Tag Archives: Mike Donoghue

The old boys’ network at Liquor Control

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The Burlington Free Press’ Mike Donoghue has been doing what he always does — carpet-bombing government agencies with public records requests* — and his mighty labors have once again brought forth a mouse. Relative to other public-sector featherbedding scandals.

*I wonder how much he’s cost the taxpayers of Vermont with all his requests. Gee, somebody ought to file a public records request for that.

But it is an interesting mouse, I’ll give him that.

The story concerns an off-the-books arrangement between Liquor Control Commissioner Michael Hogan and LCC staffer WIlliam Goggins, whereby Goggins was promised at least ten hours per week of paid overtime “without having to provide any documentation.”

This arrangement went on for 14 1/2 years, and enriched Goggins to the tune of $162,857. That’s about 12K per year; not that many dollars, really.

But while the money isn’t huge, the process stinks to high heaven. It’s a fine example of the Old Boys’ Network, where unwritten deals between longtime colleagues can fly under the radar for years without any questions being raised. It’s not the Shumlin administration at fault; it’s the Vermont Way. This arrangement began when Howard Dean was governor, continued throughout the Douglas years, and came to an end by Jeb Spaulding’s order this January. And only then because the budget was so tight, the administration was looking everywhere for ways to save.

As Donoghue reports, the Hogan/Goggins deal was unusual for state employees of equivalent rank and responsibility: top administrators don’t usually qualify for overtime. They’re stuck with their salaries. (In Goggins’ case, $75K per year.)

Hogan and Goggins insist there was nothing untoward about their arrangement. I’ll acknowledge that Goggins may well have earned his pay, although since he didn’t have to keep records we’ll never know; but the nature of their deal raises a giant red flag. And yes, I’ve got some questions:

— How many other sub rosa deals are there in the back offices of state government?

— How many such deals might exist in bodies like the LCC, which is directly overseen by the Liquor Control Board, not the central administration?

— Are there any other irregular arrangements in the LCC specifically? Mr. Hogan’s occupied that chair for a long time, and he seems to enjoy a liberal interpretation of his administrative discretion.

— And finally, should we perhaps take a second look at Auditor Doug Hoffer’s examination of the LCC, which got nary a glance the first time around? If the Hogan/Goggins agreement is any indication, the commission might need a good air-clearing. Now would seem to be the time to ask more questions, instead of blithely accepting Hogan’s response to the Hoffer audit:

“There are some things in the report that we could do, and are doing,” Hogan said. “But time has proven [this system] works. I don’t think it’s a broken system.”

Perhaps Michael Hogan isn’t the best judge of whether Michael Hogan’s own administration is “a broken system.” Reminds me of Bill Sorrell blandly assuring us all that Bill Sorrell has done nothing wrong.

Well, at least the Free Press dumped its political reporters BEFORE the list came out

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A big oopsie from the Montana province of the great Gannett Empire.

On Jan. 28, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza released a (deeply flawed and incomplete) list of the “best political reporters” in each of the 50 states. One of the four Big Sky nominees was John Adams of Gannett’s Great Falls Tribune.

Unfortunately for the Trib, only two days after the list came out, Adams declined to go through the mandatory re-interviewing process for all Gannett journalists. He balked because his position — capital bureau chief — was being eliminated, and he didn’t want any of the jobs on offer.

After serious thought and consideration I opted not to apply for any of the positions. I have been very happy in my role as the capital bureau chief for the Great Falls Tribune and would have liked to have continued in that role, but I did not feel any of the available openings in the Tribune’s new “newsroom of the future” were a good fit for me.

Bad timing, Tribbies. By contrast, our local Gannett House O’ News ‘N’ Stuff, the Burlington Free Press, had the sense to jettison its two best political reporters (Terri Hallenbeck and Nancy Remsen) a couple months before Cillizza posted his list. The Freeploid still suffered the lesser embarrassment of having Cillizza name Mike Donoghue and April Burbank as two of Vermont’s top four state political reporters, when Donoghue’s beat is only partly political and Burbank had been on the beat for less than two months.

