You may have heard about @THISISVT, the new Twitter account which will be operated by a different Vermont citizen each week. It was created by the state Department of Tourism in the vein of @Sweden and @NewZealand, but hopefully without the awkward moments. Picking a citizen to temporarily act as the voice of a polity is officially trending.
@THISISVT's goal of representing Vermont through the real voices of Vermonters is a noble one. But you know what's more fun? Fake voices. More specifically, the jokey Twitter accounts that come about through anthropomorphizing the creatures and machines that populate our state. They're a critical part of the Twitter ecosystem, making sure that it can't be taken too seriously in the midst of all the self-promotion and buzzwords. Sure, they're probably a waste of time — but at least they're fun! (Usually.)
Here's a brief guide to the parody accounts that populate our local Twittersphere. Give 'em a follow if you don't already.
(Note: This list does not include Twitter accounts purporting to belong to pets or newborns. Parents, please don’t pretend to be your child on social media.)
Knock knock. Who's there? Interrupting Sidewalk Plow. Interrupting Sidewalk Plow wh--- RRRRRMMMM BBBRRRRRUUMMMMM beep beep beep VVVVRRRRMMM!
— BTV Snow Dragon (@BTVSnowDragon) January 20, 2012
@BTVSnowDragon. The Burlington DPW’s cute little sidewalk-sized snowplow didn’t have much to do this past winter, so it had plenty of time to learn the art of tweeting. This little machines musings on Burlington life and plow-shaped smiley faces — :] — made it a fast favorite in local social-media circles. It’s not an official account of the Department of Public Works, but it could serve as a model for public agencies on how to creatively engage on social media — and we suspect the Snow Dragon gave its interplanetary cousin, the Mars Curiosity rover, a few tweeting tips before launch.
Phew! #BTVCleanSweep was fun but boy are my brooms tired. Thanks everyone for the sightings and photos!
— BTV Dust Bunny (@BTVDustBunny) May 4, 2012
@BTVDustBunny. Here’s @BTVSnowDragon’s warm-weather counterpart, a street sweeper. This account first popped up in the spring around the city’s annual “Operation Clean Sweep” street cleaning project, but it hasn’t quite got the cult following that the sidewalk plow does.
I believe that music education is important, but someone tell that kid with the penny whistle to shut the heck up. #btv
— BigJoeStatue (@BigJoeStatue) August 5, 2012
@BigJoeStatue. Twitter has a way of resurrecting the dead (or prematurely killing the living), but this might be the first account that gives life to a statue of a dead man. Big Joe is the newest joke Twitter account on the block, so tweets are scarce for now, but any character who's stuck permanently people-watching on Church Street has potential for high comedy.
Mud season in Vermont is really making me regret wearing these dress shoes every day.The move to Florida is inevitable
— Fmr Gov Jim Douglas (@JimDouglasVT) March 15, 2011
@JimDouglasVT. Parody accounts are a classic staple of Twitter — see @Queen_UK, @NotTildaSwinton and the all-time best Twitter account ever, @MayorEmanuel for the finest examples. In that vein, here's an account parodying Vermont's previous governor, which 7D news editor Andy Bromage wrote about last year. Sadly, this Douglas wannabe breaks Twitter rules by failing to announce its parody status and, worse, fails miserably at being funny. Maybe because Jim Douglas is the kind of milquetoast figure that's too boring to joke about?
Gertie the @vermontemu, you will be missed. R.I.P. dear friend. #emudragon4life [via @bfp_news] bfpne.ws/GWHMph
— BTV Snow Dragon (@BTVSnowDragon) March 28, 2012
@VermontEmu. Remember the emu that was running free around the Champlain Islands last year? Yeah, it had its own Twitter account, carrying on a curiously close relationship with @BTVSnowDragon. Sadly, the account was abruptly shut down when the real-life emu turned up dead. Awkward.
What's that smell? It's definitely not me.
— South Union Skunk (@SouthUnionSkunk) July 11, 2012
@SouthUnionSkunk. After repeated reports of a skunk on the loose on S. Union St., this wannabe Pepe Le Pew got an online personification of its own. Who knew skunks could be so sensitive? Or that they liked PBR so much?
So your saying I shouldn't eat them? RT @birddiva: release of rare turtles back into #LakeChamplain.http://ow.ly/5r4xd#bvt #vt #adk
— champ (@Champ_lain) June 27, 2011
@Champ_Lain. Of course the monster at the bottom of Lake Champlain is tweeting — and in true Twitter fashion, the grammar is suspect. Dear old Champ hasn't tweeted much in the past year, though in all fairness, it's tough to type with flippers.
