Yes friends that whistle is your signal for the signal oil program the Whistler The mystery program that is unique among all mystery programs Because even when you know who's guilty and you see his every move or know his complete plans You always receive a startling surprise at the final curtain in the signal oil program The Whistler and the Whistler and I know many things for I walked by night I know many strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadow Yes, I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak Yes friends, it's the Whistler for tops and entertainment and for tops in gasoline quality It's signal it takes extra quality, you know to give you extra mileage and signal is the famous go farther gasoline So look for the signal circle sign in yellow and black that identifies friendly independent signal stations from Canada to Mexico And now the Whistler strange story Man on the roof Eddie Welch was a young man who enjoyed his work Yes, he loved every moment of it as he sat before the microphone in the booth high on the roof of Crandall's department store His voice booming out over the public address system Directing the attendance the movement of the automobiles in the parking area below Yes, it pleased Eddie to run the lot from his lofty perch on the roof of the department store Pleased him to see the movement of the traffic below respond instantly to the sound of his voice But though he liked it here on the roof Eddie had made up his mind a long time ago He'd leave this job when the right opportunity came along something worthy of his talent He wasn't quite certain just what it would be break lucky chance But it would come sooner or later So Eddie Welch Waker and that break finally came late one afternoon I'll one two four six and eight full two spaces in aisle three one in aisle five Four in aisle seven one against the wall plenty of room in the overflow Well, well, sure sure come in I haven't seen you around the store before I'm new The latest addition to the glassware department I ought to get around more You'll stop luring at me for just a moment. I am I Have a message from Garsha at Peggy Garsha that is Peggy. Oh Yeah, it's about a date tonight Something came up said to tell you she can't make it can I like didn't really think she would anyway So I'm a free man tonight. And that is unless you Hold it Gee you get ideas fast anything wrong am I asking you for a date? I might be booked for the evening Okay Suppose I stopped by a glassware say closing time and check with you. Oh, what about Peggy won't she do?  She's engaged Didn't you know? Oh I see Check with you later Check with me later You watch her as she walks away and disappears down the stairway Then your eyes swing back over the parking area. You notice the empty spaces in each aisle Then as you reach for the mic switch again something you see stops your hand in midair Against the far wall you see two men struggling between the park cars You reach for the binoculars and train them on the scene in time to see one of the men fall back His head hits the car bumper and he doesn't get up Quickly the other man jumps into a car a light green convertible and drives away An instant after you've jotted down the license number you pick up the phone and call downstairs Now this is Eddie Welch on the roof look get one of the store cops out to the parking lot right away There's a man stretched out on the ground near the back wall. I think he needs help Hey gorgeous, I Understand the big wheel wants to see me. Well if it isn't the Romeo of the rooftop Yes, mr. Crandall wants to see you Eddie. Hey, uh, how about doing the town Saturday night? Huh, sweetheart? Sorry, I'll be at the wrestling matches junior. You think you win.  See you lady. Oh come in Eddie. I'm in Eddie this is lieutenant Davis police department. Hi lieutenant. Hello Eddie The lieutenant has been questioning the boys and a lot about that unfortunate Accident this afternoon. Oh, yes, say how did the fellow make out? Are you okay? He's dead dead That's so bad. Oh He was one of our boys City cop. That's right. I Understand you were the one who first reported the accident. Yeah, I was on the roof I'd say you were in a good position to see what happened, huh? Mm-hmm only Only I didn't see anything I just happened to notice the guy on the ground as to what happened before that I wouldn't know Lieutenant, I wouldn't know It hits you suddenly didn't it Eddie and then you decided to lie to the police lieutenant You were about to reach into your pocket pull out the slip of paper with a license number of the car on it And place it on mr. Crandall's death He would have been proud of such efficiency and certainly you would have been rewarded Mr. Crandall was always eager to help bright alert employees along Yes That could have been your opportunity Eddie the break you've been waiting for But suddenly another opportunity presented itself a golden opportunity And that bit of paper bearing the license number of the killer's car stayed in your pocket You didn't see anything that right Eddie no not a thing Funny funny from the room fights a parking area takes in a lot of territory lieutenant.  Crandall's office anxious to make plans You tell yourself you've got to move cautiously Think it all over very carefully Your first problem is to contact the driver of that new expensive-looking green convertible You think about it for a long time and it's still on your mind the following day during your lunch hour As you walk across the parking lot with Joan the girl you met on the roof Eddie Over there seem to be taken down the license number. Oh, that's right. You're new here And they work for this store check the license numbers with the motor vehicle bureau find out who the car owners are Survey is some kind find out where the customers come from help select the districts their advertising seems to pull the heaviest Nothing nothing Look John, why don't you run on ahead? I want to talk to one of the boys Okay, see you later. Thanks for the lunch Hi guys. Oh, hello Eddie. How's the boy fine fine?  