Tag Archives: Seven Days

Adventures in Serial Journalism, Dirt Cheap Job Search Edition

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This post is about three very different attempts to cover the same story. But before we pick over the bones, let’s address the meat of the matter. For whatever reason, the Scott administration is not only rushing its search for a new education secretary, it’s spent a shockingly small amount of money on the task.

Seven Days’ Alison Novak got the goods, revealing that the administration has spent a measly $495 on a search now scheduled to close, um, tomorrow. By comparison, she noted, school districts routinely invest 20 times that much on a basic search for a superintendent, and often spend far more.

The only flaw in Novak’s story was the headline, written in the form of a question: Is Vermont Doing Enough to Find the Right Leader for Its Education Agency? Remarkably timid header for a story that clearly identifies the answer as “Fuck, no!”

I mean, they posted the opening on professional job sites and that’s about it. Maybe they also taped a photocopied listing to the agency’s front door (complete with little “Contact Us” tabs at the bottom), but whatever, it’s simply pathetic.

Okay, there’s the substance. Now let’s take a somewhat speculative walk down the Memory Lane of journalism.

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Pearl-Clutching in the Publisher’s Office

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It’s been a long, long time since Seven Days began its life as a scrappy alt-weekly in the grand tradition of the Village Voice and the Boston Phoenix. Credit for sheer survival unlike those spiritual ancestors, but it’s safe to say that 7D is now the voice of comfortable Burlington, the Good Folk who habituate Leunig’s and the Flynn Center and love to amble undisturbed on Church Street and in Battery Park.

That’s my conclusion from co-founder Paula Routly’s latest Publisher’s Note, “Burlington Blues.” She’s far from alone in expressing dismay about crime, drugs and homelessness in the Queen City. But what’s missing in her column is the tiniest shred of compassion or empathy. She seems to be describing a plague or an infestation of vermin with no sense at all that there are living, struggling human beings on the other side of this equation.

Routly seems to expect that her “beautiful burg” will forever be a playground for the well-to-do, a clean, safe, secure landscape that can be enjoyed without a second thought. She doesn’t roll out the reactionary language of “lock ’em up” or call for the BPD to let loose a SWAT team, but she makes it clear that she just wishes The Unwashed would just go away, doesn’t matter where, somewhere, anywhere, and leave this “beautiful burg” to those who rightfully deserve it.

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Private Generosity Is a Wonderful Thing. It Has Its Limits.

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Scanning through the (literally) hundreds of flood-related GoFundMe campaigns is an exercise that inspires and deeply saddens at the same time. A search for “Vermont” on GoFundMe returns more than 500 matches, and the vast majority are flood-related.

That in itself is an indication of the scope of our disaster. The results of all those campaigns are evidence Vermonters’ generosity — and proof that generosity itself is not enough. Because while GoFundMe is a marvelous platform and every dollar raised will help someone in need, the returns are inconsistent and the need far outstrips the response. The meat and bone of recovery must be an organized public effort.

This has been shown by a study of GoFundMe campaigns launched during the early months of the Covid-19 epidemic. It found that “crowdfunding was most effective in areas with both high levels of education and high incomes.” In short, GoFundMe tends to “exacerbate inequalities and further benefit already privileged groups.”

I looked at several dozen of the flood-related campaigns. There were definite signs of social inequity; as of last night, a campaign intended to help the residents of the Berlin Mobile Home Park (profiled in a brilliant Seven Days cover story by Colin Flanders) had raised only $2,310 toward a goal of $145,000, which would be $5,000 for each household. Kind of explains why one resident told Flanders “”Nobody gives a fuck about a trailer park.”

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Quick Follow-Up: How Many Lawmakers Have Experienced Homelessness?

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The latest installment of VTDigger’s series on legislative ethics and financial disclosure is essentially a redo of one of my all-time favorite stories about the Statehouse: Taylor Dobbs’ “House of Landlords,” a 2019 exploration of how many lawmakers are landlords, property managers or contractors, and how that affects lawmaking.

The answer then, as it is now, is (a) a whole awful lot who (b) seem disinclined to enact any laws that might affect the interests of the propertied class.

Well, the Digger story focuses on landlords versus renters and as in 2019, the former are thick on the ground while the latter are scarce as hen’s teeth. One consequence of this imbalance, now as then, is a lack of movement on creating a statewide rental registry. Similarly, there’s no action to be seen on limiting no-cause evictions. The very concept is gunned down in a hail of anecdotes about longsuffering landlords and dissolute tenants. Rarely if ever do we hear the other side of the story — hardworking tenants who pay their rent on time and struggle to get their landlords to do necessary maintenance or repair.

So let’s take the next logical step, shall we? The Legislature is deep in discussions about how to avoid — actually, whether to avoid — a crisis in unsheltered homelessness about to hit Vermont. How many legislative decision-makers have ever experienced homelessness?

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Is Jon Murad Really Worth All of This?

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I can’t say for sure what happened in the University of Vermont Medical Center’s emergency department last August. But I can say two things: It stinks, and it makes me wonder why Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger is so bound and determined to elevate acting Police Chief Jon Murad to permanent chief.

I mean, he’s been trying since January of 2022. And the city hasn’t had a non-interim chief since December of 2019. That’s not a healthy state of affairs.

And the ER incident, in which Murad reportedly threatened to arrest a trauma surgeon who was treating a critically wounded gunshot victim, raises legitimate questions about Murad’s temperament and respect for the law.

