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In one of his novels, Vermont’s own crime novelist Archer Mayor chose the well-kept, comfortable town of Middlebury as the scene of a Hollywood-style gun battle with the goodies and baddies firing away at each other as they drove through the center of town. Many years ago I interviewed him about the book, and he confessed to a certain sly pleasure at foisting his fictional violence on that tony, tweedy community.

Well, now the good folk of Middlebury are suddenly experiencing, if not volleys of hot lead, an uncharacteristic feeling of insecurity. And we can lay this directly at the feet of state leaders, executive and legislative, who have failed to come to grips with our crises of homelessness, substance use, and mental health.

Remember last winter when housing advocates predicted dire consequences if the state were to end its emergency motel voucher program, and warned that the short-term savings from killing the program would be far outweighed by the costs of dealing with the fallout?

Welcome to Middlebury, where unhoused folk are camping on public land. There have been incidents of vandalism. People feel unsafe. Merchants are installing cameras and exterior lights and worrying about lost business. Police are overextended. Helping agencies are struggling with too many cases and too few resources.

It all came to a head at the October 10 meeting of the town selectboard, viewable on YouTube and recounted quite skillfully by John Flowers of the Addison Independent in a story entitled “Local Merchants Rail Against Uptick in Downtown Crime.” And rail they surely did.

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Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Bunch of Nimrods

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Remember this little number? The newspaper ad placed by a bunch of Addison County Republican candidates with the long list of extremist talking points? Fentanyl in Halloween candy? Gender-affirming medical care is human mutilation? Carbon dioxide is good for the planet?

Funny thing. Five of the seven “co-signers” tell the Addison Independent that they did not sign it, and do not agree with the ad’s assertions.

They are all deliberately vague about which ones they disagree with because the ad is, at best, only about 10% kookier than they are, and they don’t want to offend the QAnon types in their base.

The person responsible for the ad is the kookiest of them all, state Senate candidate Robert Burton, last seen wowing an audience (especially Sen. Ruth Hardy) with his boldfaced assertion that “Climate change is a hoax.”

The details of this fiasco, per the Addy Indy, are simply delicious. But the story leaves a couple of big questions unanswered.

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Stealth Conservatives: With a Little Help From the Press

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Today’s edition of Stealth Conservatives features two Kindly Old Grandpas, or so their newspaper profiles might lead you to think. On the left, in the photographic sense only, is John Lyddy, the previously discussed election truther running for House. On the right, in every possible sense, is Peter Caldwell, Republican candidate in the solid blue Middlebury House district.

Both received the benefit of kid-gloves treatment in their local newspapers. These candidate profile pieces are often cranked out in a hurry, out of a sense of obligation rather than due diligence. But in a day when many Republicans are purposefully concealing their ultraconservative views, our political media need to do better.

In July, the Brattleboro Reformer published an extremely friendly profile of Lyddy, who has repeatedly exposed his extreme views on social media. The uncritical piece depicted Lyddy as a goodhearted retiree who simply wants to serve his community. And it completely ignores his attendance at the January 6 insurrection (and insistence that the Democrats stole the 2020 election), his veiled threats against elected officials and government agencies, and his advocacy for “a brief correction by civil war” to remove Democrats from office.

Yeah, just a brief civil war.

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