Well, it ought to be an embarrassment, but the Freeploid is actually proud of its reporters’ “achievement.” But then, it long ago established its reputation as Vermont’s Most Shameless Newspaper Media Organization. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cillizza’s source wasn’t someone inside the Free Press and/or Gannett; he depended heavily on reader nominations for states he wasn’t familiar with, and he clearly hasn’t a clue about Vermont. It’s hard to imagine an objective reader nominating Burbank (Donoghue maybe, just on seniority) for the honor. Nothing wrong with Burbank, she hasn’t been covering state politics long enough.

 

A little shameless, and ironic, self-promotion by the Freeploid

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Okay, so the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza puts out a list of the best political reporters in each of the 50 states. He describes the list as a combination of reader recommendations and his own knowledge. It’s fair to assume that the farther away he gets from Washington, the more dependent he is on his readers.

Take Vermont, for instance. Cillizza’s list was sadly incomplete and, in two instances, ironically off-target.

He names four reporters. Paul Heintz of Seven Days; no problem there. Kyle Midura of WCAX; he does a fine job by TV standards.

The other two: Mike Donoghue and April Burbank of the Burlington Free Press.

Hahahahaha.

Nothing against either of them; they’re perfectly cromulent reporters. However…

— Neither is primarily a political reporter. Both are on the Freeploid’s vaguely-named Accountability Team. The Free Press draws heavily on the Associated Press for its political coverage.

— It was only a couple months ago that the Free Press jettisoned its political reporters, Terri Hallenbeck and Nancy Remsen. Both would be better choices for Cillizza’s list than Donoghue and Burbank.

The thickly-laden irony isn’t stopping the Free Press from celebrating its dubious honor. Three Freeploid functionaries have Tweeted the big news; here’s one of them.

Nice, Aki. I’m sure your former colleagues are sharing a bitter laugh.

As for Cillizza, he clearly doesn’t know much about Vermont media. He completely ignores VTDigger and VPR, two of the three best outlets for state political news. The Digger diss isn’t surprising, since he named it the Best Political Blog in Vermont two years ago. Small problem there: VTDigger isn’t a blog. It’s a professionally staffed news operation.

Cillizza does acknowledge the possible incompleteness of his list, and he has added people to it since he first posted it. I’ve sent him an email with my suggestions, and perhaps he’ll include them.

My top three noms: Anne Galloway of VTDigger, Peter Hirschfeld of VPR, and Neal Goswami of the Vermont Press Bureau. If I expanded things a bit, I’d include Dave Gram of the AP, Stuart Ledbetter of WPTZ, Bob Kinzel of VPR, and Mark Johnson of WDEV. Mark doesn’t report as such, but his daily radio show is the best single platform for discussion of state politcs and policy.

On the subject of Vermont’s true Best Political Blog, modesty forbids me.

Mikey Pom-Poms is at it again

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I can explain everything.

Nobody was Tweeting, officer. We were all in the back seat singing.

Last night saw another outbreak of TwitBoasting from serial offender Michael Townsend, the Burlington Free Press’ Cheerleader-In-Chief.

The first one wasn’t that bad:

Okay, fine, share a little love with one of your hard-working scribes. Nothing wrong there. But then came Step Two in Townsend’s descent.

Mike Donoghue was at the Statehouse yesterday, but I’m told he wasn’t covering Shumlin’s budget address; he was dogging people about this delinquent-taxpayer list. Short version: earlier this week, the state released a list of its top 100 tax scofflaws — 50 business, 50 individual. But just the names; not the amounts owed. Donoghue is seeking the amounts.

That’s the big scoop. On the day of Gov. Shumlin’s budget address, when he’s setting the agenda for this legislative session, the Free Press’ senior reporter is stirring up a tempest in a transparency teapot.

And then came Townsend’s topper:

Oh, Mikey.

Look, it’s perfectly okay to talk up your own reporters. But why do you have to run down everybody else?

As I’ve said before, this is why all the other reporters think Townsend is a jerk and the Free Press is a fount of institutional arrogance.

Also, please lose the fake cowboy stuff. Donoghue and Burbank are good reporters; they’re not The Magnificent Seven.