There really should be a long bench in here. Also, about 40 more hangers. Can anyone bring some in? #Vtpoli #VermontProblems
— Statehouse Coatroom (@vtcoatroom) March 1, 2012
@vtcoatroom. Anthropomorphizing animals and machines is so last year. Now we're on to rooms. The Statehouse coatroom is where legislators and citizens famously mingle, and this account keeps followers updated on all the happenings under the Golden Dome. We're certain, though, that there's more gossip told in the coatroom that deserves to be tweeted.
Got another whimsical Twitter account we missed? Let us know in the comments.
When word spread Wednesday afternoon that Castleton State College's new-ish polling center would release fresh results on the bitterly contested Democratic primary race for attorney general, reporters drooled.
At least, I did.
After all, we live in one of the least-polled states in the union, leaving political reporters to simply guess what real people are thinking or, worse yet, to dust off the rolodex and query retired Middlebury College professor Eric Davis — Vermont's Pundit Laureate, as Green Mountain Daily's John Walters endearingly calls him — who will readily provide the latest conventional wisdom.
So when Castleton released the first publicly available poll of the AG's race since May — back when the contest was still in its infancy — reporters surely went straight to Castleton Polling Institute director Rich Clark to seek his insight into what his poll tells — and doesn't tell — us about the state of the race. Right?
Uhhh, not exactly. Their speed-dials seemingly frozen on Eric Davis' number, at least three news outlets went straight to the Oracle of Middlebury to see what he thought about a poll he didn't conduct.
In a story titled, "The leader is ... uncertain: Poll results doubtful," the Vermont Press Bureau's Peter Hirschfeld brings in the Pundit Laureate in the fifth graph, before quoting Clark himself saying much the same:
“I have serious doubts about the validity of this poll,” said Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College.
Terri Hallenbeck over at the Burlington Free Press goes so far as to lead her story with Davis' take-down:
A poll released Wednesday suggests incumbent Bill Sorrell leads challenger T.J. Donovan in the Democratic primary race for attorney general, but one political scientist argued the poll has little validity.
VTDigger's Taylor Dobbs, meanwhile, doesn't even bother bringing Clark into the story, instead devoting most of his piece to Davis' critique:
“I have very, very serious doubts about the validity of a poll that says it has that many people who are likely to vote in a primary,” Davis said. “I think this Castleton survey over-reports likely voting in the primary by three, perhaps as many as four times.”
Does Davis have a point? Does a survey that relies upon respondents to self-identify whether they'll vote in a snoozer of a late August primary they probably won't actually vote in paint an incomplete portrait? Totes. As I argued back in May — and as Clark himself readily admits in a summary of his results —over-reporting intent to vote is a chronic problem in public opinion polls and is exacerbated when turnout is especially low.
Would a poll of those who've actually voted in the past couple of Democratic primaries be more accurate? Sure. Would a larger sample size have reduced the poll's 7 percent margin-of-error? Mos' def. Would a pair of questions gauging the candidates' name recognition be informative? No doubt.
But do these failings render the Castleton poll invalid? Hardly. Polls rarely pin down precisely where an uncertain primary electorate stands, nor are they terribly good at predicting the outcome of races that have little in the way of precedent. Keep in mind that next Tuesday's election is only the second since the Legislature voted to move primary day three weeks earlier — into the summer — and the first such election without a blockbuster gubernatorial primary at the top of the ballot.
What this poll does provide is a second, time-stamped look at the preferences of a particular slice of the electorate — dudes who claim they're going to vote in the primary — three months after a similar group was surveyed by the same pollster. By establishing a baseline in May of where Vermonters stood on the AG race before it had truly begun — and relying upon a similar number of respondents — Castleton's latest poll tells us two important things:
Am I headed to Intrade to bet my last paycheck on Clark's results mirroring next Tuesday's outcome? No way. But in a poll-starved state like this, I say more information — in the appropriate context — is always better than less.
Without it, dear reader, you're left listening to blowhards like me — informed by guesswork, campaign spin and occasional interaction with the outside world. Or, even worse, drivel like this:
"If the primary had been held three weeks ago when the early voting period began, I believe Donovan would have won. Sorrell has made it a tighter race over the last couple of weeks."
And this:
"I would say at this point, I would give Donovan about a 55 to 60 percent probability of winning the primary. But at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Sorrell were able to pull out a narrow victory at the very end."
Both of those predictions came last weekend from Eric Davis himself, speaking with VPR's Peter Biello Saturday morning.
