Editor’s note:With Vtdigger.org’s launch, and the advent of other Vermont Internet news sites, we thought some context might be helpful in tracking the path Vermont newspaper reporting has travelled to get us to this interesting moment. The following two-part essay appeared in longer form in 1992 in “We Vermonters,” a compendium of personal essays on the evolving identity of Vermont, published by the Vermont Historical Society. It has been updated slightly to acknowledge the growing influence of the Internet in shaping Vermont journalism’s next era.
Vermont newspaper reporters have recorded their state’s history for almost as long as Vermont has been a state. However, very few have done much historical writing about themselves or their work.
Newspaper reporting in Vermont, as Weston Cate, a former head of the Vermont Historical Society, once said, represents one of numerous holes that still exist in Vermont history books. Most Vermont reporters seem to have written about almost everyone but themselves.
Fortunately, a few have. In August of 1991, publisher Robert Mitchell of The Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus published an updated history of the Herald for the bicentennial of Vermont statehood.
As Vermont’s senior journalist, Mitchell was able to fill in many historical gaps. I am indebted to him, to my own 40 years as a Vermont newspaperman and teacher, and to the Herald’s news clip files for many of the insights and anecdotes recounted here.
Vermont newspaper history so far seems to have encompassed four distinct stages: (1) “we don’t need local news”; (2) “news is more than local”; (3) advocacy journalism; (4) and the era of “let’s be more balanced and fair.”
A fifth—news reporting over the Internet—is now beginning, its history yet to be written.
‘WE DON’T NEED LOCAL NEWS’
This was the period between Vermont’s earliest days as an organized state in the late 1700s and just before the trains came to Vermont in the mid-1800s.
The Vermont newspapers of those earliest days had more editors than reporters, because the publishers did not see local news as a necessity and thus did not need local reporters to write it. The publishers believed, probably rightly, that Vermont towns were so small, and their gossip mills so fast and reliable, that any local news a reporter might write about in his weekly newspaper (the normal frequency then) would surely be out of date, and thus not news at all, once it reached the street. Instead, the newspapers mostly reprinted national and international news cribbed from the more metropolitan-oriented newspapers to the south, along with literary fiction, anecdotes and advertising.
The Rutland Herald of Oct. 17, 1820, for example, looked like this: there were four pages for a total of 20 columns. A little over six were devoted to advertising, two for the publisher’s own store. There were nine columns of reprints from London newspapers, a column of French news, more than two columns of Gov. Skinner’s inaugural address at Montpelier, and a column and a half on the second Rutland County agricultural fair, where the publisher’s best bull calf won a $10 prize. There was also a column and a half of poetry, but no editorial content whatsoever produced by Herald writers themselves.
A few years before, the Herald had reported on the current legislative session. However, it merely noted that the session had just concluded. It never said what the Legislature had actually done.
It also was not unusual in those early days for newspaper publishers to take active roles in the political campaigns of politicians. One former Herald publisher, William Fay, is credited with reviving the Whig Party in Vermont. Another, Percival Wood Clement, was not shy about using the Herald to promote his own ideas and political ambitions. He ran for governor of Vermont in 1902 and 1906, and in 1918 when he finally won the office.
This blurring of political-journalistic lines intensified in the late 1800s and early 1900s as some Vermont newspapers began to gain influence, and some publishers, editors and even a few reporters saw nothing wrong with mixing their journalistic work with moonlighting for one political candidate or another. As late as 1928, Rutland Herald City Editor Robert St. John worked from 5 p.m. until 2 a.m. at the Herald, then moonlighted for pay at Republican headquarters for a variety of GOP political causes from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
EXPANSION OF THE NEWS UNIVERSE
The picture changed with the arrival of the train and telegraph in the mid-1800s, making modern newspapers possible in Vermont. The trains brought wider and more frequent distribution of newspapers. The advent of the telegraph at virtually the same time made foreign, national, and regional news more accessible to Vermont newsrooms. Both developments sowed the seeds for the growth and expansion of Vermont newspapers, including The Burlington Free Press, which became Vermont’s first daily newspaper in 1848. By 1861, the weekly Rutland Herald (founded in 1794, and still the oldest newspaper under continuous family ownership in the United States) was considering the same move, spurred on by the advent of the Civil War. It became a daily in 1861 and, like many other papers of the time, began to place increasing emphasis on the local news that earlier Vermont newspapers had shunned.
Local news in those days did not always mean what it means today. In many cases, it meant publishing brief accounts of what local people were doing — personals columns. Usually this wasn’t news at all by modern standards: folks visiting their children in another town; visiting a friend for tea; holding a community supper for a local cause. But it was news that was widely read—in all the daily and weekly newspapers of Vermont—because it contained the names of neighbors. As late as the 1960s, when most Vermont newspapers still carried personals, it was “news” still loyally read, especially by older Vermonters.
In the 1920s, competition for this personal news was fierce. At one point, The Rutland Herald was so put out by an upstart competitor, the Rutland News, hiring more “personals” reporters than it had, that it began lifting personals from the News that its own reporters had failed to get.
This fattened its already considerable list of personals at the Rutland News’ expense. The News, however, fought back. It proceeded to invent a fictitious person, insert him into its personals as a frequent man-about-town, then ‘eventually exposed the Herald’s use of the phony personal by admitting that the man did not exist. Alas, for the News, the hoax backfired. As Robert St. John chronicled in 1953 in his book, This Was My World, “Rutland did not like such tricks. Imputing moral turpitude to the aged and respectable Herald brought the same reaction from Vermonters as a man might have if someone were to cast doubt publicly on the morals of his favorite maiden aunt.”
I remember well in the late 1960s and early 1970s when The Times Argus began phasing out the local correspondents. There was criticism that we were getting too big for our britches. Since then, I have often wondered how much of our understanding of Vermont’s smaller towns has suffered because we no longer have those local correspondents to keep us informed of such personal, intimate things, as well as bigger news. At best, the change has probably been a mixed blessing.
Discretion could also be the better part of valor in those days. St. John remembers the night Will Rogers came to Rutland, and, at the Knights of Pythias, made the mistake of poking fun at Calvin Coolidge’s intelligence. St. John said this about that awful moment: “Never did any joke by any comedian on any stage on any circuit in the world fall so flat. There was not a smile, not a titter. Every face in the room froze as if suddenly hit by an arctic blast.” That was one story, St. John said, “I did have sense enough not to print.”
In the 100 years after the train and telegraph reached Vermont, rapid technological changes also occurred at many newspapers. Hand-set type gave way to machine-set linotype. Telegraph transmission of news gave way to teletype. Teletype and linotype were replaced by far more rapid electronic typesetting and transmission, followed by even faster and expensive desk-top publishing. In concert with the “personals'” demise was now far more coverage of local and regional hard-news events.
Through all the changes, reporters had to keep pace and adapt. They had to know more about more things, and they had to report the news much faster.
Editor’s note: Nick Monsarrat of Charlotte has been a newspaper reporter, editor and journalism teacher since 1969.
