Tag Archives: Times Argus

News You Should View: A Commons Trifecta

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I think this is a first in the brief history of NYSV: Three separate entries from a single outlet. That would be The Commons in Brattleboro. The honor does come with a pair of asterisks, because only one of the three is actually a piece of journalism. But all three are worthy of note.

The local impact of the Big Brutalist Bill. The Commons did something that every other outlet in Vermont would be wise to do: Evaluate the local consequences of Trump’s mega-bill. In the Brattleboro area, three separate medical centers are at risk of closure due to Medicaid cuts in the bill. Reporter Joyce Martel quotes Brattleboro Memorial Hospital CEO Christopher J. Doughtery as calling the BBB “vicious” and saying it would “disproportionately affect rural community hospitals.” Given the fact that Vermont’s community hospitals were already in severe straits, there are plenty of stories just waiting to be told in every corner of our B.L.S.

The Commons expands. Vermont Independent Media, the nonprofit that operates The Commons, has acquired The Deerfield Valley News, a weekly that serves a bunch of small towns in south central Vermont. The combined entity hopes to achieve some economies of scale without visible changes in either publication. Here’s hoping it leads to better financial sustainability for both.

Poking Pieciak. The Commons’ opinion pages were graced by a letter from Nick Biddle, a retired professor and Brattleboro resident, urging Treasurer Mike Pieciak to run for governor — or else get out of the way. Biddle observes that Pieciak has clearly been planning a run for governor someday, and is “in the leading financial position to run.” Biddle urges Pieciak to “Run, Mike, run – and announce it loudly… Or step aside now, so that another strong candidate can ready a powerful campaign” to challenge Phil Scott, assuming he seeks a sixth term. Amen, brother.

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News You Should Have Been Able to View But Weren’t Given the Chance

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My weekly roundup of the best of Vermont journalism will again be posted late, most likely Wednesday. The delay in posting is because of the Legislature holding its final vote on H.454, the education reform bill, on Monday. Had to leave the decks cleared for that. And before I can get to the best of Vermont journalism, I have to begin with a massive media fail that reflects our sadly depleted news ecosystem.

Last week, a House-Senate conference committee was meeting to try to hash out a compromise education reform bill. The six conferees (three Senate, three House) met multiple times. Every meeting was warned in advance and was open to the public. And we got virtually no coverage at all of their highly impactful deliberations.

Now, I know legislative hearings can be a big fat drag. You can spend hours on an uncomfortable chair, sharing a tiny room with too many people, and wind up with nothing at all to report.

But this wasn’t your average legislative hearing, not at all.

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Well, Digger Has Belatedly Removed That Dwyer Essay

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Three days after it posted a thinly-veiled endorsement of Molly Gray by an advisor to the Molly Gray campaign, VTDigger has thought better of it and taken it down.

Not sure why they did it, but to judge from the above Editor’s Note, lawyers may have been involved.

Ouch.

For those just joining us, on August 3 VTDigger posted a commentary by Carolyn Dwyer, longtime Pat Leahy consigliere and advisor to the Gray campaign, that laid out the attributes Dwyer wants to see in our next U.S. Representative. Those attributes closely tracked with Gray’s own biography. Dwyer also tried to posit Becca Balint as an “ideological warrior,” which is laughable considering that Balint has spent the past six years in Senate caucus leadership. In that position her first duty is to keep the caucus united, not impose her own policy vision. And the biographical note accompanying the essay failed to disclose Dwyer’s role in the Gray campaign.

I wrote up this adventure in journalistic carelessness soon after it happened. The next day, Digger rewrote the biographical note to include a reference to the Dwyer/Gray relationship.

Which only made posting the piece look worse, because it was a tacit admission that Dwyer was, in fact, promoting her candidate on Digger’s commentary page. That’s a no-no, and Digger has apparently realized that only three days late.

