Contact
Helen Labun Jordan
e-Vermont Project Director
Phone:  (802) 225-6091
Email: Helen@vtrural.org

(Montpelier, VT) – Anne Galloway, award-winning journalist and founder/editor of VTDigger.org, will be the keynote speaker at Vermont Communities in a Digital Age. This all-day workshop, presented by the e-Vermont Community Broadband Project, takes place February 16 at Vermont Technical College in Randolph Center. Galloway will discuss the importance of online journalism for reporting community news in Vermont.

e-Vermont is working across the state to help communities solve local issues with 21st century tools. This workshop will highlight some of the projects taking place and bring leaders and learners together to share what they have discovered so far. Topics include mobilizing community resources during emergencies, a hands-on lab about digital tools for business, a showcase of how technology is expanding the classroom for 4-6th graders, and a preview of how town meetings can reach a wider audience.

Registration is only $20 and includes course offerings, refreshments and lunch. For a complete schedule and to pre-register online visit the e-Vermont website at www.e4vt.org, call 802-859-3090, or e-mail joanna@snellingcenter.org. Follow e-Vermont on Facebook (e-Vermont) and Twitter (@eVermont).

e-Vermont partner The Snelling Center for Government is the lead organizer for Vermont Communities in a Digital Age.

The e-Vermont Community Broadband Project is led by the Vermont Council on Rural Development, and is made up of the Vermont State Colleges, the Vermont Department of Libraries, the Vermont Department of Public Service, Vermont Small Business Development Center, the Snelling Center for Government, Front Porch Forum, Digital Wish, Evslin Family Foundation and Vermont Community Foundation.

e-Vermont is funded through a federal program for Sustainable Broadband Adoption and the matching support of local funders.

VTDigger

Contact
Helen Labun Jordan, e-Vermont Project Director
(802) 225-6091, Helen@vtrural.org

(Montpelier, VT) – The e-Vermont Community Broadband Project is working across Vermont to help communities solve local issues with 21st century tools. On February 16 e-Vermont will host Vermont Communities in a Digital Age to highlight some of the projects taking place and bring leaders and learners together to share what they have discovered so far. Topics include mobilizing community resources during emergencies, a hands-on lab about digital tools for business, a showcase of how technology is expanding the classroom for 4-6th graders, and a preview of how town meetings can reach a wider audience. The all-day workshop takes place at Vermont Technical College in Randolph Center.

“”High speed Internet is the critical resource of the 21st century for business, education, community building, good governance and communicating with friends and family. It touches on all parts of our lives,” says e-Vermont Project Director Helen Labun Jordan. “But making the best use of this resource takes the kind of creative thinking we’ll be sharing on February 16.” Labun Jordan notes that this workshop is for people who are comfortable with computers and focused on applying those skills to larger community goals, not on learning basic skills.

Anne Galloway is the keynote speaker. Anne is an award-winning journalist and founder/editor of VTDigger.org, a statewide news website dedicated to coverage of Vermont politics, consumer affairs, business and public policy.

Registration is only $20 and includes course offerings, refreshments and lunch. For a complete schedule and to pre-register online visit the e-Vermont website at www.e4vt.org, call 802-859-3090, or e-mail joanna@snellingcenter.org. Follow e-Vermont on Facebook (e-Vermont) and Twitter (@eVermont).

e-Vermont partner The Snelling Center for Government is the lead organizer for Vermont Communities in a Digital Age.

“The whole day will offer participants new ideas about how digital tools can be used to create jobs, reinvent schools, attract visitors, improve civic involvement, and enliven Vermont communities,” stated conference coordinator Joanna Cummings. “We hope that hearing directly from some of our communities about their projects will inspire other towns to adapt these tools for their unique needs.”

The e-Vermont Community Broadband Project is led by the Vermont Council on Rural Development, and is made up of the Vermont State Colleges, the Vermont Department of Libraries, the Vermont Department of Public Service, Vermont Small Business Development Center, the Snelling Center for Government, Front Porch Forum, Digital Wish, Evslin Family Foundation and Vermont Community Foundation.

e-Vermont is supported by a $2.5 million stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Additional support comes from the Evslin Family Foundation, Vermont Community Foundation, the Jan and David Blittersdorf Foundation, UVM’s Center for Rural Studies, the Vermont Rural Partnership and by donated services and equipment from Dell, Microsoft, and Comcast.

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Photo from Vermont Public Television

Vermont Public Television’s Jan. 7, 2011 edition of “Vermont This Week” features a news round up with Stewart Ledbetter, host; Anne Galloway, editor of VTDigger.org; John Dillon of Vermont Public Radio; and Jeff Potter, editor of The Weekly Commons, a Windham county based newspaper.

