Well, it had to happen sometime. My own personal nominee for Best Capitol Beat Reporter, Peter Hirschfeld, is leaving the Mitchell Family Journalistic Enterprise for the greener pastures of Vermont Public Radio. He’ll start at VPR in January, ending four-plus years of stellar State House coverage for the Vermont Press Bureau. And leaving VPB once again with a single staffer, the brand-new (to Montpelier) Neal Goswami.

(And leaving me wondering whether to continue my Times Argus subscription.)

Hirschfeld’s coverage is distinguished, in my mind, by its combination of high quality and impressive quantity. He also has a knack for finding the key quote that illuminates a story while retaining journalistic objectivity. His writings have had a painfully small audience, hidden as they’ve been behind the Mitchell Family Paywall.

That will change with his move to VPR, where he’ll enjoy a much larger audience. (Plus, I’m sure, a generous pay hike and much improved benefits package*.) What remains to be seen is whether he can operate in the very strict time constraints of radio. A standard newscast “voicer” is less than a page of double-spaced copy, and even a four-minute feature contains a meager word count by print standards. A lot of depth will be lost, and he’ll be challenged to present the kind of nuanced reportage he’s been able to do in print.

*He gets full marks, however, for resisting the even plusher rewards of selling his soul for a PR job.

Especially since, quite frankly, I’m often underwhelmed by the news offerings of VPR. Much of its reporting is formulaic, and is often an audio regurgitation of what was in yesterday’s newspapers. Considering the relatively vast resources and budget at its command, VPR falls short on originality, quality and quantity.

(Well, the audio quality is uniformly excellent. The content is, as often as not, dull. Sorry.)  

Newly minted VPR News Director John Dillon sounds a hopeful note in that regard:

…Dillon said the move is part of an overall expansion of the station’s news coverage.

“We’re delighted to have Peter Hirschfeld on our news team. His experience with political coverage and legislative issues will give us an even stronger statewide news presence,” Dillon said.

I hope so. I also hope that VPR can beef up its reporting staff and break out of the current public radio tendency to load up on behind-the-scenes and management types. There are an awful lot of “producers” and executives on the VPR staff list. I suppose the former are useful in maintaining audio quality, which is gotten to be an obsession in public radio circles. They also, I suspect, contribute to VPR’s homogeneity; each piece goes through multiple hands before it gets on the air, and that usually results in blandification. Geez Louise, when I was a public radio newsman, I’d do all the reporting, production, and editing myself. I reported and produced entire series and documentaries on my own. Seemed to work fine. And I was often allowed to do things that were different, creative, even offbeat. There’s a lot less of that nowadays.

But I digress. Hirschfeld’s hire is good news for public radio listeners, even as it’s bad news for me as a reader of my local paper. I hope VPB can staff up quickly, and I hope the hiring of Hirschfeld is the beginning of a new and better day for VPR. It’s a good sign, to be sure.