( – promoted by Jack McCullough)
Vtdigger has only been online since September 2009, but already Anne Galloway’s journalistic venture has met its objective “to mine the gaps in Vermont news coverage.” Recently Vtdigger filled the void left by lack of newspaper focus in covering the governor’s race. As noted here, Seven Days, and Vermont News Guy, the Environmental Action Conference in Randolph acted as the kick-off to Democratic primary season, but most news organizations missed the obvious headline that all five pledged to shut down Vt Yankee. Since our interview, Anne has also started sorting candidates’ answers by topic with the League of Conservation Voters debate. This kind of video editing and uploading is an incredibly time consuming process but the result is a handy way to compare the candidates.
Not content to cover event-based stories, Vtdigger has gone deep on complicated issues as well. The quantity and quality of stories Vtdigger has posted on Vermont’s dairy crisis is amazing given the short period of time the site has been in existence. And just this week again, GMD frontpaged VTdigger’s work digging behind the headlines to give voice to Curtis Sinclair and discover the story behind the State Hospital’s canteen shutdown.
VTdigger is not a blog, but it complements VT’s blogosphere nicely. The site recently underwent a facelift and there are more changes in the works to make it more interactive. To that end, Anne has plans to structure citizen involvement in covering local and statewide political issues. And vtdigger is also practically engaging the question of how to make professional journalism economically viable in the 21st century. With underwriting, grant, subscriber, and donation support, and a whole lot of excellent journalism, Vtdigger will no doubt be a durable excavator on the VT media landscape.
visited VTdigger for the first time.
I was suprised to see a piece from the VT Chamber on the front page. This piece had already appeared in various papers around the state and was offered with no commentary from the editor(s). Seems to me the Chamber has ample access to MSM so why should an “alternative” web site give them more exposure? This does not seem to be a case of mining a gap in VT news coverage.
Having said that, I wish them well (and left a response to Betsy Bishop’s piece).
I was dismayed to hear on this video that Anne Galloway, whose work I have admired, has apparently absorbed the Republican budget narrative.
At 4:58 on this interview, she says “at a time when the budget is going to have to be slashed,” in the context of preserving environmental priorities.
Perhaps I’m being naive but it seems to me there are choices to be made, and “slashing” is only one of them, as Doug Hoffer — and, I might add, Doug Racine — have said before. Just last Friday night, Doug Racine proposed dealing with the major budget deficit of $80 million and counting by a combination of budget cutting (or, as Shap Smith put it, “restructuring government”), using perhaps half of the “rainy day fund,” and short-term income tax increases, with more coming from those most able to pay.
The Republicans are going to hammer on slashing services (although they will likely call them “expenses”) while targeting services for abused children and elders (including inspections of senior care facilities), folks who need mental health assistance, who knows, perhaps even the DMV (everything except the Administration’s budget, the handful of Auditor cronies who got raises recently, and the governor’s 14 spokesmodels), to balance the budget.
It is unfortunate that Anne used such one-sided and partisan language. I expected better.
NanuqFC
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. ~ Edmund Burke (1729-1797, Irish philosopher & statesman)