Leaving aside for the moment the Pundit Laureate's characteristic equivocation, what I would like to know is precisely what methodology the Oracle of Middlebury used to determine a great shift in the mood of the electorate these past three weeks. More importantly, just how is he able to pin down Donovan's probability of winning to between 55 and 60 percent? That is mighty precise.
The answers of 223 randomly-sampled, self-identified Democratic primary voters may not tell us everything we want to know about what's going to happen next Tuesday. But they tell us a lot more than the guesstimates of a sample of one: a retired professor reading his newspapers in Middlebury, waiting for the next reporter to call.
Photo of Rich Clark provided by Castleton State College.
Updated below with apology from mayoral assistant Mike Kanarick.
On Monday, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger's office alerted the local press to a "photo opportunity" that would take place on the back steps of City Hall at 9:40 a.m. the following morning. The occasion was the prelude to the mayor's first formal meeting with both Fletcher Allen Health Care CEO Dr. John Brumsted and the recently installed University of Vermont president, Tom Sullivan.
Photo ops are not a common occurrence in Vermont. They're staged publicity events more associated with the president of the United States than with the mayor of Burlington. Two other reporters in attendance — Joel Banner Baird of the Burlington Free Press and Greg Guma of VTDigger.org — said they had no recollection of a photo op in these parts.
Sure enough, though, the trio of local VIPs showed up on schedule with smiles for the cameras. Trying to follow up on last week's story about UVM's disinclination to construct more student housing, I asked Sullivan a question about why the university does not require juniors and seniors to live on campus — as, for example, St. Michael's College does.
Sullivan replied that in providing campus accommodations for 60 percent of its student body, UVM has already done more in this regard than have many other institutions of its kind. But before Sullivan could field a followup question — "Will UVM commit to building more student housing?" — mayoral aide Carina Driscoll intervened to announce that this was a photo op, not a press conference, so further queries would not be appropriate.
The White House press corps, by contrast, is sometimes able to get answers from the president to questions asked at "photo ops."
Weinberger, Sullivan and Brumsted then climbed the steps to city hall, paused for a few more clicks of cameras, and headed inside for their private discussion.
**Update**
Mayoral assistant Mike Kanarick, who was not present at the photo op, called soon after it ended to apologize for its abrupt ending. Kanarick said he wants to emphasize that "the mayor has an open-door policy." Kanarick also arranged for Seven Days to conduct a half-hour interview with Weinberger early this afternoon. A Blurt on the mayor's remarks during that session will be posted soon.
Photo credit: Kevin J. Kelley
More than 13 months after Bill and Lorraine Currier disappeared without a trace from their Essex home, a host of law enforcement officials called a press conference last Friday morning to divulge new details about one of Vermont's most mysterious recent crime stories.
With a dozen reporters covering the presser and several news outlets carrying it live, authorities disclosed that the Curriers were murdered in a random act committed by a suspect now in custody outside of Vermont.
Beyond that, federal, state and local law enforcement officials' lips were sealed. They wouldn't say who the suspect was, where he or she was being held, nor how they broke the case.
Shortly after the presser ended, though, one local news station, WCAX-TV, appeared to break the story wide open: cops and courts reporter Jennifer Reading reported on the station's noon broadcast and then via Twitter that, "Ch. 3 confirms that Currier murder suspect is 34 year old Israel Keyes from AK. He's behind bars there 4 allegedly killing a teen in April."
CAX followed up at 6 p.m. with a more complete broadcast story outlining further details: Keyes, Reading reported, was being held in Alaska for allegedly kidnapping and killing an 18-year-old coffee shop worker and using her debit card to withdraw money at ATMs all across the western United States. The station said that while Keyes was being questioned about the Alaska murder, "he told investigators where they could find the bodies of a missing Vermont couple." That intel apparently led to a dig at another Essex property and, eventually, to a Coventry landfill.
As soon as CAX broke the story, it spread like wildfire — at least, in Alaska. Television stations, radio stations and newspapers across the Last Frontier ran with the story, mostly just repeating CAX's reporting.
In Vermont, however, there was only silence.
In the six days since Reading's story ran, not a single other news outlet in the Green Mountain State has run with it.
"It is not for lack of trying," says WPTZ-TV news director Sinan Sadar. "We did call — god, not to get into a laundry list — but we called various police agencies in Alaska, Beaumont, Tex., where [Keyes] was captured, obviously the full phalanx of Vermont [and federal authorities]."
"Everyone has remained very tight-lipped about putting Israel Keyes' name to this case. I do applaud Channel 3 if they're comfortable enough with what they call an anonymous source. Good for them," Sadar adds. "But if I'm going to accuse someone of murder, I need to have that myself. I can't pass that on to another news organization."