The news editors and reporters discussed Gov. Jim Douglas’ farewell, the inauguration of Gov. Peter Shumlin and the prospects for the new governor’s ambitious agenda.

Watch the program online, or catch it 11:30 a.m. Jan. 9 on Vermont Public Television.

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Mark Johnson on the air at WDEV.

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Newspaper pile, Stockxchng image

VTDigger.org and The Vermont Journalism Trust have merged.

At a joint meeting of the boards of VTDigger.org and Vermont Journalism Trust, the directors of the two nonprofit organizations decided unanimously to combine operations.

Vermont Journalism Trust will be the umbrella organization for VTDigger.org. The web site will continue to operate under the VTDigger.org moniker.

The online news site VTDigger.org was established by Anne Galloway of East Hardwick and began publishing on Aug. 31, 2009. According to Galloway, its founding editor, the choice to produce in-depth news vital to Vermonters online and via the nonprofit model was dictated by conditions in journalism today.

“The economic model that since the mid-19th century has supported print journalism is in steep decline,” Galloway explained. “Classified and display advertising has migrated to the Web and subscription revenue has been steadily eroded by declining readership and the availability of free news from other media outlets. Investigative journalism and beat reporting have been especially hard hit. We wanted to produce in-depth journalism vital to Vermonters within a sustainable economic model. Our objective is also to fill gaps in the media landscape. We have already begun collaborative arrangements with several news outlets.”

According to Bill Schubart, one of the five founders, of The Vermont Journalism Trust was established to fund in-depth journalism in traditional and emerging media.

“We started with the idea that a free and open press is fundamental to a citizen’s role in the conduct of democratic government,” Schubart said. “Recent declines in the funding and publication of in-depth and investigative journalism constitute a threat to the democratic process. Our model for supporting serious journalism was ProPublica.org. The Trust’s goal is to fund comprehensive reporting within Vermont and to make it available to all existing outlets in print, radio and TV. In the merger, neither our goal nor the goal of VTDigger has changed. We are essentially medium and channel agnostic.”

Galloway explained the online rationale of VTDigger.org. “People often confuse production medium and distribution channel,” Galloway said. “Online news distribution is the only platform on which an editor can produce in text, still image, audio and video. TV, radio and news print are defined largely by their production medium, whereas online news production can mix and match the most effective medium to convey information. Online, we have the technical freedom to use all media to publish news and ideas.”

Clifton said, “VTDigger.org is the ideal platform on which to build out Vermont Journalism Trust’s commitment to expanding quality journalism in all media.”

Doug Clifton, a founding director of The Vermont Journalism Trust and former editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and former executive editor and senior vice president of the Miami Herald, said the goal of the merger is to support reporting on matters of public policy.

“The complementary nature of the two organizations drove the early merger exploration,” Clifton said. “The clear success of VTDigger.org in developing consistent, in-depth reporting on government, economic, business and environmental news for Vermonters realized in part our own mission. VTDigger.org is the ideal platform on which to build out Vermont Journalism Trust’s commitment to expanding quality journalism in all media.”

Con Hogan, a director of VTDigger.org, who will continue on the combined board noted that “the time for competitive scoop journalism in print is past.”

“With broadcast media carving seconds off their delivery of breaking news, the deeper more analytical news that we produce becomes more and more suited to a cooperative model in which traditional news organizations exchange and share in-depth stories,” Hogan said. “VTDigger.org is pioneering some of that sharing now with other news outlets and the combined resources of VTDigger.org and the Vermont Journalism Trust will only enhance this model. If the goal is to better serve Vermont readers with high integrity content, then sharing that content across outlets and platforms makes sense. “

The economic model for the merged entity will combine philanthropy, foundation support, business sponsorship, and a voluntary subscription model akin to the public broadcast model. VTDigger.org has already been recognized by J-Lab and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in support of its mission to provide interactive news platforms and to give Vermonters a deeper look at their community.

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Photo from Vermont Public Television

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Before you dial 911 and inform the dispatcher I’ve stopped taking my medication again, let me tell you why I may have just elected Vermont’s next governor.

You see, during the recent gubernatorial race, I became alarmed early on that the GOP candidate, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, had hired a professional communications firm from Texas at the same time that he was running on the platform, “I will bring jobs to Vermont.”

This struck me as strange. “Why couldn’t the guy hire someone in Vermont to create his Web site? Heck, I could use the work.”

