Tag Archives: Glenn Russell

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 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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Unwarranted outrage from your Freeploid

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(See also addendum below: the Free Press didn’t have a reporter at one of the biggest news events in recent history!) 

Regular readers of the Burlington Free Press (all six of us) know that transparency is one of its signature causes.

(Except when it comes to the Burlington Free Press itself; there, secrecy rules the day.)

Well, this preoccupation caused Vermont’s Saddest Newspaper to leap to an unwarranted conclusion yesterday.

In the morning, the media got notice of a gubernatorial press conference to be held at 2:15 p.m. There was no mention of the subject matter.

And this caused the Freeploid to throw a nutty. It posted a short piece entitled “Secrecy surrounds Shumlin’s news conference.”

Shumlin has led the fight for government transparency, but his new press secretary, Scott Coriell, has failed to respond to questions about the topic of the governor’s meeting with the media.

Well, son of a bitch. Of course he didn’t respond.

Most gubernatorial pressers include a bit of political business — a bill signing, a new initiative, a ribbon-cutting. In those cases, the media alert will tell us what’s coming up.

But when there’s an actual policy announcement of significant magnitude? Hell no. Shumlin’s people aren’t going to upstage the announcement by providing advance information. The Freeploid is basically demanding that the administration leak its own stuff.

Particularly in this case, when the announcement was made simultaneously to the media and to those who’d been involved in the single payer work.  If Coriell had disclosed the subject matter, do you think the Free Press wouldn’t have found a way to publish the “scoop”?

The Freeploid went on to complain about changes in the time and venue for the presser. Which, c’mon, grow up. It’s not that big a deal.

I suspect the Freeploid’s real problem is that it no longer has a Statehouse bureau, and the editors had to decide whether to send a staffer down from Burlington. That’s a big deal for a paper as understaffed as the Freeploid. But that’s not the governor’s problem. And Scott Coriell shouldn’t be raked over the coals for simply doing his f’n job.

The article was slightly updated after the presser, and can be viewed by anyone who hasn’t canceled their subscription yet. The updated version mostly changes the verb tenses; the misperceptions, self-entitlement, and aspersions on Coriell remain intact. One more signpost on the Burlington Free Press’ descent into irrelevance.

 Addendum. A loyal reader pointed out that the Free Press’ main article on Shumlin’s presser was not written by a Freeploid staffer, but by the Associated Press’ Dave Gram. That’s pretty awful for a “media company” that insists it hasn’t retreated from Statehouse coverage, and whose leader has publicly slammed “rumors and speculation that we are abandoning coverage in Montpelier.” Well, sir, your absence at yesterday’s announcement is not rumor or speculation, but fact.

Presumably what happened was: the Free Press tried to find out the subject of the presser and failed. The editors then made a calculated gamble not to send a reporter — although they did send their photographer Glenn Russell. Their gamble exploded in their faces. Dave Gram’s a fine reporter, but Vermont’s largest newspaper should not be depending on the AP for coverage of a huge news story.