Like other news organizations, PTZ opted simply to not mention the development pending its own, independent confirmation. The Associated Press' Montpelier bureau made the same call.
"We have tried to independently verify the identity of the suspect and so far have been unable to do so and would want to do so ourselves rather than relying on someone else's unnamed sources," says AP reporter Dave Gram.
While the AP often picks up stories run by member newspapers and broadcast outlets, such as CAX, to run as news briefs, Gram says that the high-stakes nature of the accusation merited AP confirmation.
The Burlington Free Press apparently made a similar — but not identical — decision. In a story by reporter Adam Silverman (with contributions from three other Freeps reporters), the paper obliquely mentioned that CAX had named a suspect, but that authorities — including Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan, U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin and Essex Police Chief Brad LaRose — refused to comment on the story:
Friday afternoon, investigators refused to comment on or to corroborate a WCAX-TV story attributed to unnamed sources that included the name of a person the station identified as the suspect. Asked if the name meant anything to him, Donovan replied: "No comment." LaRose, Coffin and others also declined to address the report.
Calls to the Freeps Wednesday and Thursday were not returned.
After the story broke, Seven Days briefly — and unsuccessfully — attempted to confirm it with Vermont law enforcement authorities. Several Seven Days staffers, this writer included, tweeted the news, attributing it to CAX. [Disclosure: CAX has a media partnership with Seven Days.]
Since its first reports last weekend, CAX too has been mum on the case.
"We really haven't had any new information outside what we reported Friday," says news director Anson Tebbetts. "If there's something new to tell the public, we'll tell them."
Unsurprisingly, Tebbetts declined to reveal who Reading's sources were, nor whether any are law enforcement officials. He did say that, "It's more than a single source."
"We're confident that it's accurate," he added.
According to Tebbetts, Reading was working the Keyes story for weeks, placing calls to Alaska in an effort to confirm the alleged suspect's identity.
"We didn't confirm all the information about this particular story until that day, which is last Friday," he says. "We knew it was going in a certain direction, but we didn't button it up, put it in a package, have it all complete until that Friday."
In addition to the unattributed allegation that Keyes told investigators where the Curriers' bodies could be found, Reading also cited other circumstantial evidence: that Keyes owned property in nearby Constable, N.Y., that he checked into an Essex hotel when the Curriers went missing, and that he resembled a witness sketch of a man spotted in their car after they went missing.
Tebbetts would not confirm whether it was Reading's looming story that prompted the U.S. Attorney's office to call the Friday press conference. CAX was the first to announce that it would take place. He did reiterate that the station, "did our best not to jeopardize or hurt an investigation."
"Keep in mind, the authorities had said they have a suspect, they are gonna charge someone and that person is in custody," Tebbetts says. "It would be a much tougher call for us if they were searching for someone, they did not disclose that name and that person could be out there potentially trying to harm someone else."
As for why no other news source in Vermont has picked up on their scoop, Tebbetts says he's too busy with his own work to notice what others are doing. But faced with the same decision his competitors were about whether to run with the story absent confirmation, Tebbetts said he wasn't entirely sure what he would do.
"I suspect it does rise to a higher level of scrutiny in this particular case, because it's such a high-profile case and there's been a tremendous amount of interest in this," he says. "I suspect it's at a different level than a spill into the Winooski river."
Photo credit: Andy Bromage
As we reported in this week's Fair Game, Agency of Natural Resources Sec. Deb Markowitz made a bit of a whoopsie last week at a Norwich University panel on Tropical Storm Irene recovery efforts. The ANR secretary and former gubernatorial candidate apparently stepped on her boss' message, criticizing Gov. Peter Shumlin's handling of the state's waterways in the weeks and months afer the August flooding.
The episode was first reported by Vermont Public Radio's Steve Zind, who quoted Markowitz as saying, "[Shumlin] early on made some statements, some ‘dig-baby-dig' type statements, that inspired Vermonters to help out in ways that ultimately are very costly not just to the ecosystem but to the infrastructure."
After administration officials pushed back on her comments, Markowitz declined or ignored several requests for an interview (we suspected she might have been stuck in time out), but she did send us an e-mail saying her comments "were misinterpreted."
Well, VPR has now posted a two-and-a-half minute audio clip of Markowitz's remarks on its website, providing a little more context to the episode.
Did VPR get it wrong? Actually, the comments are even worse than we thought. Markowitz bemoans the fact that she and her agency "didn't have a chance to educate [Shumlin] in advance" and failed to "manage up" — i.e. get her boss on message.
