Seven Days Writers Reveal What it Took to Report the News in Year 2 of a Pandemic

Once a year, Seven Days invites readers into our world. The backstories our reporters tell in this issue — the tales of how they got the news — offer glimpses of how we go about our work. You'll learn how we were able to document monthslong wait times to see doctors at the University of Vermont Medical Center, how Burlington City Hall reporter Courtney Lamdin spotted the plagiarism in a well-paid consultant's report and how great stories emerged from reporter Anne Wallace Allen's personal quest to get a dateline from every town in Vermont.

Backstory: Coldest Stakeout

January 6 wasn't circled on my calendar. COVID-19, not electoral politics, was my reporting focus, so I didn't give much thought to president Donald Trump's Stop the Steal rally planned outside the U.S. Capitol. My to-do list for the day included conducting interviews about Vermont's vaccine campaign, chasing a story involving the Tiger King and following up on some court cases. I was tired, though, because I'd stayed up the previous night watching the vote get tallied in two pivotal U.S. Senate races in Georgia. For fun, I guess.

Backstory: Worst-Timed Vacations

In July 2019, I was lounging in a Maine hotel room when I took a break from my Jodi Picoult novel to check Twitter. There in my timeline, I saw that a colleague had written the story I'd been chasing for weeks: Developers of the long-stalled CityPlace Burlington project downtown had announced that the entire development would be redesigned, from top to bottom.

Backstory: Most Fruitful Fact-Check

Kyle Dodson's short tenure with the City of Burlington began and ended the same way: with a boatload of controversy. Mayor Miro Weinberger tapped Dodson, a Black man who serves as president and CEO of the Greater Burlington YMCA, to lead the city's "police transformation" effort in September 2020. That month, protesters had occupied a city park to demand that the city fire three officers accused of violence and racism.

Backstory: Most Random Assignment

To explain how I ended up spending part of Easter weekend at a Bible reading in the Northeast Kingdom, it helps to understand how I was feeling at that time. It was early April, and I had spent most of the previous year toiling away at home, emerging from my dim bedroom-turned-office only to make lunch or refill my water bottle. My neck felt permanently kinked from doing interviews with the phone propped against my shoulder. Too often I was forgetting to put on deodorant. And while the vaccine rollout offered hope, my age group wouldn't be eligible for another two weeks. I was going stir-crazy.

Backstory: Best Hunch

In April, I was assigned to cover a press conference in Barre. The event was meant to drum up interest in the case of Ralph Jean-Marie, a 38-year-old Black man who vanished from the Hollow Inn & Motel a year earlier. (As of this writing, he remains missing.)

Backstory: Most Reluctant Sources

There are two sides to every story, as the saying goes. But time after time in 2021, the subjects of my reporting found ways to avoid telling me theirs. At first, this was frustrating: I want to include all perspectives in my reporting, and an interview is often the only way to fully represent an individual's view of the facts. But, after a while, the lengths to which some people went to avoid answering questions became downright amusing.

Backstory: Best Little Story in My Back Pocket

I didn't want to leave the food table at the outdoor, all-you-can-eat seafood fest at 18 Elm in Waterbury, onto which chef Eric Warnstedt was dumping steaming pots of shrimp, mussels, clams, corn on the cob, sausage and potatoes. But I needed a quote from someone in the crowd, so I scanned the attendees. My goal was to grab a quick quote about steamers and get back to my preferred activity: eating.

Backstory: Most Evasive Subject

I pulled my car into Winooski's O'Brien Community Center parking lot and braced for disappointment. To my right: a plastic briefcase containing an expensive sound monitor I barely knew how to use, despite a two-hour lesson from the person who'd lent it to me. To my left: a window cracked just enough to hear my surroundings without letting the summer heat into my air-conditioned car. Above, a clear — and quiet — sky.

Backstory: Biggest Rookie Mistake

I'd never been to Thunder Road before I was sent there on assignment in July, and I assumed, based on no evidence, that there would be food. I also assumed that at least one vendor would accept credit cards, and, if not, that there would be an ATM machine on the premises. I believed these things with my whole heart, and therefore I did not bring cash.

Backstory: Most Intriguing Drive-By

I love reporting and writing stories but don't do it very often these days; running this newspaper is more than a full-time job. Whenever I do get out, though, I talk to people, learn things and almost always return with a long list of potential story ideas to pursue. Although they're hard to swing, these forays always make me happy. That's why our special publications manager, Carolyn Fox, suggested that I take a plum assignment for the July edition of Staytripper: exploring the Northeast Kingdom area around Lake Willoughby and writing about it. Better yet, my research would involve staying overnight. It was the closest I got over the summer to a real vacation.

Backstory: Nastiest Blowback

"You are a dirtbag." That was the entirety of the first email I received after a story I wrote about my visit to a new indoor shooting range in Waterbury, where I fired a 9mm pistol and a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle. In the days and weeks that followed, gun lovers across the nation pumped round after round of derision into my inbox.

Backstory: Twistiest Route

I'm not surprised that a story about mealworms is my most memorable of 2021. Even if it had gone according to plan, I'd still tell all my friends about hanging out underneath the parlor of an old dairy barn, surrounded by 2.4 million wriggling insects. It really grosses them out.

Backstory: Best Family History Lesson

Trying to get the story on a historic synagogue for sale in Burlington's Old North End, I didn't expect to learn something new about my own people — specifically, my husband, Jeff's, paternal grandfather.