The current bee in Mike Donoghue’s bonnet

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There was laughter in the room, I’ve been told, when the Burlington Free Press’ Mike Donoghue asked Gov. Shumlin about the possible removal of Rep. Mary Morrissey from a House committee.

HIs question came near the end of Shumlin’s Monday news conference. The laughter came from several other reporters, who saw Donoghue’s question as basically irrelevant, and just another example of his dogged pursuit of a story he’s decided is important. Sometimes he’s right, sometimes he’s wrong.

In this case, yep, he’s wrong.

Undeterred by the audible scorn of his colleagues, Donoghue wrote an article about Shumlin’s Monday presser — an event that produced actual news — that focused primarily on his prefabricated Morrissey “controversy.” Of all the stuff going on this week at the Statehouse, it’s a sad joke that Donoghue and his paper have devoted so much time to such an insignificant story. And provided so little coverage of anything else.

For those just joining us, Morrissey has been an unproductive policy scold as a member of the House Health Care Committee. Apparently, House Speaker Shap Smith is considering a reassignment. As is his right: the Speaker makes the committee assignments, and reshuffles are commonplace.

But Donoghue has fixed upon Morrissey as a champion of transparency because once, at a committee hearing, she asked a question:

… Morrissey questioned Health Access Commissioner Mark Larson [about security breaches in Vermont Health Connect] and was told, “We have no situation in which someone’s private information has been breached.”

The problem was there had been a serious breach of information. Larson later offered an apology to the Health Care Committee.

Her questioning was standard practice for any committee member. But because of Larson’s misleading answer, Donoghue is now crediting Morrissey for “helping expose a major security breach… in the Vermont Health Connect computer system.” If she played any role beyond asking her question, Donoghue does not so inform us.

He also takes some groundless shots at Morrissey’s critics (including me, I guess):

Morrissey been criticized for not buying into all the health care plans rolled out by Democrats.

Not quite, Mikey. It’s not that she failed to buy into “all the health care plans” from Democrats; I wouldn’t expect any Republican to do so. The truth is that she routinely slammed any Democratic plan. There was no thought, no discernment; just a consistent, unproductive, ideological gainsaying.

Only after Donoghue thoroughly explores the subject that prompted his colleagues’ laughter does he actually report the substance of Shumlin’s news conference: a new survey has found a sharp drop in uninsured Vermonters.

The Vermont Household Health Insurance Survey found that about 19,000 of the 43,000 Vermonters without insurance during the 2012 survey now are covered, Shumlin said.

The state’s uninsured rate dropped from 6.8 percent to 3.7 percent, the second-lowest rate in the country. Only 1 percent of Vermont children under age 18 are not covered, the lowest rate in the country, Shumlin said.

Those are some very encouraging figures about the first year of health care reform. But somehow Donoghue concluded that this development was less newsworthy than the routine reassignment of a legislative backbencher. But he has already elevated her to the lofty position of Public Interest Whistleblower, which she is not. I fully expect more breathless Morrissey coverage when the committee assignments actually come out.

Because boom or bust, Mike Donoghue sticks to his guns.

Freeploid clickbait FAIL

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The Burlington Free Press is allegedly entering the Brave New World of Journalism’s Future: an age with resource-starved newsrooms, reporters scrambling to fill multiple “content streams,” Orwellian job titles like “Content Coach” and “Engagement Editor,” little or no copy editing, and a fixation on “audience analytics,” i.e. clickbait. Stories will be pursued, written, and even rewritten in response to the perceived interests of the audience. And note: we’re not readers anymore. We’re “news consumers” or something.

But if this is indeed the future of the Freeploid, it’s off to a rocky start. Yesterday, we learned the identity of Ebola Guy, the Vermonter who spent most of October in West Africa on a solo mission to fight Ebola.

It’s a big damn sexy story that pushes all the right buttons. It’s got important public policy implications: How did this guy get to Africa and back? How was his return handled by local, state, and federal authorities? What does it say about our Ebola containment efforts?