The problem came about, she says, "because we didn't get in front of that leadership message. We didn't manage up right away to say, 'Hey, here are the important messages you can get out there.' And, you know, after we caught up with him, but it took, it took a little bit to get him on the right, the right course..."
Listen to the audio yourself — or read our transcription below. Do you think Markowitz's comments were "misinterpreted?"
“There were things that we learned along the way. One is that very early on you’ve got to manage up. You know, the governor’s all around the state talking. He’s played an incredibly important leadership role. He really brought this state together. He helped direct the resources in a way that was incredibly important to the state. But because we didn’t have a chance to educate him in advance about river dynamics and the approach of the agency in managing, in managing the river, he early on made some statements, some ‘dig-baby-dig' type statements, that inspired Vermonters to help out in ways that ultimately are very costly not just to the ecosystem but also to the infrastructure, because if you take, if you dig in the river and you do it without understanding fluvial geomorphology, which is the geology of the river, then what you’re going to do is cause more problems upstream and downstream. You might be saving the house that you're digging in front of, but at the expense of the properties above and below. One thing we know about Vermonters is that we’re very independent and very community minded, so it’s this freedom and unity — that’s our motto — freedom and unity. And not only are we independent and community-minded, but a lot of us have heavy equipment in the barn. And so there are a lot of Vermonters who are proud of their contributions, they took their equipment into the river and dug out trees. I mean we had people who were actually taking trees, pulling them out. They were still rooted. Clearing trees from the side of the rivers. Now that’s a problem because that’s a part of what stabilizes our banks. And in part it was because we didn’t get in front of that leadership message. We didn’t manage up right away to say, 'Hey here are the important messages you can get out there.' And, you know, after we caught up with him, but it took, it took a little bit to get him on the right, on the right course, and at that point it’s had an impact because of course when the governor speaks it has a ripple effect and, and it gets quoted over and over again in the press, so that was, that was an early lesson.”
A few months ago a young woman named Katrina Roi contacted Seven Days. She's an intern at "State of the Re:Union," a syndicated public-radio show and website that reports on locales around the U.S. I had heard this program on Vermont Public Radio a number of times and really enjoyed its in-depth explorations of not just the who/what/where of a place but of what makes its people tick. The soul of the community, as it were.
I also enjoyed the show's host, Al Letson, who's the executive producer, as well. He came from the poetry-slam movement and really gets delivery.
So I was excited to find out that SOTRU was coming to Vermont. Tropical Storm Irene was the impetus; Letson and crew wanted to know how Vermonters lived through, and came out of, that experience, which devastated so many small towns in our state.
The program SOTRU put together took them to Pittsfield and Bethel, and even to a quintessential Vermont town meeting. Their report contrasts those two towns and how each responded, or didn't, to post-Irene realities. If you missed the broadcast last Saturday, you can download it here. Though Vermonters have heard plenty of stories since the storm of August 28, 2011, I still strongly recommend listening to this one.
But I started out this post by introducing Katrina Roi. She was looking for additional Vermont stories. I corresponded with her and — though we gave her a number of story suggestions — I found myself waxing enthusiastic about White River Junction. The town had been hit by Irene, too, but the broader story was how the place has slowly emerged from a long post-railroad-industry slump ... through the arts.
Seven Days readers are no doubt familiar with the biweekly cartoon we publish in the print edition from a student or graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies. I told Katrina about the school, and about how it, along with the Main Street Museum, Northern Stage theater company, Two Rivers Printmaking Studio and other arty establishments, had infused WRJ with new life. Moreover, some of the students who come to CCS — like many of us — love Vermont and decide to stay, thus becoming a part of the creative-economy infrastructure.
Katrina investigated WRJ herself and, with SOTRU radio producer Laura Starecheski, ended up creating a delightful short video, cartoon style, about the town and its history, in collaboration with CCS student Sophie Goldstein. The production, titled "White River Junction: A Town at the Crossroads," can be viewed on the website. Sophie's brown-hued illustrations (see image above), have a vintage look, but the voiceovers are contemporary, including those of MSM owner David Fairbanks Ford and CCS cofounder Michelle Ollie. Check it out.
When everyone at your table grasps at a basket of warm rolls as if they're hundred-dollar bills, they're either very hungry, very cold, or both.
It might have been sunny and 72 degrees outside, but inside a conference room at Montpelier's Capitol Plaza Hotel yesterday, the temperature hovered closer to arctic. A few dozen journalists had gathered for the Vermont Press Association's annual meeting and awards ceremony and, after a few hours of sitting through panel discussions, the rolls were the very welcome advance guard of our lunch, one that would almost certainly (I was told) end with chocolate mousse.
