Tag Archives: Bennington Banner

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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I Think We Should Call This “Winters Hall”

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This, my friends, is what the Scott administration thinks is an acceptable shelter space for dozens of our most vulnerable Vermonters. This is the Agency of Natural Resources Annex building, technically in Berlin but closer to Montpelier than anything. Starting tonight, if the administration has its way, this will be one of four nighttime-only temporary shelters meant to house a total of roughly 500 people being booted from their state-paid motel rooms. For no good reason. Bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, pitched in multisyllabic words intended to drain all the human emotion from the matter.

(Note: Vermont Legal Aid is going to court to try to block the mass exiting operation. I kind of doubt they’ll succeed; this plan is cruel, obnoxious and heartless, but it’s within the purview of state decision-making authority. But we can hope.

Otherwise, what are we looking at here?

I haven’t been inside the Annex, so I can’t witness to the quality of the decor. Probably not great; it’s been used for general storage by various state agencies, which have apparently been busily clearing out all the stuff that’s been sitting around. I can’t swear to the bathroom or shower facilities, although I have heard that the building contains two single-stall bathrooms. For dozens of people?)

Food service? Refrigeration? Privacy? Personal storage? Need we ask?

Did I mention it’s in the Winooski River flood plain and that it was flooded last summer?

Opens at 7:00 p.m. Closes for the day at 7:00 a.m. It’s about a half-hour walk from the Statehouse. (Bitter irony alert: It’s almost directly across the river from a tent encampment that’s been occupied by unhoused folk throughout the winter.) There is no bus service on this industrial roadway that probably gets more heavy-truck traffic than anything else. Perhaps some, or many, of the residents will find day shelter in the Statehouse’s welcoming cafeteria. They sure won’t gain access to the governor’s own offices in the closely-guarded, entry-by-pass-only Pavilion Building.

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Lightning Round!

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As the Legislature winds down, the political news is coming thick and fast. Got several items worthy of comment including Gov. Phil Scott’s generic condemnation of persons unknown, a better use for the state’s “extra” money, three potentially interesting House races, and a depressingly rote report on last night’s Congressional debate. Let’s GOOOO!!!

Scott condemns… somebody. Perhaps because of the killing of Fern Feather, the governor (or his comms staff) took to Twitter and amped up his language condemning hate speech in the political arena. He cited “disturbing hostility toward the transgender community” and lamented that Vermont “is not immune to this.” It was a good statement, as far as it went.

But he failed to mention the source of all the hostility: his own Republican Party. He also failed to name the two individuals responsible for bringing the hate home: VTGOP chair Paul Dame and Burlington Republican Committee chair Christopher-Aaron Felker. As long as the governor refrains from identifying those responsible and refuses to step into his own party and deal with this garbage, his words are sadly empty, In the vernacular, it’s time for him to grow a pair.

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Dregs of the Ballot: This Is How You Do It

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In my pre-TMD series on far-right candidates seeking local office, I’ve criticized our news media for taking a cookie-cutter approach to the races. They often put in the absolute minimum effort, and thus fail to reveal the actual agenda of these hopefuls.

Well, I have to say the Bennington Banner hit this one out of the park. In a story profiling a school board race in Arlington, reporter Greg Sukiennik wrote all that needs to be written about the candidate pictured above: Luke Hall, who resigned from the Vermont State Police last year for social media posts in support of the January 6 insurrecrtion.

Posts like “Cheers to the great Patriots in Washington DC,” and “it might be war.”

Yeah, not a good look for a keeper of public order. (Although I suspect that if someone did a social media sweep of Vermont’s law enforcement community, they’d find a lot more Luke Halls.)

The agenda for his candidacy seems to boil down to one thing: He doesn’t like mask mandates.

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Will the Witness For Synthetic Turf Please Take the Stand?

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Last month I brought you news of Michael Shively, professional “expert” on sex trafficking and staunch foe of decriminalizing sex work. He took the mic at Burlington and Montpelier City Council meetings, delivered his spiel, and got quite a bit of coverage in the media. More than he deserved. His credentials went unquestioned in press coverage. In truth, he represents an organization that sprung out of the religious right and has fought not only sex trafficking but also pornography, sex toys and birth control.

Well, now we’ve got another professional expert whose credentials should not be accepted at face value. Meet Laura Green, PhD., who has represented the synthetic turf industry and developers of synthetic turf athletic fields on numerous occasions. Her take is that synthetic turf is not at all harmful. It’s just a bunch of inert ingredients, nothing to see here, please move along.

Green does have solid credentials in the field of toxicology, but she has been a paid expert on only one side of the synthetic turf issue. Many experts and environmentalists do not agree with her view. Truth is, the necessary research on the safety of turf has yet to be done. It’s an open question.

Green recently paid a digital visit to Vermont, specifically the board of Mount Anthony Union High School down Bennington way. The board has proposed covering a dilapidated field with synthetic turf. Green spoke at a special meeting about the plan on October 25. Her expertise was taken pretty much at face value by trustees and the local press. (The Bennington Banner both-sidesed the hearing, which is always the shortest route to fake objectivity.)

Before proceeding any further, I should note that the plan has been derailed, at least for now. On November 3 district voters rejected the proposal, most likely over its cost. School officials are deciding what to do next; the field needs attention one way or another. Synthetic turf remains an option.