Yeah, get a license number. I'd like to slip into that list check it for me. Oh that's a Well as a as a baby comes in here regularly Yeah, you have to talk until a couple of times only friendly type and very cute Oh, I get it. She's kind of quite cool won't give you her name a phone number But she does have a car and cars have license plate. I got it. Yeah Sure, we're glad they help you out Eddie. Let you know in a day or so. It's well With the right sort of break does this deal show much promise Who knows guys? It might be what I've been waiting for all my life With the prologue of man on the roof the signal oil company brings you another strange story by the whistler Since last week's whistler, you know your car has aged a whole year Yes, even though shiny 1948 to now technically last year's models But after all the important thing is not the year your car was made but rather the care it receives That's why if you want your car's performance to stay young It's so important for it to receive the more thorough more conscientious service that cars get at independently operated signal service stations For example, when a signal dealer lubricates your car He checks against the official factory chart that shows exactly which of signals nine specialized lubricants Each part should have for long trouble-free service Then just to make double sure not a single part has been missed your signal dealer checks the whole job again Which explains why we call it signal double-check lubrication? This is typical of the many little extras you enjoy at signal service stations Because signal dealers being in business for themselves Have more reason to want to keep your business and Now back to the whistler You're not sorry. Are you ready? Not sorry about the sudden decision you made in mr. Crandall's office when you told the police lieutenant You knew nothing about the Unfortunate accident that occurred on the parking lot today. The city detective was killed You didn't tell him that you saw the struggle of the two men between the park cars Saw the killer ride away in a green convertible That you were jotted down the license number of the car No You have other plans.  Then two nights later as you leave Crandall's department store you run into your friend Gus Hi, Eddie, I say I check that deems license number for you. Well, did you swell? Yeah, the car's registered to a guy named Merrick Alton Merrick Me very boyfriend, huh? So bad Eddie. I could be your old man Gus. Oh, sure sure Who knows? Anyway, that's who the car belongs to Alton Merrick. It's a hundred weather be placed. Hmm. Yeah, it's a nice neighborhood Thanks, thanks Gus. You've been grand boy. Just grand I Mr. Merrick Alton Merrick The name isn't important and just the guy who happened to be around Crandall's department store the day that city cop was killed Still on the line, mr. Merrick. Yes. Yes.  I'll be waiting Why should I come be there pal? The blue hat eight o'clock and wear that same checked coat you had on the other day, huh? The piano player Correct. Oh, yeah. Yeah I like this place Eddie the blue hat bar, you know something, baby And the day you walked into my life things started to break right for little Eddie. Yeah What is it Eddie? Nothing see someone, you know, no nobody Seat ticket. No, no, it isn't here. I'll take my hat. Thanks.  Yeah, I've seen all I wanted with this place. Come on. Let's breathe Eddie Did you see the coat he was wearing what the man who sat down next to you wearing that check code? Oh, yeah loud, wasn't it hope it as you make your way out of the bar the panic that swept over you a minute ago Has left now hasn't it Eddie? For a moment you were frightened when you saw him walking towards you Merrick the man and the checkered coat For an instant your heart seemed to stop beating as he spoke to you Then you realized he couldn't possibly know you were the voice on the telephone That now you knew what he looked like and that's all you wanted to find out for the present As you take Joan back to her home his face flashes before your mind a cold hard brooding face Square jaw dark heavy eyebrows a cruel face isn't it Eddie and you realize you're going to have to be extremely careful dealing with this man Merrick Late the following afternoon. You're on the roof again directing the flow of traffic in the parking lot below No one seemed to notice the break in your voice Eddie at that moment when you saw him again The man in the check code the man you're going to blackmail Standing down there in the lot staring up at you Now as your voice groans out over the lot a thousand frantic thoughts race through your mind and you wonder if he knows Then shortly before closing time you see Merrick again You're talking to Joan on the main floor when suddenly you're no longer aware of what she's saying I thought we were talking yeah, I said I thought we were talking. Oh, yeah, sorry. I get sidetracked You're still that way Why the sudden interest in our store to pick it's a guy with him that interests me the guy in a check coat Oh, he's gone now as I was I said later. Will you have baby? I want to ask Ben something Okay, okay. See I was business man.   Him no part of mine. That's not that guy. Well, you seem to know it. I met him in Philly ten or twelve years ago He aims Griffin Griffin Yeah, we worked the same store then he branched out after that I lost track of them. What do you mean branched out? Opened his own office. Oh, he turned out to be a private eye our detective jobs were higher You heard of the type sure on the radio. Not quite. This is a bad boy Eddie real bad anything for a dollar Sounds familiar. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I sport this guy like that Ben smiles as you walk away from him doesn't he Eddie he doesn't have any idea what's going on in your mind Just talk he thinks But it isn't that way at all No, Eddie You're thinking how smart Merrick is to use this man Griffin for his blackmail negotiations He almost threw you off didn't he? Making you think that Griffin the man in the check coat was Merrick Another thought occurs to you and sends a little quiver of nervousness along your spine Merrick must know for certain that you are his blackmailer Eddie Yes, and the knowledge could be disturbing enough to make him want to push you off the roof someday You're anxious now to find out what Merrick himself looks like before you plan your next move And so that night you call Merrick's home again What's on your mind this minute? Yeah, yeah, I guess you do Well, we better get together talk Good enough be there tonight so you turn o'clock.  