Vermont News Guy » journalism

The News Hole

admin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:34:53 +0000

A decade ago, three reporters from the Burlington Free Press covered Vermont’s State Legislature, and the paper kept an office in Montpelier all year. One reporter in the Associated Press’s Montpelier Bureau was in the Capitol just about all day, every day, while the Legislature was in session. On some days, two reporters from WCAX-TV (Channel 3) were in the Capitol.

Now Kristin Carlson covers the Legislature by herself for Channel 3. She’s quite good, but one person can not do as much as two. The Free Press Montpelier operation is down to two reporters while the Legislature is in town. The paper shuts down the office shortly after the session ends, said political reporter Terri Hallenbeck.

“Certainly three people can do more than two people,” she said. “There’s more chance to have some vision. Press corps-wide is where you really begin to see the over-all impact.”

She’s right, because the Free Press is not the only news organization that has cut back on covering government and politics in Vermont. So has the Associated Press, and it was the AP’s daily coverage of routine matters that gave the other bureaus the “luxury,” as Hellenbeck put it, to probe more deeply into what was going on in state government.

Now the AP reporter who covers the Legislature is at the Capitol only sometimes, Hallenbeck said.

That means that she and her colleague Nancy Remsen have to cover that day-to-day routine stuff themselves, leaving them less time to poke around to see where state agencies might be squandering your tax money, or whether a special interest is sneaking into passage a bill that would benefit it and nobody else, or whether a piece of legislation is being held up because Legislator A got mad at something Legislator B said over dinner at Sarducci’s the other night.

“I really have felt that,” Hallenbeck said. “You can’t depend on a given day that the AP is going to get that story.”

Neither can the reporters at the Vermont Press Bureau, which covers state government and politics for the Rutland Herald and the Times Argus. So said Jack Hoffman, who “got fed up” and quite the Bureau six years ago, but stays in touch with the reporters there.

Well, one might say, who cares? Isn’t this just a lot of journalistic Inside Baseball?

Yes and no. Because when news organizations don’t cover public affairs as much, or as well, the citizenry doesn’t know as much.

And a couple of things should be kept in mind. One is that these cutbacks started well before newspapers got into the financial trouble besetting them today. The bean-counters wanted to save money, sure, but they also acted on the assumption that most people didn’t care about government and politics, that readers wanted stories about murder, scandal, celebrities, and how to get rich.

The bean-counters may have been right. But there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy element in their decision, too. If you tell people less about something—and tell them about it in a more boring manner—they are certain to be less interested in it.

One result is a certain amount of political naiveté among the populace (see yesterday’s post, “Democratic Delusions”). Beyond that, when people learn less about something, they know less about it. In theory “new media” (blogs and the like) can fill in where traditional “old media” outlets have cut back. But Vermont’s blogs don’t really pretend to inform, merely to convey the blogger’s passions.

The result? Vermonters are politically/governmentally ignorant.

Which renders them apathetic, to their own disadvantage. That’s their money the legislators are appropriating and the agencies are spending. If the news media do not tell them how, where, and why they are doing it, they won’t know.

Maybe they don’t care. Worse, maybe the news muckety-mucks (as opposed to the working reporters) don’t care either. News coverage has not just gotten sparser; it’s gotten blander. And maybe the cause of that is more cultural than economic.

One reason he quit the news business, Hoffman said, was the increasing disinclination of some of his colleagues and bosses to challenge authority. To illustrate, he recounted a conversation he did not personally hear, but one participant was then-Times-Argus reporter Dianne Derby (now at Vermont Law School) who confirmed it.

Back in 2000, the newspaper had a page one story about a town clerk who quit. This was one of the town clerks who had objected to the then-new Civil Unions bill, proclaiming they would refuse to issue licenses for the unions as the new law required.

But the story made no mention of civil unions. Derby asked why. Well, said an editor, the clerk herself had said nothing about the issue. But there was such an obvious connection, Derby said. Just “connect the dots.”

At which point the editor said, “It’s not our job to connect the dots.”

Uh, it is actually. Just as it is the job of reporters not to take everything (or anything) they are told at face value, Just as it’s a basic responsibility of a state’s largest newspaper (that’s the Free Press) to staff its state capital year-round.

And maybe of the general public to complain more vigorously when these jobs are not done.—-Jon Margolis

Introducing VermontNewsGuy Blog

admin — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:57:37 +0000

By Jon Margolis

Hello, and welcome to the birth of Vermont Newsguy.com, which aspires to fill a hole: the dearth of journalism in Vermont

Oh, there are good reporters here. They work for the Free Press and the Times-Argus, for the Associated Press and VPR, for 7 Days, and, yeah, even for the TV stations.

