From the Publisher: Listen Up

Seven Days reporter Kevin McCallum traveled to New York City to visit a safe-injection site for this week’s cover story. Credit: José A. Alvarado Jr.

I had to drive to St. Albans to find out that I’ve lost some hearing in my left ear. After a scary bout of vertigo in December, my physician at the Community Health Centers of Burlington recommended that I consult an otorhinolaryngologist, aka ear, nose and throat specialist, aka ENT. It would have taken many months to see one in the University of Vermont Health Network, so I asked about other options. But that’s another story…

Three months later and 20 miles north, I found plenty of parking and thorough, unrushed care at Northwestern Medical Center. The good news: I don’t have Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear problem that can cause dizziness. The bad news: I’ve lost some low tones.

One thing I heard all too well — on the highway to St. Albans and back — was the spring fundraising drive on Vermont Public. I don’t begrudge our colleagues the right to ask listeners to support their work, despite their enviable financial situation: The late Vermont Public Radio inherited a substantial nest egg from Vermont Public Television when the two nonprofit entities merged; in 2017, VPT sold a broadcast license for $56 million.

What I object to is their problematic pitch, which I’ve heard many times over the past few years: Newspapers are dead, so you should support public radio journalism. It’s true that print outlets are disappearing nationwide, and the Burlington Free Press is a shadow of its former self. But a bunch of us are still kicking — and being buried alive does not feel good.

I didn’t listen to the entire four-day campaign, and I heard from a coworker that Vermont Public reporter Liam Elder-Connors gave on-air shouts-out to Seven Days and the Valley News. But what about the Stowe Reporter, the Addison County Independent, the White River Valley Herald and the Barton Chronicle? These are media outlets that really need support. Plus, Vermont Public relies on their local, on-the-ground reporting to guide its coverage; in some cases, the station even puts their reporters and editors on the air. Seven Days looks to those papers for leads and background information, too.

We have collaborated with Vermont Public on at least two ambitious projects: one, with Elder-Connors, about notorious Chittenden County landlords Rick and Mark Bove; another, about the problems in Vermont’s eldercare facilities. The latter multimedia effort won an Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative journalism from the Radio Television Digital News Association.

I wonder: Is this a national fundraising approach that has proven effective in other markets? Why else would Vermont Public, which enjoys some of the highest per-capita giving of any public radio station in the U.S., willfully ignore its other media partners in the state, many of which are print newspapers doing the hard work of reporting micro-local news?

I asked Vermont Public a version of that question, and interim CEO Brendan Kinney responded with an email expressing gratitude for Seven Days and noting that I’d likely heard a nationally produced segment on air that morning.

He also sent a written statement: “We all feel the stakes when it comes to the challenges faced by local media. Every news outlet in Vermont is working to solve these common problems, and the solutions will take care, creativity, and resources. Vermont is fortunate to have a more vibrant local news ecosystem than many places, with Seven Days as an essential part. We are proud to be frequent partners and collaborators with Seven Days, and know that Vermonters benefit when we work together.”

We’re grateful for Vermont Public, too — but we’d sure appreciate a change in the way its on-air fundraising characterizes print media.

Seven Days searches high and low to find stories that are crucial to Vermont. For instance, staff writer Kevin McCallum traveled to New York City to deliver this week’s cover story on safe-injection sites — one of the harm-reduction strategies state legislators are considering to manage the opioid crisis. Both of Burlington’s major-party mayoral candidates were in favor of setting one up in the Queen City. Gov. Phil Scott does not believe such services belong in Vermont.

To help readers understand this polarizing Statehouse debate, Kevin found OnPoint NYC in East Harlem, talked his way in and saw for himself how a “supervised injection facility” operates in a community.

If I have to shout it from the rooftops, hear this: Shoe leather and newsprint still go a long way.