It clears your mind And soon you feel that you're clicking again able to handle the situation You reach Merrick's apartment building a good hour before the appointed time Wait in the dark entrance of a building across the street It isn't too long before you see Griffin the private eye come out still wearing the check coat Then he turns opens the door of a car for another man You're certain that he's Merrick aren't you Eddie now you can be sure you're dealing with the right man You don't have to keep the appointment. You know what he looks like now, and you won't forget That's right. Oh, no tonight. Yeah I almost forgot there was a fellow hanging around the store. He wanted to be sure when you got off Oh, I told him everybody was working overtime tonight. What did he look like? heavy set for the rough-looking bushy eyebrows I Nobody important now thanks You expect to be followed Eddie and you are and as you also expected it is Griffin Merrick's detective for hire the man Ben thinks would do anything for money And you know he's working for a man who'd do anything too. You quicken your step hurry down the darkened street Then as you move past an abandoned building under construction Hey Run into the convenient protective darkness of the building scrambled wildly up a set of improvised stairs Wait listening you start forward again frantically take another flight of stairs and leaping strides to the fifth floor At the top you freeze Almost paralyzed with fright the wall at the outer edge of the landing hasn't been put up yet And you almost stepped off into space To a five-story fall to the street He's still coming You press back into the shadow wait quietly grim, but he's slowing up Eddie moving cautiously You want to make him come at you fast? Here I am Griffin come and get me Mr. Merrick, Mr. Merrick open up. It's annoying Eddie that Merrick doesn't answer Because you're sure he's inside waiting for Griffin to come back and tell him that you're out of the way Then from a sound down the hall. You're aware of an elevator stopping at Merrick's floor You duck back out of sight Wait nervously until you see who it is that stepped out of the elevator you recognize him. Don't you wait? It's the same man. You saw with Griffin last night Merrick at the pleasure it isn't gonna be any pleasure mr. Merrick I mean pretty slick up to now you and Griffin but not slick enough I'm Eddie Welch See sure you know you see plenty like lots of dough changing hands, huh?  Well, we better talk it over. There's nothing left to talk over Griffin's dead what an accident Too bad, isn't it? Don't you think it's a good idea to invite me in? All right Eddie, you know you've got me stymied come on in The whistler will return in just a moment with a strange ending to tonight's story Recognize that noise that was someone breaking a perfectly good New Year's resolution and here it is only January 2nd There's one resolution however that I hope you won't break the resolution We made on last week's whistler to cry just cry signal gasoline in your car Because seriously friends there are real advantages for the driver who powers his car with signal the famous go farther gasoline Mileage of course is one of them but only one For in order to give you such good mileage today signal gasoline has to help your motor run more efficiently and When your motor runs more efficiently naturally you enjoy more exciting performance in the way of pep power and smoothness That's why you'll find folks with big cars as well as folks with small budgets patronizing signal service stations They've both discovered that in gasoline it takes extra quality to go farther and Signal is the famous go farther gasoline And now back to the whistler You knew it all the time didn't you Eddie knew that someday that golden opportunity would present itself the break You were waiting for and you'd be sitting on top of the world Then it came suddenly Remember Eddie that day at the parking lot of Crandall's department store when you saw the struggle of the two men between the parked car Saw the killer race away in the green convertible It was a smart move wasn't it taking down the license number of the car and the smarter move on your part Not to tell the police about it and now the killer a man named Alton Merrick is at your mercy And as you sit in his apartment facing the tall cold-eyed man, you're waiting to discuss the financial arrangement That was kind of cute of you sending Griffin around to keep your appointments with me. We're in that check code of yours But the same build to At the start I really thought he was you Merrick didn't know what you looked like until last night when I saw the two Of you leave the building You know sending him around and knock me off wasn't such a good idea Not for your pal Griffin. He wasn't very smart. It took care of him Let's say he'd still be here if he hadn't chased me into an empty building You're a pretty smart boy aren't you smart enough to tell the police I saw a gent named Alton Merrick kill that city cop at a fight in the parking lot Unless mr. Merrick makes it worth my while to forget it Get it all figured out. Mm-hmm You're wrong about one thing Eddie. I didn't send Griffin around to see you You see I've been trying to get Griffin myself for a long time That's why I came here last night. You saw me with him We had a lot of things to talk about Like what? You see Eddie my name isn't Merrick. That was Griffin's real name If then Merrick were one and the same guy same guy But you my name's Kincaid Lieutenant Kincaid Los Angeles police And I'm very glad to meet you Eddie Very glad Let that whistle be your signal for the signal oil program the whistler each Sunday night at this same time Brought to you by the signal oil company marketers of signal gasoline and motor oil and fine quality automotive accessories Signal has asked me to remind you to get the most driving pleasure drive at sensible speeds be courteous and obey traffic regulations It may save a life possibly your own Featured in tonight's story were Tom Holland Lorette Phil Brent and William Conrad The whistler was produced by George W. Allen and directed by Gordon T. Hughes with story by Steve Hampton and music by Wilbur hatch And was transmitted to our troops overseas by the armed forces radio service Remember at the same time next Sunday another strange tale by the whistler Marvin Miller speaking This is CBS the Columbia broadcasting system