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Tell me again why we can’t defund the police

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One of the homey little touches in my local newspaper, the Times Argus, is the regular listing from the police blotter. This is labeled “a sampler” from the log; I can’t say how they choose what they print. I’d assume it’s somewhat representative.

Well, if it is, then Montpelier could probably get by with a couple fewer cops. The latest Police Log largely contains calls that didn’t require an armed response, and every log is simliar in content. Let’s run it down, shall we?

Feb. 1: On Northfield Street, a report of someone having seizures who was using alcohol and Valium was unfounded.

Well, ehh. Better handled by a trained social worker. Which is one of the ideas offered by the “Defund the Police” movement: Fewer cops and more social worker/counselor types.

A vehicle broke down on Main Street.

I’d suggest calling Bob’s Sunoco. Very prompt towing service. Or AAA if you’re a member.

Someone from Oregon called to report their Vermont phone number was prank called. They were told to contact their local police.

Yeah, no.

Feb. 2: A trash can was blocking a sidewalk plow on Pearl Street.

Get out of the truck and move the damn thing.

After the jump: The carnage continues.

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A Pair of Hardcore Trumpsters Are Running for Barre City Council

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Meet Brian Judd, everyone. Candidate for Barre City Council, challenging Ward 2 incumbent Teddy Waszazak. Frequent Facebook poster. And QAnon-style nutcase.

The other hopeful who features hateful Trumpist crap on his Facebook page is Timothy Boltin, who will oppose Emel Cambel for a Ward 1 seat currently held by the retiring John Steinman. (Boltin is also the owner of Delicate Decadence, a downtown bakery that you can decide whether you choose to patronize or not. I won’t.)

Each man’s Facebook feed is full of anti-Democrat, pro-Trump, sometimes racist memes and quick Photoshop jobs.

The Times Argus today published a long piece on the candidate lineup for Town Meeting Day, and filled some background on those running for Council. But they didn’t think to check the candidates’ social media presences. Which, these days, ought to be Journalism 101 for those covering an election contest. (The article, for whatever reason, has yet to be posted on the T-A’s website.) I thought the good people of Barre deserved to know who they might be voting for.

There’s more… oh God, so much more… from Judd and Boltin’s Facebook feeds… after the jump.

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Minter gets media boost

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Didn’t see that coming.

The Burlington Free Press has endorsed Sue Minter.

As have the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

Both are surprising; the latter because the ex-Mitchell Family papers are published in (1) the heartland of Vermont Republicanism and (2) Phil Scott’s home turf respectively. I mean, c’mon, Thunder Road.

The former because, well, I thought the Free Press’ endorsement of David Zuckerman sent clear signals that the paper would split its ticket and go with Scott.

Instead, we have the state’s three biggest newspapers going with Minter.

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Arrivederci, Mitchells

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Big splashy headline in my morning paper: “Mitchells Agree to Sell Times Argus.” Actually, they’re selling the whole megillah: the Times Argus, Rutland Herald and associated print and online media entities.

You see that headline and you fear the worst: a big national chain like Gannett that’d commodify and multiplatform the papers into mush, or a low-budget media outfit that would strip-mine the papers into irrelevance.

But no, the Mitchell Empire is being sold to a guy. One guy, not some faraway corporation. The guy is Reade Brower, who seemingly owns just about every newspaper in the state of Maine. From a 2015 account of his purchase of MaineToday Media, which cemented his dominant position in Maine journalism:

MaineToday Media publishes the print editions of the Maine Sunday Telegram, the Portland Press Herald, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, and The Coastal Journal in Bath. MaineToday Media also operates the news websites MaineToday.com, PressHerald.com, and CentralMaine.com.

Brower, a longtime resident of Camden, currently owns The Free Press and Courier Publications – which publishes the Courier-Gazette in Rockland, The Camden Herald, and The Republican Journal in Belfast.

That passage, you should know, appeared in The Free Press — owned by Reade Brower. And there’s the rub: when you do a Google search for “Reade Brower,” you get a whole lot of links to articles from Brower-owned media operations.

