Vermont journalism: then and now – VTDigger

As veteran journalist David Moats reflects on Vermont’s changing press landscape, your support is crucial to VTDigger’s continued success. We rely on donations to provide rigorous, independent reporting that keeps our state informed. Help us reach our goal of $539,000 by December 31 to sustain fearless journalism through 2024 and into the new year. Your gift, of any amount, makes an immediate impact.

It wasn’t the hot lead era when I came into the news business, but it wasn’t long after that. We were still on typewriters, though we soon moved on to computers. Even then, type came out on long strips of paper, waxed on the back, that were cut and pasted onto the pages. A darkroom technician developed the photos. Paper boys and girls delivered the paper in the morning, or it came in the mail. 

If you weren’t listening to the ball game the night before, you had to wait ’til you saw the morning paper to find out who won. At the Rutland Herald, where I worked for more than 35 years, a large team gathered on the night of Town Meeting Day to get results by phone from town clerks throughout southern Vermont and Addison County, which appeared in the paper the next morning.

All that has changed. And it’s not just the news business that has changed. Amazon, Google and others have sucked billions of dollars out of local communities, advertising has dried up, and newspapers have cut back or disappeared altogether. You can get the baseball scores inning by inning on your phone. You can sell your boat on Craigslist instead of paying for a classified ad in the local paper.

VTDigger is among the pioneering news websites working to fill the gap caused by the digital revolution. In the last 25 years, 75% of newspaper jobs in Vermont have vanished. A number of the reporters and editors whose jobs disappeared have ended up at VTDigger.

It was this declining pattern in newspapers that inspired founder Anne Galloway to launch VTDigger in 2009.

For a time Anne was the one at the Sunday Times Argus and Rutland Herald who edited the editorials I wrote for the Sunday paper. Those editorials benefited from her close attention. 

When layoffs eliminated Anne’s job, it was not just a personal loss. It was becoming clear that coverage of Vermont news was going to suffer if staffing at the state’s major papers continued to decline. Thus, VTDigger got its start when Anne began her one-woman news operation, and now it has the most robust news staff in the state.

My time at the Herald coincided with what might be viewed as a Golden Age in Vermont journalism. The Herald and the Burlington Free Press occupied large buildings in their respective downtowns and served as nerve centers for their communities. They competed for the biggest stories and helped provide news coverage as thorough as coverage at any state capital in the country. 

But it wasn’t just the big stories that were important. The papers had reporters and stringers who followed the news in small towns throughout the state. Selectboard meetings and school boards didn’t escape attention. 

Now news comes out, not just in the morning, but whenever it’s ready to be posted. In order for it to be something other than a random posting of dubious credibility somewhere on social media, the news requires conscientious reporting and diligent editing. It’s true at newspapers, as it always was, and it’s true at any online source that can be counted on as reliable. That’s why news sites such as VTDigger work to establish and maintain credibility over time in their communities.

VTDigger can celebrate its 15th anniversary because it has established that credibility. One of its early big stories was the EB-5 scandal in the Northeast Kingdom, ultimately revealed as the largest financial fraud in the state’s history. Anne’s reporting was relentless, much to the discomfort of the perpetrators and those in state government whose failure of oversight proved so  costly.

Another story that VTDigger broke was the saga of Daniel Banyai, who ran an illegal gun range and training camp in Pawlet and who had intimidated nearby residents who objected to its presence. Fear in the community was real, but VTDigger dug into the story and eventually, after a tortuous legal process, the camp was closed down. This was a local story with larger implications.

The good stories have been many, and accuracy and clarity are still essential, which is why a professional staff to write and edit the news is also essential. No one gets it right all the time, and they never have, which is why VTDigger’s motto is both accurate and aspirational: “News in pursuit of truth.”

 As a veteran of the news business, it is rewarding for me to sense the dedication and excitement felt by the largely young staff gathering the news for VTDigger. It was exciting for us in the 1980s, as young news editors and reporters, to take the reins at the Rutland Herald and guide its news coverage. It helped bind Vermont together.

During those years, I sometimes asked myself whether I should go to work for a worthy cause — the environment, civil rights, human rights — or go to work in politics. Instead, I stayed with journalism and realized eventually that in doing so I was working on behalf of one of the worthiest causes of all — a free press. I was a practitioner of the First Amendment.

One can foresee the crises of the immediate future. For example, what are Vermont farmers going to do if the Trump administration’s mass deportation of foreign workers decimates the state’s farm labor force? 

That’s one question among many that readers will be asking and editors and reporters will be facing in the coming days. As VTDigger celebrates its 15th anniversary, dedicated practitioners of the First Amendment, at VTDigger and elsewhere, will be as important as ever. 

If you can, please join me in supporting VTDigger’s year-end drive with a donation today. 

Sincerely,

David Moats

Author, journalist and editorial page editor emeritus of the Rutland Herald