At the same time, it’s an eyeball grabber. Peter Italia is a full-on nutball who has claimed to use time travel and other “special powers” to cure disease and bring back people from the dead. His Facebook page is chock full of juicy stuff, chronicling his trip to Africa and detailing many of his cherished beliefs.

Also, I’ve heard that there are more dimensions to the story yet to come out — some on the serious policy questions, some in the “WTF” hot zone of audience curiosity.

The Freeploid’s Mike Donoghue managed to get quite a bit of detail yesterday and posted a story online last night.

But did they feature it on the website?

No. The primary slot on the homepage was about a high school soccer game.

Today’s print edition banishes Donoghue’s story to page 3; the front page has a run-of-the-mill piece on Vermont officials preparing to deal with Ebola cases.

And this morning, even after a solid 12 hours of “audience analytics,” the homepage STILL doesn’t feature Italia:

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All I can say is, c’mon, Freeploid. If you’re going to burn your journalistic soul on the altar of “audience analytics,” you could at least do a good job of it.

Postscript. The Freeploid pulls an old favorite trick in Donoghue’s piece: doggedly refusing to give credit to other media outlets. You wouldn’t know it by reading Donoghue, but it was WCAX-TV who first identified Italia and scored a phone interview with him. I’ve said it before, but this is the kind of thing that makes the Free Press disliked by many others in the media world. It’s arrogant, it’s wrong, and in the long run it does nothing to elevate the Freeploid or diminish its rivals.

Freeploid Follies, Weekend Catchup Edition

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Things are getting a little sketchy at the Burlington Free Press, Vermont’s ever-dwindling Largest Newspaper. I’ve got several items to report; none merited separate posts, but they make a nice collective bundle.

— Things are worse inside 100 Bank Street than I thought. And I thought things were pretty damn bad, what with almost every news staffer being forced to reapply for jobs and a new era of clickbait-oriented, sales-friendly journalism about to begin. Er, sorry, that’s the Newsroom Of The Future.

But as Paul Heintz reported in Wednesday’s Fair Game column, the pursuit of clickbait is already in progress:

Sources say that editors have become increasingly focused on web metrics in recent months. Reporters are expected to monitor the number of clicks their stories receive on a daily basis and rejigger headlines and copy to boost readership.

Oh joy. Not only are they allowing reader metrics to determine which stories they cover, they’re rewriting stories and headlines after the fact in hopes of goosing the pageviews. That’s gotta grind at the soul of any self-respecting journalist.

And things will only get worse in the NOTF, when a “Content Coach” will be monitoring pageviews and “coaching” reporters who don’t measure up. (“Say, Terri, any way you could mention the Kardashians in that school-consolidation snoozer?”)

— Speaking of self-respecting journalists, remember the Columbus Day tag team Tweetwar that erupted between The Freeploid’s Mike Donoghue and Adam Silverman in one corner, and Seven Days’ Mark Davis and Paul Heintz in the other? Donoghue and Silverman were vociferously defending the honor of their employer.

Well, interesting thing about that. As Heintz reported on Wednesday, Donoghue and Silverman are two of only four news staffers who are exempt from the reapplication process. No wonder they’re singing the praises of the Freeploid: they got a pass, and won’t have to go through the demeaning and degrading ordeal of having to re-interview at their current employer.

— Speaking of demeaning and degrading, ace journalism watchdog Jim Romenesko reports that Gannett is offering opportunities for current staffers to, ahem, adjust to the Newsroom Of The Future. Gannett’s holding a virtual re-education camp with seminars on subjects like: How to perform well when interviewing for one of the new jobs, writing “sharper” headlines, achieving better SEO for stories, using social media to “establish your brand and personality,” and “cleaning your copy.” The latter will be crucial because the NOTF will include far fewer copy editors, and reporters will be expected to submit publication-ready stories.

You know, if by some hellish circumstance I was offered a job at Bank Street, I’d turn it down. It’s sounding like a truly awful place to work.

— Speaking of truly awful, my Friday Freeploid arrived with a big fat section on pink newsprint. The front page bore the image of a pink ribbon, the Freeploid’s Circle-B logo, and the title “Making Strides: Breast Cancer Awareness.” Inside were a handful of heartwarming articles about cancer survivors and people involved in fundraising, treatment, and research.