What's going on everybody? As you can see, I'm here alone. First of all, if you're into the channel, my name is Janice. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, join the family. But I am on my pranking game. Christmas is over and it's time to get dirty with these pranks. So, as you can probably hear, Isaiah's downstairs. The TV is blasting because he is playing FIFA, I think, the football. I don't know. It's time to get dirty, baby! But, oh, I think that's Madden. Yeah, I think he's playing Madden. So he's downstairs playing football.  So, with that being said, I am about to go out and I'm going to be with my aunt and we're going to go on a little brunch get together.  So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to be taking off my engagement ring before leaving the house and I'm going to give it to him to see his reaction. I already have a camera set up and I'm just ready to go. So, if you guys are ready for today's prank, don't forget to smash that like button. Comment down below, Team Janice. And let's get this reaction because I know he's about to flip out. So, let's get it, guys. You're so extra. I'm not doing it in the future. Pissed. Wait, wait, wait. I think a lot of you guys are already starting to think about getting out of here. Alright, I know. You do too much. Babe. Sorry, Nene. Why are you so extra? He could weave it. You saw that, though? Yeah, of course. We almost hit him. He said it. Bye, Levy. Here we go. Where are you going to go? Oh, you got lipstick. Seriously? It looks wet. I'm going to brunch with Tiffany. Bring me back something. No. Come on.  Yeah. I'm trying to be gentle because of your lipstick. Oh, my God. Relax. Take this. Put it somewhere safe. Bye. Why is it dirty? That's not what I'm saying. It's dirty. I don't want to wear it. Okay, I can clean it real quick. No. Bye. It takes me two seconds. Babe, no. I don't want to wear it. Why not? Because I'm going out. I don't want to wear it. Why? Because I'm going out. Because it's dirty? What does it matter if you're going out? You're always supposed to have your engagement ring on. Why? Why do I have to wear it all the time? Because it's an engagement ring. You always wear it all the time. Alright, but they're not going to give us free drinks if they see that I have a ring on my finger.  I'm not going to flirt with nobody. I'm just saying. If you don't wear it, I'm taking it back. What do you mean you're taking it back? I'm just saying. But if a bartender does a guy that doesn't want something for free, he's not going to if he sees that I'm like engaged. I'll go with you. No.  Why? What is your issue? I just told you why. That guys always offer like free shots and stuff like that. Sips are already married. You don't even drink. I don't. But as I said, I'm going to give her the stuff like. Oh my gosh. Don't be extra because you don't even want to wear it. So why are you being extra for me drawing? Because you're going to taint it. Tell Tiffany to take her ring off if she wants free drinks. Why are you guys taking her ring off? We both are taking our rings off. No. Put it on. Put it on. I'll just put it on my back. No, you're not putting it on your back. Put it on your finger. Why? You're literally turning red. Put it on your finger. Because why are you not trying to wear the ring? Because I don't. Like how many times do I have to explain to you? I don't want to wear it. Put the ring on. No. You think you're funny making fun of me? That's not going to make me wear it. If you're not wearing it, then you're not going to get it back to you. Give it to me. I wear it myself as a pinky ring. Bro. You look crazy wearing that as a pinky ring. I don't care. You look crazy not wearing it. How? Because I don't care. I propose to you. Why don't you take that ring off? Because it's not the engagement ring, Smarty. Put this one on. No. Then you're not getting it back. All right, give me. Give me. I'll put it on. No. Let me see your finger. Do you want me to put it on in front of you? Yeah. No, I got it. What are you doing? I'll put it on this one. Long hair. Did I do something? No. Every stuff in the club. Bro, stop being like this. Put it on the fourth quarter. Come on. Hurry up. Put the ring back so I can play. No. I'm leaving.  Put it on the right finger. Come on now. No. Bye. All right. So you know what? I'm single then. I'm changing my face because that is the single. I'm busy. Hey, that's disgusting. Look, good isn't it? Now I got your natural. It's because you put lotion all over. You can put lotion on your hands and then it makes it look all fake and whatnot. Shake. Yeah, this looks bad now because you got lotion on it. It's not even shining now. But can you hurry up and put it on my finger? I got a spit on it. Ew. What's wrong with you? Put it. There you go. Uh-huh. Why it takes you so long to put the ring on? Just push it. Bro, because I don't want to hurt you. You're not going to hurt me. Okay. Well, I'm making sure of it. Every 10 minutes to send you a picture.  All right. To make sure it's off. I got like a child today. I don't know what's wrong with you. Give me the ring back too. Go to brunch. That's why it's dirty. All right, y'all. So as you can see, this was such a banger. I got him. So we're taking a W over here on Team Genies. But I'm just going to let you guys go because I am really late to brunch. So if you guys enjoyed today's video, don't forget to smash that like button. Look at the score. Comment down below, Team Genies. And I'll see you in the next banger. Love you all. 74 to 9. My gosh.


