Thursday, January 2, 2020
The outlet announced Walters' hiring Thursday evening. In an interview with Seven Days, Walters said he'll work "slightly less than full time" covering the Vermont legislature and state politics. He'll also contribute to Digger's Final Reading email newsletter.
"There is a need, in some way or another, to hold politicians and political leaders to account," Walters said. "I think there’s a need for commentary with something of an edge to it, and apparently, Digger feels the same way."
Tags: John Walters , Media Note , VTDigger.org , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Sample News Group announced on Wednesday that Steve Pappas, 51, has been selected to lead the papers ahead of the impending departure of general manager Rob Mitchell, whose family previously owned and operated the papers for nearly 80 years.
Pappas will keep his executive editor title and oversee the daily operations of both newspapers as part of a four-person leadership team, he said. As publisher, Pappas plans to focus on both improving the papers' news content and “aggressively” building its sales force.
Tags: Steven Pappas , Times Argus , Rutland Herald , Barre , Sample News Group , Publisher , Web Only , Image
Friday, December 6, 2019
The ruling, while narrow, also endorsed the district's unusual decision last year to sue the newspaper rather than respond to its public records request.
The case began in 2018 after the newspaper sought details of former Burlington Tech interim director Adam Provost's departure in January of that year for unspecified medical reasons. Provost had been on administrative leave for months before he resigned.
A Seven Days reporter asked the school district to provide any separation agreement involving Provost. The district believed the document was public under state law but said that Provost promised to sue unless certain details were withheld.
So the district drew up the legal equivalent of a football punt. Instead of responding to the newspaper's records request, it filed a lawsuit asking a judge to decide what it was obligated to release. The filing, known as a request for declaratory judgment, named Provost and Seven Days as defendants.
Tags: public records , Burlington School District , Adam Provost , Seven Days , Vermont Supreme Court , Web Only , Image
Monday, December 2, 2019
Report for America selected VTDigger.org, Vermont Public Radio and the Valley News to join about 160 other media outlets taking part in its 2020 partnership program, which it calls a “direct response to the worsening crisis in local news across the country.”
“We offer a pretty simple fix for news holes in communities throughout the country — local reporters on the ground, who hold leaders accountable and report on under-covered issues,” Steven Waldman, president and cofounder of Report for America, said in a press release.
Tags: Report for America , media outlets , Valley News , VTDigger , Vermont Public Radio , VPR , newsrooms , Web Only , Image
Friday, November 29, 2019
"Your support has far exceeded our expectations; however, we’ve fallen short of other goals, so we are shutting down the site while we reassess our future," the email reads.
HereCast launched in 2015 as DailyUV, offering user-generated news, blogs and notices focused on the Upper Valley. The company rebranded in July and expanded the platform statewide, though it was not yet profitable, founder and CEO Watt Alexander said at the time. HereCast paid its content creators based on how many clicks their content generated.
DailyUV attracted about 80,000 monthly visitors and more than 100 regular bloggers, Seven Days reported earlier this year. It paid out $71,000 to content creators over a recent 12-month period, according to the company.
Alexander envisioned the platform as a space where professional news organizations and citizen bloggers would publish side by side.
But in a note published Friday to the site under his username, Brave Little Startup, Alexander said local newspapers haven't wanted to collaborate with HereCast.
Alexander has used the platform in the last couple of months to advance his critiques of the Valley News, which he claimed has refused to run HereCast advertisements or credit its users for breaking local stories. He also wrote that a recent Seven Days profile of the company evidenced traditional journalism organizations' "provincial" attitudes about what's news.
Alexander did not respond to an emailed request for comment. His post referred to the shutdown as a "hiatus" and asked supporters to "stay tuned."
Tags: HereCast , DailyUV , media , local news , Watt Alexander , Valley News , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Emergency responders extinguished the fire by 6 p.m., according to WCAX general manager Jay Barton, and nobody was injured. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
The remote tower, owned by WCAX, hosts antennae used by Vermont Public Radio and Vox AM/FM, but only a television antenna shared by WCAX and WPTZ appears to have been damaged, Barton said.
According to Barton, roughly half of his station's viewers have lost access to its broadcast, including customers of the Dish Network, DirecTV, Spectrum, Burlington Telecom and Vermont Telephone Company. Comcast/Xfinity customers were unaffected.
WCAX employees first noticed technical issues at around 2:45 p.m., Barton said. An engineer dispatched to the mountain saw the fire and reported it to authorities at around 4 p.m.
Barton said his station hopes to restore access to most viewers by Wednesday or Thursday, though it's unclear how long it will take to repair the antenna. "If it's prolonged, it becomes a very large problem," he said.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Students at the state college in southern Vermont began reporting and writing stories this fall with the hopes of landing bylines in newspapers including the Rutland Herald and the Mountain Times, as well a website called the Community News Service.
The University of Vermont in Burlington launched the site this year, when it began offering students a new minor — reporting and documentary storytelling. UVM also created an internship for its students to learn news and feature writing and work with a professional editor who vets stories for publication in area newspapers.
Students' stories have appeared in outlets including the Shelburne News, the Waterbury Record and the Other Paper.
Tags: Castleton University , University of Vermont , Burlington , journalism , David Blow , Richard Watts , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Flanders, a 2015 graduate of Saint Michael’s College, spent four years covering Chittenden County for the Essex Reporter, Colchester Sun and Milton Independent. Last year, he helped uncover an embezzlement scheme at a Milton youth football program, resulting in the arrest of the nonprofit’s president. The series earned him and cowriter Courtney Lamdin — also now a Seven Days staff writer — a first-place award in investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper & Press Association.
According to Seven Days news editor Matthew Roy, Flanders is “a talented, ambitious journalist who has been punching above his weight” at the Chittenden County weeklies.
Tags: Colin Flanders , hires , Seven Days , Montpelier , Statehouse , Web Only , Image
Friday, October 11, 2019
Cengeri was probably best known to public radio listeners as host of "VPR Café," a weekly segment focused on food and agriculture that was axed in July. His primary job was producing the station's daily public affairs program, "Vermont Edition"; he also occasionally guest-hosted it.
According to Cengeri, VPR president and chief executive officer Scott Finn intercepted him in the station's Colchester parking lot Thursday as Cengeri was returning from vacation. Finn led him into a conference room, terminated him and did not allow him to clean out his desk, Cengeri said.
"It was a surprise. It was definitely a surprise," he said. "There was no warning that there was anything amiss."
Tags: media , Vermont Public Radio , Ric Cengeri , Scott Finn , Vermont Edition , Web Only , Image
Monday, September 9, 2019
"Letting go is tough. Anytime a newspaper closes, the community it served loses," publisher Suzanne Gillis wrote in the farewell issue that hit newsstands on September 6.
The tribute examines the paper's legacy of reporting on news, arts and the politics of everything from reproductive rights to feminism.
"We did not cover fashion, diets or hairdos," Gillis wrote. As the publication sought to shine a spotlight on the inequities facing women, it rarely included men's viewpoints because, Gillis explained, "they were massively covered in the dominant male-owned and -staffed media."
The goodbye includes a note that the paper is for sale for an unspecified price.
Tags: Vermont Woman , media , newspaper , Web Only , Image