Backstory: Best Crowdsourcing Effort

I was on the final day of a weeklong summer vacation when I made the mistake of checking my inbox. That morning, I had been copied on an avalanche of emails from our publisher, Paula Routly. They were responses to a piece that she had written in the previous week's paper about a very scary migraine episode that landed her at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

Backstory: Most Satisfying Quest

Years ago, when I was a new reporter at the Associated Press, I liked visiting obscure nooks of Vermont to find stories that nobody else was writing. Every AP story started with a dateline — the town name in all caps that indicates where the story was reported. The AP bureau is in Montpelier, but I looked for stories from elsewhere in the state and the experiences they promised.

Backstory: Closest Call

When the black bear bolted from a cornfield in front of our pickup shortly after dawn, my initial reaction was relief. Photographer Jeb Wallace-Brodeur and I had gotten up before 4 a.m. to drive to Newbury to catch a bear hunt in action, and it now seemed like our efforts would not be in vain.

Backstory: Saddest Epilogue

I never met Anne Saxelby, who opened Saxelby Cheesemongers in New York City in 2006, but I interviewed her via email and phone probably half a dozen times. Anne was a staunch, vocal supporter of the American artisan cheese movement before many people took it as seriously as the centuries-old European cheesemaking tradition. And she put her money where her mouth was by stocking only American-made cheeses and other dairy products.

Backstory: Best Bromance

"Tom Messner is the same guy on screen as he is off it." That's the refrain I heard over and over again while reporting an October cover story on the retirements of the NBC5 meteorologist and his counterpart at WCAX, Sharon Meyer. And it's true. I know from my own interactions with him over the years that Messner really is as smiley and upbeat in person as he is on TV. "With Tom, what you see is what you get," his friend and former NBC5 anchor Stephanie Gorin told me.

Backstory: Story That Most Changed my Perspective

It took me a while to psych myself into going to the Sears Lane homeless encampment on a cold October day. The City of Burlington was in the process of evicting the 40-some campers following arrests related to guns and drugs. According to the city, it wasn't safe at the site; one official told me not to venture there alone. City staff would be there, he said, but wouldn't be responsible for me if anything went awry.

Backstory: Most Fortuitous Lapse in Judgment

The sausages were on the grill, and the small talk went where it always does when journalists gather: to work. In June, freshly vaccinated and feeling safe again, I joined some friends for an after-work barbecue at Burlington's Oakledge Park. Most people there had some connection to journalism — a not-uncommon phenomenon, in my experience, because reporters often struggle to talk about anything other than reporting. Most other people, apparently, find this insufferable.

Backstory: Most Ridiculous Border Crossing

I had considered the possibility that my passport might have expired, but I didn't bother to check before my partner and I set off for the Eastern Townships of Québec to do some high-stakes reporting on the local sauna scene. You might call that bad planning, but I prefer to think of it as self-preservation. If I had known that my passport expired at the beginning of this year, I would have freaked out, and then we would have had to cancel the trip, and then I still would have had to find a way to write the story, minus the exciting spa material. Better to forge ahead in ignorance, I thought, and let them spurn me at the gates!

Backstory: Best Memory Maker

From the Publisher: Hope Scrolling

The Magnificent 14: Must See, Must Do, December 29 to January 11

As we enter the new year, there's no shortage of ways for Vermonters to connect, learn and have a good time. We've compiled fourteen must-do events, including New Queers Eve, the annual LGBTQ+ celebratory extravaganza at Higher Ground Ballroom in South Burlington.

Six Stories That Shaped Vermont’s Arts and Culture Scenes In 2021

The 2021 Art Shows We Liked Best, and Why

Will Gebhard Explores Shape and Color in “So It Goes” at Soapbox Arts

My 19-Year-Old Son Got Married Without Telling Me

Free Will Astrology (12/29/21)

Crossword: 'Off Duty' (12/29/21)

Clean: 'Back to My Roots' (1/3/21)

Clean: 'Alone in the Darkness' (1/10/22)

'Seven Days' Food Writers Share Their Favorite Bites and Sips of 2021

Burlington Food and Beverage Company Invests in Stowe's Idletyme Brewing

Soundbites: Local Musicians Pick the Best of 2021, New Year's Eve Music

Six Album Reviews We (Almost!) Missed in 2021

Obituary: Harold Harvey, 1941-2021

Avid snowmobiler compiled the first map of snowmobile trails for the state of Vermont

Obituary: Mark Eldridge, 1943-2021

Former Burlington director of planning and zoning was a champion for climate change solutions

Obituary: Meg Brazill, 1952-2021

Woodstock woman brought her creativity to a long career in the New England arts scene

Obituary: Patricia McClure, 1948-2021

Warmhearted and generous woman delighted in spending time with her four grandchildren

Obituary: Mona Wheatley, 1934-2021

Middlebury College graduate went on to direct the school's bicentennial celebration

Obituary: Jennifer Lynn (Mathews) Fredette, 1972-2021

Vermont Legal Aid employee was committed to helping others find justice

Obituary: Micheline Hogue Junas, 1933-2022

From an "epic love story" to travel and volunteering, Shelburne woman "lived a very good and full life"

Promotions: Welcome, Peter Dysart

Obituary: Holly Valach Hanley, 1961-2022

South Burlington woman had a contagious smile and her greatest achievement was raising her children

Obituary: Kristin Ann Johnson, 1946-2021

Enthusiastic educator spent more than 40 years teaching students with reading difficulties

Obituary: R. Allan Paul, 1931-2022

A lawyer and active community member was the Vermont Chamber of Commerce's Citizen of the Year in 2006