What's up everyone, welcome back to the channel. Today we are gonna be talking about my express pickups. This video is fully sponsored by Express. I wanna be transparent about that. I just wanna showcase some of the items that you can get, you know, your classic casual menswear stuff to some streetwear. So, let's check it out. So first off, we have these solid bomber sweatshirts. This one right here is in the camel colorway and I am also wearing the olive colorway with the socus fur on me. And I did get this in a size small. So you guys know currently I'm in this wave of just simplistic minimal over shirts. I think it's a perfect essential for the springtime. And because they're so minimal, simplistic, they have a color, they're timeless. Because if you just look at this right now, it's very casual, but also slightly formal feeling. Does that make sense? So you can wear this to the club or you can wear it in a more streetwear outfit.  And that's totally fine. But what I would encourage you guys to do is to juxtapose these more formal items with more streetwear items, techwear items, whatever it is. The more you try to experiment with different things, the more unique and better outfits you will have. So let me just show you guys how versatile this piece is. So here I'm rocking it with some white fit cargo pants and some high top sneakers, which just contrasts very nicely compared to the more slim fitting top. I'm rocking a tank underneath and I'm topping it off with an orange beanie because I think orange and green work really well together. Those two colors together are very underrated. So now let's just move it more towards that traditional routes of how to rock this piece. So we got on the camel colorway with the white tank top as well. But I'm throwing on some wide fit trousers that tapers down very nicely, a gray beanie and some simple white leather sneakers. This is a super chill spring outfit. I think it also looks very good. Sometimes the simpler the better. All of them camo is always a go-to color and also a great piece for the springtime. Now for my next pickup, we have this two tone cap. I was actually surprised to see this because I really dig two tone caps. This hat is actually constructed very well. It holds its shape. The brim is nice and stiff and made out of vegan leather and this double tone of cream and brown is just so versatile and definitely perfect for the springtime. Here you see me rocking in with a military jacket. Olive and cream always work together very nicely. Then just some sweats, white sneakers, very simple. A lot of people like these two tone caps. I feel like the two tone is a very simple element but it does so much for the fit. And especially now this hat definitely feels like spring to me with the cream tones but they're actually quite hard to find and sell out everywhere. So this is a nice alternative, no branding. I've definitely been wearing this a lot. Pick this up if you could.   Up next we have the leather minimal sneaker but this time it's in gray. So this is a nice alternative if you're not into the all white sneaker. If you don't like contrast. I really like the way these look. They do have a texture to it, a suede texture. It looks pretty nice. It's a subtle detail compared to the smooth leather and it's just minimal. So it's very versatile, decently comfortable and affordable. Now personally I prefer white leather sneakers. So if you're gonna be styling this I recommend styling it with more gray tones colors that have a clay undertone to it, if that makes sense. They'll really compliment this sneaker. As you can see, I'm just wearing it in a fit I'd go shopping with. Just some sweats, a beanie, a clay colored over shirts. Like I said, in terms of color, this is a blue over shirts but you can tell it has some gray undertones to it which is why it compliments the sneaker so nicely. And also I'm keeping the rest of my fits pretty monochromatic with the black sweats, the white tank top, the gray beanie and the gray sneakers. They all follow under the gray scale spectrum. You guys have seen my video about that. And then I topped it off with a tote bag and overall this fit feels very cohesive. Definitely one of my favorite pieces. Next up we actually have a really dope hoodie from the Express Marketplace. Just check this out, you got this nice color blocking the Sherpa material. And yeah, it does feel a little bit more like fall but it's still really cold right now and I've really been enjoying wearing this. For those of you guys that are about to ask I am five foot seven, I weigh 156 pounds and I did get this in a size medium. But yeah, I really like the color blocking. You got some navy, some forest green, some grayish and maroon.  So I would recommend keeping it very simple and letting the hoodie do the talking. Last but not least is this Stripe summer shirts. I really enjoy wearing these types of shirts for the summer. It's made out of rayon which is very breathable, very light and I feel like I'm in Miami whenever I rock something like this. This one is in a size medium. It fits pretty nicely on me. I do cuff up the sleeve one time. Yeah, I just love the simplicity, the stripes. It's a very easy piece to wear. Definitely something to pick up for the warmer weather. And that's really it guys. It's a very short video. Just wanted to showcase all these items that you can get from Express. Remember, you don't have to style these pieces in just one way. And I just wanted to showcase you guys that you can style some of these types of items in more streetwear fits. So yeah, if you guys want to pick any of these items up I'll leave a link in the description. Full transparency, if you guys do make a purchase I do get a small kickback which does go back to supporting the channel. Really appreciate the love you guys. If you guys enjoyed the video make sure you give the video a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel and until then stay fly deuces.