When I dug a little deeper, I became even more wary. Brian Dubie’s Texas communications firm, Harris Media, proudly displayed on their website a gallery of attack videos and smear Web sites like notches on a gun belt. These guys were the SS Panzer Division of political operatives whose sole purpose was to demonize Democratic candidates. Who did the Dems have to fight back against such a formidable foe? (At this point in time, the Dems didn’t even have a candidate as the primary results were still being recounted.)

These guys — Harris Media — were the SS Panzer Division of political operatives whose sole purpose was to demonize Democratic candidates.

I looked around. Who was the @#$%&! in Vermont equal to these mud slingers in Texas? Only one face stared back at me from the mirror before it cracked. I would have to dip my hands into the dark detritus-filled waters and create political satire and advertisements so brilliant, so biting, it would outmatch anything the Texas warlocks and witches could conjure. And I would have no support — emotional or financial — from any candidate or campaign.

Download the AnyoneButDubie Results Chart

Now as it turned out, there are some advantages to being a loose political cannon in Vermont; it meant I had minimal disclosure requirements with the state’s Campaign Finance Office and no limit on the amount I could spend on advertising. While the candidates were noisily trying to raise money and outmaneuver each other with TV spots, I was filed away in some bureaucrat’s drawer as a solo electronic “pamphleteer” and ignored.

My first instinct was to operate anonymously under the pseudonym, AnyoneButDubie, but faster than you could say, Karl Rove, I was flushed out of hiding by the enterprising journalist at vtdigger.org, Anne Galloway. Further, the state’s attorney decided that I had to attach my name to each video along with my address for public disclosure. (The irony that billionaires could remain hidden behind their PACs while I had to reveal the GPS coordinates of my farmhouse along with the thread count of my cotton Percale sheets did not escape me.)

Over the next two months, following the contours of the campaign, I created about a dozen videos, matching Harris Media attack for attack and — boy! — did Dubie’s Texans go on the offensive like hornets in the wrong hive, challenging the Democratic candidate’s ethics at every turn, and claiming he would get out a hacksaw and terrorize Vermont by releasing 780 dangerous felons from prison.

You can find my responses on Youtube here — http://www.youtube.com/user/AnyoneButDubie — along with this battle cry:

Sure. I wish AnyoneButDubie didn’t have to exist. And I wish butterflies would land on my face each morning and wake me with the flutter of their wings.

But there needs to be a level playing field, and once Vermont’s Lt. Gov., Brian Dubie, hired Harris Media in Austin, Texas — a communications firm that specializes in attacking Democrats with emotionally charged, incendiary ads — he set the bar pretty low.

I mean, watch Dubie waving his list of felons in the air … a list which turned out to be pure fiction. How do you combat this kind of disingenuous nonsense from Vermont’s second highest ranking elected official?

Some political dissidents around the world fight back against a repressive regime with theater. I have chosen to rev up my Mac and use Youtube to expose Brian Dubie for the pusillanimous pismire that he is.

Now Dubie’s political operatives back in Texas are not dumb. They know Democrats lean towards incertitude and will too easily turn against each other in a kind of circular firing squad at the slightest provocation. So one of their strategies is to weaken Democratic resolve by lobbing into the crowd a Grenade of Doubt that questions the very battle itself — watch for editorials that beg us all to be nice — and whose real goal is to keep disenchanted Vermonters from voting — the very people who need to fight back vociferously against Republican lies and distortions.

Some political dissidents around the world fight back against a repressive regime with theater. I have chosen to rev up my Mac and use Youtube to expose Brian Dubie for the pusillanimous pismire that he is.

Of course, if you buy into it, you’re playing right into Republican hands. Because regardless of what is said, the Republican attack machine from Texas will do whatever is necessary to win and hold onto the levers of power. Vermont is just one small, annoying pebble in their overall goal — to redistrict the country and regain the Presidency.

Right now, Dubie’s slick, bow tie wearing operatives from Austin are not scared of AnyoneButDubie because they know our reach is checked by the paltry limit of my pitiful credit card. But do you know what will make them lose sleep at night? The idea that Vermonters might discover their FORWARD TO A FRIEND button, causing our videos to go viral, and Everyone In Vermont watches Anyone But Dubie — for free!

Now that’s a Texas-size nightmare that can make a Republican political consultant’s bow tie spin around like a pinwheel and propel the Democrats to win the election in November.

The end result? The Democratic candidate, Peter Shumlin, won the election in a squeaker by a slim 4,331 votes — one of the few bright blue spots in a bloody sea of Republican red that election night.