But mostly, the 32 pages (!) were full of advertisements by local businesses proclaiming their support for the fight against breast cancer.

Nowhere, as far as I could see, was there any statement that any of the hefty proceeds from this special section would go to cancer research or treatment. Nope, it was the Freeploid cashing in on an emotionally appealing cause. And their many advertisers doing the same.

— Finally, an odd note from late Saturday night. Apparently, the Newsroom Of The Future was empty except for the gray countenance of Executive Editor and Chief Corporate Shill Michael Townsend, because Townsend himself was sending out a stream of Tweets about stories on the Freeploid’s webpage. And one of ’em was a real headscratcher.

Screen Shot 2014-10-18 at 11.26.38 PM

That’s odd, I thought. So I clicked on the link, which took me to an article about Entergy’s announcement on Friday that decommissioning Vermont Yankee will cost $1.24 billion.

But WTF is with Townsend’s gratuitous shot at single payer health care? The article has nothing to do with health care reform.

Maybe Mike was sitting at his desk on a Saturday night, Tweeting his brains out and drowning his sorrows in a bottle of Kentucky’s finest. Otherwise, how can you explain this out-of-nowhere shot at Governor Shumlin’s top priority? It was certainly unbecoming for the Freeploid’s number one exemplar of the Newsroom Of The Future.

Here’s a protip for “establishing your brand” on social media, Mike: Measure twice, Tweet once.

A picture is worse than a thousand words, I guess

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Where do you draw the line between journalism and exploitation?

I know where the Burlington Free Press draws it, after reading its downright grisly, torture-porny article on yesterday’s testimony in the Allen Prue murder trial. The article colorfully entitled:

Medical examiner: Jenkins looked ‘beat up’

The Freeploid was happy to report WCAX’s mistaken broadcast of a crime scene photo that showed the murder victim’s body. (Or, as the ever-sensitive Mike Donoghue put it in a Tweet, “naked body of slain teacher.”) Which was wrong, and WCAX News Director Anson Tebbetts fell all over himself apologizing for it.

So, it’s wrong to show a picture. But apparently it’s all right to publish every detail of Medical Examiner Stephen Shapiro’s testimony, including the following phrases:

“Jenkins’ bruised and marked body”

Shapiro “…told the jury about the marks left by different types of strangulation. Shapiro said he determined Jenkins’ official cause of death to be manual strangulation, meaning done by hand.”

Gee, thanks for that clarification. I wouldn’t have guessed.

‘She looked beat up,’ Shapiro said, later adding. ‘She did not do this to herself.’

“Shapiro used a laser pointer to highlight different scrapes and bruises… including six circular marks.”

This was followed by a thorough retelling of the effects of a stun gun on a human body:

Shapiro said the effect of a stun gun is not quite the same as a Taser, since the Taser almost instantaneously incapacitates the person. The stun gun, on the other hand, causes pain but does not incapacitate.

“A stun gun that’s pressed up against your body is more of a compliance weapon,” Shapiro said.

You can almost feel the burn, can’t you?

The first sentence of the story began with “Several loved ones of Melissa Jenkins inhaled sharply and covered their eyes…”

If they happen to read today’s Free Press, I think they’ll be inhaling sharply and covering their eyes all over again.

I know how the Free Press would defend itself. It’s a high-profile murder case, the trial is open, the testimony is fair game, and The People Have A Right To Know.

But do we have to know every detail? Or is this another case of Clickbait Uber Alles?

To me, this story crossed a line. And it makes the Freeploid’s sanctimony over WCAX seem downright hypocritical.

 

One man’s cheap shot is another’s cogent criticism. Or, why I bag on the Free Press so much

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Those who follow Vermont media accounts on Twitter may have enjoyed a little Columbus Day entertainment by way of a Tweetfight between staffers at the Burlington Free Press and Seven Days, which the Freeploid has long looked down at, but which has become a powerful competitor in the battle for print advertising.

