“’True North Reports’ cordially invites you to their Summer Campaign Season Kickoff.”
Unless you’re a competing news outlet. According to a June 19 email sent to VTDigger.org and others by the Vermont Republican Party, “True North Reports” is sponsoring a campaign season launch next week.
The event features a cash bar followed by information sessions on polling data, an analysis of the 2010 GOP takeover of the legislature and governor’s office in Maine and key votes for the upcoming session.
The event is open to “True North Reports” subscribers for $25 and political candidates of both parties for $10, but closed to media. A request from VTDigger.org for access to the event was denied.
The GOP email gives contact information for Robert Roper at “True North,” who replied by email to a request for media access like this: “Nope. This is closed to media. (except us, of course) ;).
I mean how would it look if we gave you guys the scoop on our own event!?”
In a phone interview, Roper elaborated.
“I want [the event] to be sort of a free-flowing conversation of ideas,” he said, “and we are a media outlet so why would we give the scoop on our own event to another media outlet?” He clarified that True North will not be covering the event either, so there will be no media coverage of the launch.
Roper said an increased media presence could hinder the conversation.
“People know that we’re the ones that are hosting it so I think they’re going to feel a little bit freer to talk about it when they know that we’re the only ones in the room,” he said.
The email was a “SNAFU,” he said, resulting from a miscommunication with the Republican Party. He said he asked Jack Lindley to send an invitation to Republican candidates, but the invite instead went out to the party’s email list of supporters.
Roper made it clear that it was not a GOP-only event and that it would be open to all political candidates.
It seems though there was an even bigger SNAFU with the Democrats. Neither Democratic Chair Jake Perkinson or the Democratic Party’s executive director, Julia Barnes, had been told about the event.