The Cincinnati Reds are on the verge of reaching the post-season playoffs with just four games remaining in the 2020 season. Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer will get his long-awaited wish on Wednesday when he makes a start against the Brewers on three days rest for the first time this season. Bauer is 4-4 with a 1.80 ERA in 10 starts this season and is contender for the National League CY Young Award. As the Reds fight for a playoff spot, Bauer, working on short rest, will enable the club to use him twice this week on Wednesday and in Sunday season finale versus the Twins. Coverage begins tonight at 6.10 p.m. on Fox Mountain Top Sports with the pre-game show. First pitch from Great American Ballpark is set for 6.40 p.m. Fans are reminded the 3-point podcast returns to Mountain Top Sports and Mountain Top News' Facebook pages at 6 p.m. on Thursday night. Join your host Cody Davis, Colin McCoy and Jerry Scott as they talk all things sports. They'll unveil the latest Super 7 football poll and look ahead to Kentucky and Auburn on Saturday. Pikeville High School sports fans are reminded to sign up for the live streaming of sporting events. Football packages are available to keep up with your panthers. Weekly streamings, monthly and yearly subscriptions keep you in the game. Visit mountandashtopsports.com and click on the icon at the top of the page for more details. For a closer look at this Friday night's high school football games across the region, visit mountandashtopsports.com or check out our Facebook page.


Ethylene is a key component in many plastic products, and its production has traditionally been based on steam cracking of hydrocarbon feedstocks. However, due to rising oil prices, researchers are looking for more sustainable alternatives. In this paper, several catalysts and reaction engineering techniques were evaluated for their potential use in industrial applications. The most promising results came from a nano-catalyst HCSM-5, which was able to achieve high ethylene yields at low reaction temperatures, 240 degrees Celsius, and long lifespans, 630 hours. Additionally, a microreactor system with mechanical vapor recompression was used to further improve efficiency. Finally, the authors suggest that algal-based ethanol could be used as a renewable source of ethylene. This article was authored by Hoshing Wu, Dujong Dai, and Denise Fan.


We're going to start just a minute. I have two important announcements. Cell phones, turn them off, please. Feedback forms. The lucky people that found them in their seat, please fill them out. They are so important to the program committee. And now Dorothy Lovering is our publicity chairperson, and she wants to say a few words. One of the things that publicity is doing is making sure that our brochures are out in the libraries, the retirement centers, and the senior centers where we send them out. So if any of you are interested in doing that for us, just go in and check them to make sure that they still have film heads that even resupply them. That'd be great. We've got quite a few volunteers locally, but if you live out from the rooms in the south and you see Wilson, that would be helpful. Thanks. Just come and see me. I'll be up at the membership table afterwards. Thanks. And now Michael will introduce his speakers. Thank you, Betsy. Good afternoon. Today I'm very pleased and honored to introduce Khan Main. He's the news editor and VT Digger, the influential statewide news and public policy website. And also to welcome his wife, Sukin. Thank you for joining us. Colin grew up in Topsom, Maine. He earned his undergraduate degree from the Dill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Colin has spent most of his career, far from Maine, in Cambodia. He was a reporter and editor at two English-language newspapers, the Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post, and also an editor at Southeast Asia Globe, a regional current affairs magazine. Fortunately for us, Colin recently returned to New England and took up a key position earlier this year at VT Digger. Today he will be sharing some insights with us on such issues as real news, disinformation, investigative reporting, and the challenges and opportunities facing journalists in Vermont and perhaps beyond. This is his first visit to Triple E. Please join me in giving a very warm, Triple E welcome to Colin Main. Good afternoon. So can you hear me in this? Or should I talk in the microphone? Yeah. All right, great. Yeah, so thanks a lot for being here and starting to take you away from the vote on the cabinet here. And maybe we can get some live updates into the presentation. Yeah, so I was, as far as what I'm sort of going to talk about, all I, this was basically the title that was sent to me in the speech. It's quite a title, as you can see. How the disappearance of real news has led to disinformation, mistrust, rigid thinking, and our democracy instead of shared values and real problem solving. So this is like a pretty huge question. We're basing the media. Pretty huge question. We're basing society, obviously. So I'm going to sort of start on a national level and sort of what's going on there, even a global level, and then sort of work our way into Vermont. And then I'll talk a bit about what's going on at BT Digger. And hopefully we'll have like 20 minutes or so to take questions and talk about whatever I didn't cover in this presentation. And I'd like to say before I get started that Ann Galloway, our founder and editor, he may know of, she's very sorry she couldn't make it. She's in Texas this week at Trip Fest, which is hosted by the Texas Tribune, which is one of the most successful nonprofit news organizations in the country. Started by a guy named John Thornton, who invited Ann to go down there and sort of talk about some of the bigger ideas of what's going on with nonprofit news and how we can expand what we're doing at BT Digger, both in Vermont and elsewhere. So she's sorry she couldn't make it, but she's quite in a good fight in Texas at the moment. All right. So I'm going to sort of break it down one thing at a time. First, the disappearance of real news. Obviously, at BT Digger, we very much do not believe the real news is gone altogether, right? I mean, we're trying to make real news happen every day, but certainly the amount of real news being generated at a local level is seriously diminished compared to even what it was two decades ago. So just some of the basic figures that the amount of money going into print outlets through ad revenue just from 2000 to 2015 has gone down from $6 billion