It began with Freeploid vet Mike Donoghue taking a little poke at WCAX:

This was a reference to WCAX mistakenly broadcasting a crime scene photo including the body of a murder victim, which the Freeploid wrote up at great length. Seven Days’ Mark Davis Tweeted a reply about the ‘Loid “firing cheapshots at WCAX.” To which the Freeploid’s Adam Silverman replied “Is someone from Seven Days really one to talk about cheap shots?”

Davis pointed out the “thinly veiled glee” the Free Press was exhibiting over a competitor’s mistake. Donoghue and Silverman accused Seven Days of ignoring the story, to which Paul Heintz replied that he hadn’t gotten a call back from WCAX.

This exchange included two contraditory Tweets from Donoghue. First, he accused Seven Days of ignoring the story because the two entities are media partners; and then he insinuated that WCAX won’t return calls from Seven Days because of some unstated offense.

Which is it, Mike? They’re in bed together, or they can’t stand each other?

Anyway, that’s when I lobbed a couple of spitballs from the back of the class, and Silverman went all Charlie Bronson.

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I can just see him grabbing his crotch as he hit “SEND.”

Which brings me, finally, to the point of this post: an explanation of why I so often criticize the Free Press. Or, in the words of Mr. Silverman, why I deliver so many cheap shots.

Basically, it’s all about the words of Voltaire, best known as delivered by Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben:

With great power comes great responsibility.

The Burlington Free Press is the number-one print publication in Vermont. It ought to be the unquestioned leader in serious journalism. But, because Gannett keeps sucking out its precious bodily fluids to satiate the endless thirst of stockholders, we’re left with a depleted newspaper that can’t serve its readers well but still occupies the largest niche in the Vermont news market.

It doesn’t occupy that niche in any satisfying way, but there it sits, and because of the structure of the news marketplace, nobody can dislodge it.

The Burlington Free Press has great power. To be charitable, it does an inconsistent job of exercising that power. To be less charitable, it’s an almost daily disappointment. So when somebody like Mike Donoghue or Aki Soga positions himself as a guardian of the public trust — and yet expects to be insulated from the kinds of accountability or transparency he expects of everyone else (including WCAX) — well, it makes the rest of us throw up in our mouths a little. Likewise, when Jim Fogler or Michael Townsend serve up a column’s worth of bullshit and expect us to gobble it down like steak.

Too often, the Free Press comes across as arrogant and condescending. And its performance fails to justify its overweening sense of superiority. That’s why the Free Press gets so much criticism. And the occasional cheap shot. Expect both to continue.

Bunched knickers at the Freeploid

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The Burlington Free Press’ Mike Donoghue is shocked, shocked, that someone would dare steal his scoop.

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Donoghue is referring to his excellent story on the Louis Freeh accident, in which he broke the news that an eyewitness saw Freeh’s vehicle force three other drivers to swerve out of his way. Which raises the question, why isn’t Freeh facing any charges for reckless driving or endangerment or some such?

And how Mike’s knickers are in a twist because Channel 3 poached his story.

I feel his pain.

As does every non-Gannett journalist in Vermont, who would tell you that the Burlington Free Press is the number-one violator of this ethical principle. The Freeploid likes to pretend, in fact, that it is the only journalistic outlet in the state. It is very quick to grab credit for its own “gets,” and extremely — extremely — reluctant to grant the same credit to others.

Let’s just take one recent example. Terri Hallenbeck, reporting on Governor Shumlin’s campaign launch: 

According to the governor’s office, Shumlin has spent 141½ days in the past two years outside of Vermont, which includes 54 personal days off and 35 days on business for the Democratic Governors Association, of which Shumlin is chairman.

“According to the governor’s office,” my ass. That story came straight out of Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz’ column in Seven Days. Which was entitled “On the Road Again: Shumlin’s 141.5 Days Outside Vermont.”

So, rather than give proper credit to Heintz and Seven Days, Hallenbeck called the governor’s office for confirmation. Which gave her an excuse to avoid giving credit where credit is due. Well, to be fair to Hallenbeck, I suspect that her editors made her do it.

In any case, I say anyone at the Burlington Free Press who whines about story-poaching needs to look in the goddamn mirror.