The rolls were also, indeed, vital warming devices; I was tempted to place one on my lap, but instead slathered it with Cabot butter and kept an anxious eye out for the main event.
The arrival of what appeared to be chicken breast coincided with that of Gov. Peter Shumlin, who took the podium as the plates were set down. This provided an aural conundrum: dig in and risk messy bites and loud knife clinks as the governor locked eyes with each of us, or leave forks untouched as we listened intently. Adding to the complexity was that the sauce atop the meat looked as though it might coagulate, given a few minutes.
Some plunged right in; others sat politely with their hands in their laps. As Shumlin railed passionately for single-payer health care, I took a hybrid approach: delicate, occasional slices and slow chews punctuated by long periods of fork rest and undivided attention. The meat — liberally slathered in a sort of a light lemon-butter sauce, chunks of artichoke, sliced black olives, and swirls of decorative dried parsley — was unexpectedly tender and moist, albeit bland. The sauce was a bit flabby and lacking in punch, but the olives offered up salty little hits of flavor, as did the sole sun-dried tomato I found on my plate. (Apparently I had lost the tomato lottery.)
Underneath the chicken lurked a mound of quasi-mashed (quashed?) potatoes that seemed blended with an entire stick of butter. It was comfort food for the rocky road ahead — the business portion of the meeting. More importantly, they were warm, as was the tangle of crisp — very crisp — green beans, shimmering with even more butter.
A handful of standard-issue baby spinach on the plate was untouched by knife, heat, dressing or sauce. Unsure of how to approach it — I hate the chalky sensation of raw spinach against my teeth — I left it behind, a sad little pile of green. Others had different priorities: some downed the spinach and left the chicken; others inhaled the meat and not the greens, and some — such as 7D writer Paul Heintz — had a full plate one minute (as the gov spoke, he neither ate nor clapped), and an empty plate the next.
"It was better than I expected," was the consensus of those who were still simply reporters and editors and not yet, say, Rookie of the Year (the Milton Independent's Jackie Cain) or the winner of the John D. Donoghue Award for Arts Criticism (7D co-editor Pamela Polston), both of whom sat at our table. I agreed — it was a decent, square meal, and certainly better than a sandwich from a vending machine or the bag of salt-and-vinegar chips I had lunched on at my desk the previous day.
And then it came: a chocolate mousse topped with a rosette of whipped cream. My editor unceremoniously ditched the cream onto her bread plate and then scooped out the rest of the mousse, of which not much can be said other than it was airy, chocolatey and impossible not to eat, even if it came with the kind of calories you later regret.
After hours of talk, the awards ceremony almost felt frenzied. Best feature photo? Bang. Best sports story, daily and non-daily? Bang, bang. Pots of decaf coffee arrived, eliciting a few quiet complaints ("I need more caffeine") but more welcome than the ice water that was the beverage de jour. (I thought I saw two older reporters nip into the hotel bar for a nip, then slink back in after the awards had begun. Smart men).
Did we leave sated? Yes. Some of us even left with awards —Seven Days won five. As for the governor, he disappeared without taking a bite.
Each week, Grazing highlights tasty, sometimes under-the-radar dishes and drinks that reflect the season. If you know of a local edible (or libation) worth making a fuss over, let me know: corin@sevendaysvt.com.
Vermont’s online political arena moved a notch to the left Tuesday as the state’s most prominent conservative blog, Vermont Tiger, announced it's ceasing regular publication.
Dorset writer and editor Geoffrey Norman (pictured right; photo by Lee Krohn), who launched the blog in January 2007, said that competing professional and family obligations are forcing him to scale back from posting new content on a daily basis.
“I made a point when I started this thing: there was going to be something fresh up every day and there was — including the day my mother died,” he says.
Over the years, the blog has featured a host of voices promoting free market principles, including University of Vermont economist Art Woolf, Ethan Allen Institute president John McClaughry and St. Albans Messenger publisher Emerson Lynn.
Though Norman moved to Vermont nearly 35 years ago, the Alabama native told Seven Days in 2010 that he didn’t start paying attention to Vermont politics until his property taxes tripled in 2006.
Norman says that after years training his fire on many of the same issues — Vermont Yankee, Act 160, Act 250 — he’s struggled recently to find fresh things to write.
“I just wonder if I have anything original to say about them,” he says.
Woolf, one of the site’s more prolific contributors, feels the same.
“I thought I was repeating myself from things I’d written months or even years ago,” he says. “It’s just a little case of burnout after five years of doing this. The mood wasn’t striking me as often as it has in the past.”
The site will remain online and both men say they’ll write every now and again — “when the mood strikes me,” as Woolf says. Norman characterized it as “a kind of modified sabbatical.”