But for good journalism, good reporters are merely necessary ; they are not sufficient. With few exceptions, news coverage in Vermont is superficial. It barely informs; worse, by its shallowness, it effectively misinforms.

Meaning that it injures the public it is supposed to serve.

The newspapers have smaller staffs and less space. Radio and television news are, as they have always been, little more than headline services. OK, VPR is a headline service plus insight. But it doesn’t devote much time to state and local news.

Then there’s the excess of prudence that leads to timidity and transforms reporting into stenography. So if the reporter accurately quotes Sen. Smith saying that the world is flat, and then Sen. Jones arguing that it is round, the job has been done.

In mid-November, for instance, on the release of a report contending that closing the Vermont Yankee power plant in 2012 would mean the end of life as we know it, journalists dutifully recounted the report’s conclusions, and the challenges to them by the usual suspects. But no one actually read the report and checked its assumptions and conclusions with experts who don’t have a dog in this fight.

Similarly, every year the state spends huge gobs of money. State officials and legislators are quoted on the wisdom or necessity of these outlays, but rarely does a reporter examine the documents showing just how much is being spent for what.

So I will. Not only check how much is being spent for what, but on who is benefitting from the spending, and how much those beneficiaries contributed to the office-holders dolling out the dough.

Not everything all by myself, of course. As the product of a one-man band, this site will be selective rather than comprehensive. Nothing about auto accidents and crime (unless it becomes a political/legislative issue, a la pedophilia). Probably not much about raunchy pictures on snowboards.

No opinion, either. Note the name: Vermont Newsguy. You will read here news—substantive information about Vermont’s government, politics, economics, society, and culture. No crusades. I am out to describe the world, not change it. The perspective will be neither liberal nor conservative. Nor centrist, for that matter. Ideology, in the words of a veteran newspaper columnist (me, actually) is an impediment to clear thinking. Clear thinking will be one goal.

Liveliness will be another. There is no law of man, woman, or nature that requires “serious” journalism to be dull. I want to inform you, not bore you. Anything—yes even stories about electric utility rates or tax assessments—can be written well.

No opinion on this end doesn’t mean none on yours. Comments are welcome. So are comments on the comments. (You’ll have to register, but that’s free). This site will be mostly “old media” in that one experienced reporter will be responsible for the content. But let’s include a touch of participatory, inter-active “new media.” If you have ideas, complaints, insights, by all means voice them. Maybe we can get a conversation going.

No opinion doesn’t mean no assessment, or no analysis, especially about politics. Nor does it mean not calling nonsense nonsense. In the example above, Sen. Smith is wrong; the world is round and a reporter should say so. Just as he should say that lower taxes do not always lead to faster economic growth nor smaller classes to better schools. But the same standard will be applied equally to all parties, factions, and persons.

And to the state’s establishment news outlets. The media, no less than the politicians, will be examined. Where warranted, bad journalism will be so described. Who knows? Maybe this will be a spur to make some of it better.

The schedule will be semi-daily, meaning a posting most weekdays, usually brief (usually shorter than this introduction), sometimes breezy. But in-depth reporting requires occasional absence from the daily routine. So if nothing much happens on a particular day, and if I am immersed in documents or interviews or a legislative hearing, there won’t be a posting . Not to mention that now and then a fellow needs a few days off.

I recognize that there is a certain lack of modesty in putting oneself forward as the person who can do something better than it is being done. But it isn’t that no one else has the ability to do this; it’s just that the current system does not give them the chance to do it.

Still, I do confess to a certain immodesty when it comes to covering the news, and to writing about it well. It’s pretty much all I’m good at (though I am a fair dry fly angler and death on the badminton court ). I have a 35-mile-an-hour fastball, no jump shot to speak of, and can neither sing, dance, draw pictures, nor play the piano (which I sometimes do; you don’t want to hear it). But I can write the news, and have been doing so for 40 years. For details, click on the accompanying “About Me” button.

As it happens, this is not a unique enterprise. All over the country, from Connecticut to San Diego, as standard news organizations falter, journalists are starting on-line newspapers, though without the paper. Like this one, a few of them are one-person operations. Most are non-profit

Which does not mean they cost nothing to produce. I don’t expect to get rich from this exercise. I would like to recoup my start-up costs, with perhaps a little left over for my time and trouble. This site will be free, and, for now, free of advertisements. Donations of any amount will be appreciated. Here’s a suggestion: How about $24 a year, all at once or in installments? That’s two bucks a month, less than 50 cents a week, less than one day’s Free Press, Times-Argus, or Rutland Herald. Such a bargain.

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