But even worse is how Weinberger and Murad have handled the matter since. They’ve done everything they could to cover it up and minimize the consequences. That doesn’t speak to the soundness of their position.

We wouldn’t even know about the incident were it not for Seven Days‘ dogged pursuit of the story. As it is, Weinberger managed to keep it out of sight until after the defeat of a ballot measure to create an independent police oversight board.

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They’re Just Going to Beat This Crypto Bro Thing Into the Ground, Aren’t They?

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I don’t know what U.S. Rep. Becca Balint did to so mightily offend the journalistic nabobs at VTDigger and Seven Days, but our two most prominent political media outlets seem bound and determined to lash her tightly to disgraced crypto king (and long-lost Fourth Stooge) Sam Bankman-Fried. Hell, they’ve probably started pre-writing her obituary with the headline “Balint, Beneficiary of Fraudulent Crypto Bro Wealth and Vermont’s First Woman in Congress, Dies at [insert age here].”

Digger’s been at this for a while now. Every time there’s a fresh development in the downfall of Bankman-Fried, Digger’s political team cranks out a story that reports said development and fills out the space by recapping all the old stuff about his million-dollar donation to a political action committee that then spent it in support of Balint, and hinting at a deeper relationship between the two.

It’s a nice way to fill the news hole, but c’mon.

Digger’s latest breathless retelling of the same old story refers to Bankman-Fried as “Balint’s $1 Million Benefactor,” which is about the most sinister possible way to characterize the situation. “Benefactor” implies two very untrue things: That the two had some sort of undisclosed relationship, and that he straight-up gave her a big bag of cash.

In truth, Bankman-Fried gave a bunch of money to the Victory Fund, a political action committee that supports LGBTQ+ candidates. The Victory Fund then spent it, almost certainly at SBF’s behest, on a last-minute ad blitz supporting Balint’s bid for Congress.

And no matter how long our political media keep chewing on that dry old bone, they can’t prove that Balint knew about any of this, that she’d made a deal of some kind with SBF, or that the money made any significant difference in Balint’s primary win over then-lieutenant governor Molly Gray. They continue to hint at it whenever they can, but that’s as far as they can get.

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Let’s Check In On Downtown Burling — Oh, Dear

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There’s a lot of politically-motivated bemoaning of the Queen City’s fallen state these days. Crime, vandalism, fear, lawlessness, tsunamis, earthquakes, alien invasions… but now somebody’s brazen enough to label it an “apocalypse.”

Granted, it’s only Guy Page of the Vermont Daily Chronicle, but still. He really outdid himself with this one:

Fact check, please!

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Now That’s What I Call a Perfectly-Timed Scoop

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Every reporter loves to get a scoop — a story with some impact that you’ve got all to yourself. It’s a badge of honor, to be sure. But more often than not, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

The latest comes from Seven Days‘ Courtney Lamdin, who hit the sweet spot by uncovering a lucrative side hustle negotiated by the Burlington Police Officers Association. It made a deal with a luxury condo development to provide security with off-duty city cops.

Her story may affect the outcome of the hottest issue on the Burlington ballot: A proposed police oversight board that would exclude members of the force from serving. That idea has prompted opposition from Mayor Miro Weinberger and Interim-For-Life Police Chief Jon Murad, among others.

Well, Lamdin’s article makes me think there’s a real need for police oversight, and it would be best done without any officers on the board.

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“You Either Die the Hero, Or You Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Villain.”

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Hey, remember when Seven Days was the “alternative” newspaper in Burlington?

Well, if there was any doubt that the scrappy underground outfit has adulted itself into the establishment, last week’s “From the Publisher” column settled it once and for all. If you were to Google “White Privilege,” you might very well find a link to the piece.

The essay’s subject is the former Greater Burlington YMCA building at College and South Union Streets, now derelict and unused. It’s sad, but publisher Paula Routly sees it as emblematic of an entire city on the edge of an abyss.

Paula Routly is a real contributor to the city life and culture of Burlington. She and co-founder Pamela Polston are to be admired for what they have built. In a time when other print publications are shadows of their former selves, Seven Days is an invaluable part of Vermont’s media ecosystem.

But that column. Woof.

Whiny. Entitled. Fearful. Classist.

Lest you think I exaggerate, I call your attention to the last paragraph of the essay.

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A Child’s Treasury of Questions About Gerald Malloy

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Oh hey, who dat?

It’s Gerald Malloy, our very own Republican candidate for Senate, yukkin’ it up with insurrectionist fraudster Steve Bannon!

This is an image from Malloy’s October 17 appearance on Bannon’s “War Room” show, during which Bannon called on his legions of followers to volunteer for, or donate to, Malloy’s campaign.

Hmm… October 17… that date rings a bell… right, right. That was the day federal prosecutors called for Bannon to be locked up for six months for defying a Congressional subpoena.

Well, as old Aesop once said, “A man is known by the company he keeps.”

Speaking of which, do you remember the Mark Coester hullaballoo? The archconservative Senate candidate ‘s logging truck was in Colchester’s Fourth of July Parade, festooned with fascist and alt-right banners.

And Malloy for Senate campaign materials.

“…the company he keeps.”

Malloy has been the Republican nominee for more than two months. For the most part, the media coverage of him has been awfully polite and incurious. (One exception: Kevin McCallum’s deep dive in Seven Days.) This is probably because no one thinks he’s going to win, so why bother going beneath the surface? But still, he is a major party candidate for high office. He ought to get as much scrutiny as any other candidate.

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