across the country to $20 billion across the country. So we're operating on a third of the budget that we were just 20 years ago. And from 1990 to 2016, the number, total number of people employed at these organizations has gone down from almost half a million people to 173,000, and the number of daily newspapers has also seen a precipitous decline, although not as significantly. I think that it's important to note the number has gone down from 14 and a half to 12 and a half thousand, but the actual, those organizations are far less robust than they were in the past and get into in a bit. Some of the bigger Vermont news organizations, the extent to which they've been gutted. They still exist, but they exist in a far, far diminished way. And then talking a bit about news desert. So you may be familiar with the term, this is places where basically there just are no journalists covering what's happening in these places, right? So I mean, I think that you can think around Vermont. Can you guys hear me okay? Yeah, yeah, all right, cool. Around Vermont, a lot of places that once had strong coverage. So a lot of jobs, even the jobs that do exist have shifted from local places, from sort of blanket coverage in the United States to pockets in the East Coast and the West Coast, right? So areas around New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, that still have very strong coverage. So this is sort of, as things have shifted from print to digital, the jobs available in digital media are very much focused on the sort of urban centers. So just to use that sort of, the number of jobs in internet publishing has gone up from 77,000 in 2008 to more than 200,000 in 2007, 17. But 73% of those jobs are concentrated in these areas. And then this sort of shows where you see the darker colors down in Southern California, around Chicago, Illinois, and in New York, a little bit in Florida. Those are places where lots of journalism jobs, lots of coverage, very robust. Obviously, if you look here in Vermont, you see a much lighter shade, which would suggest there's just not a lot of folks doing journalism here. And particularly, interestingly, sort of central Vermont is the lightest color, which is kind of surprising. I think that things like the Caldonia record, the Rattleboro Reformer, that those sort of give a slightly brighter view to some of the other parts of the state. And then a bit about fake news, which obviously has become, we've got some thumbs down in the audience. And fake news has become this very broad term. At some point, it might have actually meant things that were intentionally fake. It's come to mean something, a lot of different things. It's often used to describe news that people don't like, such as the Russia reports. This sort of clickbait, which is maybe sort of true in some way, but is meant purely to bring as many people onto the website as possible, so it has very little value. And then actual fabricated news, such as Katy Perry resolving the ISIS conflict. So it's sort of a broad swap of things as far as what means fake news. But when we talk about, and I think it's important to talk about fighting all these things separately, but to see each of them as being a separate problem in themselves. That fake news, actual fabricated news, is some problem, clickbait is something that sort of the internet business model has driven, just to try to get as many people on your website as possible. And news people don't like, that's obviously another issue. And then just a bit about another thing is fake news is not news that are mistakes, right? We make mistakes. Does this work? Yeah. Oh, it's a pointer. No. No, it's a pointer. This new fangle technology. And then mistakes also not to be confused with fake news, right? That news organizations get things wrong and sometimes when you get things wrong, it's a huge liability for the news organization. I don't know if you guys saw the New York Times story recently about Nikki Haley's curtains cost $52,000. She didn't make the decision to buy the curtains. The Trump administration didn't make the decision to buy the curtains. So it was sort of framed in a way that made the Trump administration look very bad. It was actually a decision made by the Obama administration and a lot of conservative pundits took the New York Times to task and said this is proof of their liberal bias. So mistakes sometimes, maybe they're not, whether or not they're well-intentioned, badly-intentioned, they blow up on the news organization and they fuel this sort of fake news narrative. And this isn't new, right? So Jonathan Swift said a few hundred years ago, falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it. And this is proven very much true in the social media age. A study that was published in Science Magazine found that falsehood diffuses significantly faster, farther, deeper and more broadened in truth. And on Twitter alone, falsehoods tend to spread 70% faster than truths. And then it's not just robots that are doing this. There's an idea that these sort of algorithms that are generated by the social media sites are somehow responsible for spreading this fake news and it's actually us that are responsible for fake news. There's various theories on why that is, but that humans are the ones who are spreading this news and not the bots most of the time. And one solution to all this, and this goes, this is less about fake news than it is about what I was talking about with the news deserts and that sort of thing, but that the advertising model is, it's becoming very clear that it's broken, right? The New York Times, the Washington Post, who have millions and millions of readers a day, they can generate enough money to actually have sort of a standard funding model for their news organizations. For local news, that's just not possible anymore. It's very clear that people who are still sticking to the advertising model, they can hire a few reporters, a few editors, but they're really struggling to get by. And what Ann Galloway did a few years ago after being laid off from one of those newspapers from the Times Argus, it has started website and try a whole different model for how local news can be done. And it's not just happening at BT Digger, it's happening across the country. Like I said, Ann's at the Texas Tribune right now. They're doing it about as well as anyone are. There's Mississippi Today, there's a website in Connecticut, there's a pew in California. So this is, the idea is starting to spread a bit. And there's organizations like Institute for Nonprofit News which brings together, I think they have 140 