Is it possible my Youtube videos, coordinated with a robust Google and Facebook ad campaign, had something to do with the narrow Democratic victory?

Attached is a spreadsheet of my most effective online ads. I spent about $3,600, generating 1,600,000 media impressions and 6,000 click-throughs. The Google campaign ran for about two months; the Facebook campaign for about a week.

My buxom Dubie Girl, who pissed off a lot of people because it appeared I was a sexist insensitive jerk, was my best performing display ad for much of the campaign, garnering a sweet 5% click through rate early on. All told, at 330×250 pixels, she achieved 1,655 clicks and 83,183 impressions. The best text ad in terms of impressions was, “Dubie Wants To Work Less. Lie In Tanning Booth More. Watch.” which achieved 109,340 impressions and 132 clicks.

The ads were targeted throughout Vermont and, on occasion, aimed directly at the Harris Media office building in Austin, Texas — the theory being that maybe the Dubie operatives inside would get pissed off, misjudge the tenor and tone of the Vermont electorate, perhaps even believe I was really part of the Shumlin campaign — I had no communication with Peter Shumlin or his senior advisors — and overreach by retaliating with full guns blazing.

Did this whole Vermont vs. Texas, David vs. Goliath, smack down work?

“Well,” as I say in my best Southern voiceover twang on my videos, “Why don’t you take a look and decide for yourself.”

http://www.youtube.com/user/AnyoneButDubie

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Last May police in Hartford Vermont got a 911 call reporting suspicious activity in a nearby home. When officers arrived at the home they encountered smoke and a naked black man. According to news accounts they thought the man was acting aggressively. They pepper sprayed and handcuffed him and took him outside wrapped in a blanket. Within 15 minutes they removed the cuffs and sent him off in an ambulance for medical attention. No charges were filed.

That bare bones account is pretty much all that is known of the events of May 29. That and one more salient point, Wayne Burwell, the black man who had been pepper sprayed and handcuffed, owned and lived in the Hartford house and was in diabetic shock when the police arrived.

When reporters asked for records of the episode, Hartford police refused to turn them over. They cited a portion of Vermont’s open records law that excludes records dealing with “detection and investigation of a crime.”

Anne Galloway, editor and creator of an on line news site called VT Digger, was one of the reporters stiff armed by the police. The Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union agreed with her that the records surrounding the event should be made public and shared her interest in determining what, exactly, went on at Wayne Burwell’s home that spring night.

Backed by the ACLU, Galloway filed suit in July. On Nov. 9 Windsor Superior Court Judge Katherine Hayes issued her ruling. To say that it did less than nothing to illuminate the events is to overstate the ruling’s logic. Judge Hayes ordered that all records created after a decision not to arrest Burwell should be turned over “forthwith.” But any record created prior to that decision would be subject to the “investigative” exemption. In other words records generated during the time the police were trying to determine whether a crime had been committed could remain secret.

Those records, of course, are the very ones that would help the public understand whether the police were acting appropriately. The records include the 911 tapes and – because the police were “miked” during the initial phases of their investigation – tapes and transcripts of their conversations with Burwell.

What did witnesses report? What did Burwell tell them? What led them to the decision to pepper spray him and put him in handcuffs? What made them decide he wasn’t a criminal after all? Did they have any evidence he was the home’s owner before they cuffed him? Was there any evidence that they or others were in danger? On what did they base that conclusion? The questions abound. The judge’s ruling almost guarantees that they will not be answered.

It may well be that the Hartford police were models of restraint and did everything by the book. In that case their reputations will remain under a cloud, thanks to their department’s refusal to release records and the judge’s support of their recalcitrance. But it may also be that the police behaved badly. Either way, the citizens of Hartford deserve to know the answer. Thanks to Judge Hayes, they may never.

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Lauren-Glenn Davitian, right, interviews Anne Galloway on CCTV, Channel 17

Lauren-Glenn Davitian, executive director of CCTV, Channel 17, talks with Anne Galloway, editor and publisher of vtdigger.org, on “Live@525″ about how the nonprofit, online news organization has evolved since its beta site was launched in September 2009. Much of their conversation delves into Galloway’s coverage of the 2010 legislative session.
Here’s a link to the interview:

http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/anne-galloway-and-vermont-diggers-first-legislative-season-its-online-vermont-medi

Vermont Digger was recorded on 2010-06-01.

You can watch this program on Channel 17/ Town Meeting Television, on Comcast Cable and Burlington Telecom on the next four Friday afternoons:

Friday June 11, 3:30 PM
Friday June 18, 3:30 PM
Friday June 25, 3:30 PM
Friday July 2, 3:30 PM

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