Vermont Tiger’s semi-retirement is the latest shift in the state’s ever-evolving online news and commentary arena. The Tiger was one of five sites featured in a January 2010 profile of up-and-coming online outlets written by Seven Days’ Cathy Resmer. Now three of them are gone: Vermont Daily News’ Alden Pellett moved on to become a producer at WCAX-TV. Vermont News Guy’s Jim Margolis folded up shop in November 2010 and became a columnist at VTDigger, another of the sites profiled.
VTDigger, which was founded by former Barre-Montpelier Times Argus editor Anne Galloway, has thrived in the years since, adding staff and freelancers and closely covering Statehouse doings. A fifth site profiled in the piece, the liberal blog Green Mountain Daily, remains active — despite recent personnel changes: publisher John Odum stepped back from the site after being elected Montpelier City Clerk and front-pager Julie Waters passed away.
Eddie Garcia, a Green Mountain Daily cofounder who regularly posts on the site, says that he, for one, isn’t sad to see Vermont Tiger go.
“So what? No one reads it anyway. They don’t really have any effect on the political sphere here,” he says. “Conservatives historically don’t do as well with social media as liberals do — for the same reason they do so well with AM radio and Fox News: because these are one-way shout channels. Conservative messaging comes from the top.”
Norman, for one, says he disappointed by the dearth of conservative voices in Vermont — online, in print and in office — but he’s hopeful others will step up to fill the void.
“I grew up in a one-party state. I’m from Alabama. There was a time when if you could find a Republican in Alabama, you could shoot him and claim a bounty,” he says. “I think it’s unfortunate and not healthy for the state of Vermont that we’re moving toward one-party government. That is hugely enabled by the media of the state.”
So has Norman enjoyed his time in the blogosphere?
“Enormously. I’ve been in media since 1969 and this is one of the most fun things I’ve done. Vermont is a fascinating place, and I’m not through writing about Vermont.”
Vermont Republicans are bringing to bear quite a metaphorical campaign against Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin.
In case you missed it, Sen. Randy Brock (R-Franklin) prowled the streets of St. Albans with an ursine companion during Sunday’s Maple Festival parade — presumably scouring for blueberries and votes. Brock and his furry friend were, of course, alluding to Birdfeedergate, a sorry incident involving a governor-sans-pajamas that we’d all prefer to forget.
State GOPers, however, seem to believe their metaphorical march will bear fruit. Maybe they think it has legs. Four of them!
In a new web ad released Thursday morning, Brock and the Vermont Republican Party bear down on Shumlin with a parody of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “Bear in the woods” ad. Featuring footage of the governor’s favorite beast, a menacing narrator intones over a beating heart, “There’s a bear in the woods. For most people in Vermont, the bear is easy to see. But others, like Gov. Shumlin, don’t see the bear at all. Why can’t Gov. Shumlin see any of the bears?”
What are the bears? Oh, you know: Job-killing cloud taxes, our health care freedoms being confiscated, ratepayers’ money being stolen like s’mores from a campsite. The usual.
“If there are clearly bears in the woods, why can’t Gov. Shumlin see any of them?” our narrator asks. “Isn’t it smart to look out for bears, since there are bears?”
According to Politico’s James Hohmann, the ad was produced for Brock’s campaign by Strategy Group for Media, whose president, Nick Everhart, signed on as Brock’s media consultant in March.
Is the Brock campaign bearing in the right direction? Perhaps if his target demographic consists of those who tear up with nostalgia when they wistfully recall the Gipper. The Atlantic Wire’s Elspeth Reeve is slightly more charitable. In a campaign ad roundup, she rates it a “B+,” noting that, “Schumlin (sic) looks silly, but so does his opponent. But people (like us!) will talk about it…”
Maybe. But for bear-ly a second.
If supporters of a proposed merger between the state’s two largest electric companies made one thing clear Tuesday it’s this: They’re winning the inside game in the Statehouse.
At a hearing held by two House committees Tuesday morning, an all-star lineup of current and former regulators, business leaders and the execs of the merging companies — Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service — stepped up to the microphone to say, “Hey legislature, mind your beeswax and quit meddling with the merger.”
House Energy Committee chairman Tony Klein (D-East Montpelier), who organized the hearing, said that with the merger battle royale focused on a disputed $21 million component, his goal was to broaden the scope of the debate.
“It’s a $700-million-plus deal and we’re only focused on $21 million. Part of this hearing was to find out what’s in the rest of the $700 million,” he said.