Back to the witness for Big Turf.

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Some Rich Guy is Buying Up Southeast Vermont

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Until today, I’d never heard of Paul (nee Pavel) Belogour, a native of Belarus who’s made a fortune in international investing and related software. Now, he’s the incoming owner of three newspapers in southern Vermont: the Brattleboro Reformer, Bennington Banner, and Manchester Journal. The big prizes are the Reformer and Banner, the only two daily newspapers south of Rutland.

This is either a really good thing or a really bad thing. When an oligarch swoops in and buys media outlets, it may be out of a true sense of obligation to support journalism. The owner’s deep pockets can counter the effects of the news business’ decline. Or it might just be a matter of collecting trophies and buying influence with little regard to the health of the publications. On the rich-guy scale, this purchase amounts to spare change.

Oh, and his native country is a corrupt dictatorship which ranks… let’s see… 158th on Reporters Without Borders’ ranking of 180 countries. RWB noted that Belarus is “the most dangerous country in Europe for media personnel.” Let’s hope Mr. Belogour doesn’t practice his homeland’s approach to the press.

The Reformer and Banner have been circling the drain for some time. How they’ve survived the pandemic on top of all that, I have no idea. But it’s not surprising that Massachusetts-based New England Newspapers, which bought the papers a few years back with an eye toward enhancing the bare-bones operations, has now decided to sell out.

There is another dimension to this. Belogour has been buying up properties in southeast Vermont at a rapid clip. He’s well on his way to becoming a real economic force in the region. And now he’s going to control the daily newspaper? That’s troubling.

So let’s look at the available Google trail on Mr. Belogour, shall we?

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And the Hits Just Keep On Comin’

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No sooner did I drop a post featuring five different stories about Vermont’s uneasy relationship with racial issues, than two more appeared in our media.

  • From the Bennington Banner, yet another unfortunate comment from a frequent offender on this subject. (No, not Kevin Hoyt.)
  • From VTDigger, Vermont’s racial equity director issues a damning new report.

The latter is the more impactful, but first let’s pick the low-hanging fruit.

UVM’s Designated Racism Detector, Prof. Stephanie Seguino, reported on racial disparities in Bennington traffic stops. Surprise, surprise, she found that Bennington cops were much more likely to pull you over if you’re black — a perpetual issue for the town’s police department.

The kicker was a quote from town manager Stuart Hurd, a steadfast denier that the P.D. has any racial issues whatsoever.

“Unfortunately the updated study may not have changed its analytics, continues to use census data that does not take into account people traveling in and out of Vermont on a regular basis, and continues to disregard the fact that many departments were incorrectly filling in the information requested on the ticket (no training had been provided by the state when the tickets changed).”

Sheesh.

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State business grant gets flushed down the crapper

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Bad news from down Bennington way, courtesy of The Banner:

With a two-paragraph note Thursday afternoon, a major Bennington employer for decades — Energizer — confirmed that the local factory will close.

Well, there go some nice manufacturing jobs in a community that’s taken more than its share of body blows. How many jobs is apparently a mystery; Energizer didn’t say, and The Banner couldn’t immediately find out. In 2015, the factory was downsized to an undisclosed extent (companies have learned to conceal the grim details of cutbacks and closings); at the time, per VTDigger, it employed “between 100 and 250 people.”

Sen. Dick Sears of Bennington learned of the plant’s closure — after the fact — in an email from a corporate stooge who offered hollow words of praise for “the years of productive engagement we have had with you and your office.”

That “productive engagement,” by the way, included a Vermont Training Program grant issued in April 2018 — only a year and a half ago. VTP provides taxpayer funds to cover up to 50 percent of training new workers or teaching new skills to existing workers.

I’m not sure, but I’m gonna guess here that Vermont had something a little more… uh, permanent in mind when it gave Energizer those dollars. Instead, the company didn’t even bother to inform state government until after it had publicly announced the plant closure.

Nice.

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Southern Vermont: Journalism-free zone?

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A while ago I was chatting with somebody from Seven Days, and I half-jokingly suggested that Vermont’s only financially healthy print publication should think about launching a Southern Vermont Edition. Or at least, including some southern Vermont content within the existing paper. (The Rutland Herald and Times Argus share stories, but what’s front page in one is often on page 5 in the other.)

Well, it might just be go time.

New England Newspapers Inc., has laid off 10 editorial employees in Vermont and Massachusetts.

The company laid off three newsroom staffers at the [Brattleboro] Reformer. Tom D’Errico, the manager of content marketing, Mike Faher, senior reporter, and Pat Smith, the newsroom clerk, were given notice on Friday. On June 12, Michelle Karas, the managing editor of the Reformer and the [Bennington] Banner left earlier to take a job at The Colorado Springs Gazette. The Banner laid off newly hired reporter Jacob Colone, and the [Manchester] Journal let go of Brandon Canevari.

Leaving two papers with “skeleton crews”: three reporters at the Banner and only two at the Reformer, whose coverage of Vermont Yankee has been invaluable to the entire state. And at the Journal, they’re facing a Zen question: what do you call a newspaper with no reporters? That’s right: zero.

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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?