As far as I can tell, which isn’t far, Brower is no Sheldon Adelson. He didn’t wade into the newa business to further his own interests. He built his empire bit by bit, and his origins are in printing and marketing, not casinos or fossil fuels. He seems to have a legitimate desire to preserve print journalism and find ways for it to survive the modern era.

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At my daily paper, questions are many and answers few

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You know what I think? I think daily newspapers, even in this era of shrinkage, have an obligation to their “consumers” and the communities they serve. It’s an obligation more honored in the breach than in the observance, as a smart guy once said.

In my opinion, daily papers have a duty to be as transparent in their own operations as they expect other institutions to be.

They aren’t, of course. Oh, they have an excuse: they are private entitles, not bound by the same standards as public organizations (plus whoever they choose to hunt down with their journalistic blunderbusses). But to my eye, daily papers are a different animal. They occupy a unique and valuable parcel in our public common. This is especially true of the daily paper, but it’s also true of, oh, say, VPR, for instance.

If you don’t like the way a retail store does business, you go down the street. But a daily paper, even a failing one, occupies an unassailable position in its community. It is a de facto monopoly. In the way it operates, it is more like the Burlington Electric Department than, say, Walmart.

Plus there’s the principle of the thing, that newspapers expect others to abide by standards they themselves ignore.

Which brings us to today’s Mitchell Family Runaround at the offices of the Rutland Herald.

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Son of Racism Is Bustin’ Out All Over

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You think the deadly combo platter of two seemingly needless police killings of black men plus the Dallas killing of police officers by a black man has kinda lanced a boil on America’s psyche? Because everywhere there’s talk of racism — and the denial of same by white folks who are way too defensive about the whole thing.

Last week, I wrote about a bunch of racially-tinged incidents tainting the pure and blessed landscape of Vermont, and now we’ve got some more to share.

Coming up, signs that the authorities in Bennington Still Don’t Get It, even in the face of a potentially expensive lawsuit… and further evidence of cowardice in Vermont’s second city.

But first, the Burlington Free Press reports that some locals have their knickers in a knot because Ferrisburgh’s Rokeby Museum had the audacity to put up some “Black Lives Matter” placards.

The Rokeby is a small museum dedicated, in part, to Vermont’s role in the Underground Railroad. The Robinson family, who lived on the property, were Quaker abolitionists who sheltered runaway slaves. The signs were hung in May to honor “the legacy of the Robinsons as social justice activists.”

In the aftermath of the Dallas shootings, it’s gotten a little tense down Rokeby way.

A young man who came in to ask about the signs, became angry, thinking they supported violence against police and white people — himself included.

One person called and another posted a Facebook message on the museum’s page demanding the signs be taken down… By the end of the day on Friday there were at least five response that left staff feeling vulnerable.

(Note: yes, it’s incorrectly spelled “response” in the Free Press story. No proofreaders need apply.)

Funny, isn’t it, how a single incident of black-on-white violence can shatter the automatic assumption of safety that’s part of White Privilege in America?

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The decline of the newspaper continues apace

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Sad, but entirely predictable, news from the world of Vermont media. The Mitchell family newspapers, the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, will no longer be daily papers as of early next month.

Both organs are jettisoning their Monday through Wednesday print editions, and will publish physical newspapers Thursday through Sunday. Thursday and Sunday are the biggest advertising days of the week, with Friday not far behind. The news was reported first by Seven Days; a few hours later, both papers posted stories about the change online.

Many newspapers around the country have already abandoned daily delivery. My old hometown paper, the Ann Arbor News, publishes only on Thursday and Sunday. Which is a disgrace, because Ann Arbor is a prosperous city of more than 100,000 with masses of affluent suburbs on every side.

The Mitchells and their minions have been doing yeoman’s work in maintaining a daily schedule AND providing decent coverage of local news AND a two-person Statehouse bureau. The T-A and Herald do a lot more with less than, say, the Burlington Free Press.

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