Reaping The Benefits Of The Digital Era

With Public Post Vermont Public Radio takes advantage of electronic records to conduct more independent fact-finding for the benefit of Vermont. In aggregating government documents in a searchable online database, our newsroom has rethought the way we cover Vermont’s communities.

Since we launched last year, we’ve already reaped the benefits of the digital era. For example, we found an item about license plate readers sparking privacy concerns in Hardwick’s minutes, which became a story in a VPR newscast and then was carried by NPR.

But not all agenda items turn into long-form national broadcast stories. Some are shared on social media (“@vprnet: In Killington, select board member proposes giving free tuition to people who relocate to the resort community: http://bit.ly/QjvdtN #VT #PublicPost.”), before we report and produce a story for our statewide newscast.

Of course, we don’t have the resources to cover all city council and select board meetings in the state. But with Public Post we hope to tease out themes that help to define our regional identity.

We present our work online and on-air in compelling ways, and we hope you will help by sharing news from your town. So search the city council and select board minutes for a topic, and post a comment or share it on Twitter using the hashtag #PublicPost to open a discussion about an issue that affects your community.

And if you don’t see the records from your council or select board and would like us to add them, send us an email at PublicPost@vpr.net.

Kirk Carapezza
Online Editor/Reporter

(note: the blog post was reposted from the VPR News Blog)