To opponents of the deal, Klein — who, like House Speaker Shap Smith, believes the legislature shouldn’t weigh in on the merger — was simply trying to change the subject. They say Smith and the merger’s chief elected booster, Gov. Peter Shumlin, are bottling up two bills that could be amended by detractors to change the terms of the merger.
“I think they’re just trying to run out the session and then we’ll all go away,” says Rep. Patti Komline (R-Dorset), who coauthored an amendment that would force the merging companies to cut $21 million in checks to ratepayers.
If that is indeed the House leadership’s not-so-secret plan, it certainly appears to be working. Though Komline says she’s convinced 80 House members to support her amendment — a majority of the 150-member body — you can’t amend a bill that's not going to the floor.
Over in the Senate, antagonism toward the merger has been louder but less organized. While Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell has bucked the Shumlin administration by indicating ambivalence toward the deal, it’s anyone’s guess whether he'll organize his chamber to oppose it. Campbell did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
So with merger proponents winning the inside game at the Statehouse, it’s time for those who want to tweak the deal to take their ball and go home, right?
Not if you ask Greg Marchildon, Vermont state director for AARP. His interest group is the loudest proponent of returning the $21 million — the value of a 2001 ratepayer-financed bailout of CVPS — to consumers and businesses, rather than investing it in energy efficiency, as the electric companies and the Shumlin administration have proposed.
Marchildon believes that by crafting a coherent message — give Granny her bailout money back — and running an aggressive campaign in the court of public opinion, his side is winning over the hearts and minds that matter.
“We ran a sophisticated and very high-level campaign, and we executed it pretty flawlessly, frankly. I’d let the other side characterize how they’ve done,” he says. “What we’ve done is create an environment for real people to take a step back and say, ‘This isn’t right.’”
AARP’s public engagement campaign has been extensive. According to Marchildon, the organization has spent just shy of $100,000 on television advertisements — in three two-week waves — blasting the deal. Their latest ad, which is appearing on WCAX-TV and cable channels, debuted last night.
Additionally, AARP spent between $15,000 and $20,000 on two mailings to members who live in CVPS’s service area and who would therefore benefit from a ratepayer refund. The group spent $12,500 on newspaper ads and $5000 on Facebook ads, according to Marchildon.
“Obviously, a real question for us at the start was if we’re really going to make this case, we’re going to need a big tool,” Marchildon says. “We’ve been greatly outnumbered and knew we were going up against what most people would agree are a very powerful twosome: Green Mountain Power and the Shumlin administration.”
Marchildon says his cause has been helped by a simple message.
“One of the things we’ve focused a lot on is speaking English and what the other side speaks is utility, which is not a language most Vermonters understand,” he says.
AARP's 30-second television spot, replete with images of a hard-working dairy farmer and a sad-looking family, translates a complex and wonky merger proposal into a paired-down, emotional appeal.
“If Vermont’s two largest utilities merge, executives and shareholders will make a bundle — about $150 million,” the narrator of the ad intones as a stack of cash falls from the sky. “But this merger wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t bailed them out in the first place.”
The governor and the utilities, the narrator tells us, “seem to know what’s best for us.” But, the ad concludes, “Shouldn’t the governor side with Vermonters, not a power company?”
Far from subtle, but even those on the other side agree that it’s been effective.
“I congratulate folks who are advocating for the payback in a check,” says Klein. “I can’t go to the hearts of the people. I know that in the world of politics, that’s great politics. And it’s really, really hard to refute something like that.”
Of course, it’s all well and good for AARP to rile up Granny and Gramps — but if the legislature won’t budge, what’s the use?
Marchildon claims it was never AARP’s intention to goad the legislature into interfering with a decision on the merger that will ultimately be made by the independent Public Service Board.
“The legislature is going to do what it’s going to do,” he says. “They listen to their constituents and they speak up because that’s what elected officials do. Whether they want to move forward on this is entirely up to them." No matter that it’s his organization that’s been telling those constituents to contact their elected officials.
Instead, what AARP appears to be up to is working the referee. Though the Public Service Board acts as a quasi-judicial body and reviews only the evidence filed by formal interveners, Marchildon suspects the three commissioners might be paying attention to the ruckus in the Statehouse.
“You don’t lobby a quasi-judicial body the way you lobby a legislator and a governor. But this was a fair and honest way to bring the people’s voice into the process,” he says.
If the three commissioners are paying close attention to what Marchildon hopes the masses are thinking, perhaps that might sway them when they settle on the terms of the merger.
“There’s absolutely no question that the Public Service Board doesn’t live in an icebox. They wake up every morning, pour their coffee and read the newspaper.”
And who knows? Maybe they even watch the ads on WCAX.