members around the country who are talking about ways to do membership models of journalism so that the readers are essentially paying for as much as possible the content that they're reading. So you have a much more direct connection and you no longer rely on advertising. Lion Publishers is the same thing, that's local, independent online news. They also have hundreds of members. News Match is an organization that gives matches local donations so that it sort of helps fund these operations. And as I mentioned, TriVest is this, I would encourage you to check out the Texas Tribune, they're doing some pretty cool work. So rather than just talking about how bad things are out there, Ann talks about going to conferences around the country and journalism and just how depressing the experience is that everyone's saying everything we knew is gone and the end of news is near. But that doesn't have to be the case, right? There are people who are actively coming up with ways to fill some of these news deserts. There's a thing, I believe it's called News Corps that's sort of like AmeriCorps where you hire young journalists and send them around the country to some of these places that don't have reporters. So people, we, BT Digger, are part of a broader effort to actually fill these news deserts and create a model that's more sustainable than this. And then a few of the ways, so as I mentioned, it's a membership model largely. I'll get in later to sort of how BT Digger is funded, but the idea is that people are moving towards a system where if you want the news, you pay for it and you don't pay a rate necessarily, you pay as much as you can afford. And the NPR affiliates really, I think, are the standard bearers of this model. They did it decades before anyone else did it. So BT Digger is not reinventing the wheel here. A lot of what we're doing is very similar to what the NPR or other NPR affiliates does, which is they say, if you appreciate this programming, if you appreciate the work we're doing, then help support us. And it's also mission-driven. So on my clickbait that we were talking about before, you don't need to put out the news that's going to, you don't need to put out Half Naked Woman, you don't need to put out this kind of thing that you're doing stories that are part of a broader mission. So, you know, at BT Digger, we're doing government accountability work, we're doing, obviously, democracy, environment, I mean, all the things that you see on our website that this is part of a broader mission to contribute to important public dialogue. And, you know, most importantly, sustainable, that we're not relying on advertisers to continue taking out ads in BT Digger, that we have a membership base who appreciates what we're doing and will keep supporting. This is not all gonna be a pitch for BT Digger, by the way. Most of it is more broadly focused. So back to the title, you know, talk about disinformation and now mistrust and rigid thinking. So the Pew Research Center just did a general study into people's opinions about their government and it was pretty depressing. Yeah, at the moment, 18% of Americans trust their government to do the right thing most or all the time. In 1968, that number was 62%. And even during Watergate, the number was 36%. So it's a pretty dire situation. And this sort of helps explain why they're so low. So low of trust in the media right now. So this shows from left to right, liberal leaning media to right leaning media. And this variations on this are sort of kicking around the internet. I don't really want to get into the methodology that they use or whether or not, sites that they call are neutral or not. But I think it helps explain the general sense that there's not a lot of this sort of partisan divide in the media at the moment, right? But you see down the middle, you have NPR, BBC, Washington Post, New York Times. Obviously some people, including our president, would disagree with whether they're playing things down the middle. But it's hard as a news organization right now to not be seen as, you know, when there's such a partisan divide, so many people are distrustful of the government. Then how does the media sort of be trusted? What is the vertical? This is clickbait down at the bottom. So websites that are just generally trying to get as many people onto the website as possible. Sensational and clickbait is what it says down here. And then up here is complex. So more like intellectual news outlets, the Atlantic, the Economist, things like this. So you see CNN sort of plays it down the middle, but it's panders a bit more. Yeah, so that's the idea of this graphic. And I'm sure that many different people using many different methodologies would place different news organizations in different places on this. But just to give a general sense of the sort of how the media is caught up in a lot of the partisan, at least the perceptions of how things are. I saw one of our reporters who said this weekend, someone came up to them and said, so where does BT Digger fall in the political spectrum? And she was trying to say, we don't, right? That we're reporting the news, we're reporting both sides of the story to the extent that they are sort of legitimate and have something to contribute to the conversation. But there's sort of a sense that news organizations wield a political stick in the same way that others do. And part of the problem is that a lot of news organizations do try to do that, right? Obviously Fox News and MSNBC and these organizations have their own agendas, I guess. So what to do about all this? There's sort of a reactive approach. I just took the example of Indonesia's government, which is gonna start having weekly press conferences where they inform the people about what fake news is. You can see how this would be pretty easily abused obviously when they start, I mean, leaders tend to have different views of what's true and not true than journalists and that sort of thing. Obviously there's a more extreme reactive approach, which is that if leaders or people don't like the news then you can put people in jail. There are lawsuits in Cambodia where I was reporting for a long time, near the end of my time there, the government was cracking down quite a bit and some journalists ended up in jail. So the reactive approach from governments can be extreme or it can be just having news conferences to try to clear things up. And then there's a more proactive approach to how to deal with fake news, which is to teach people how to read the news, right? That to not take it for granted that people, young people, middle-aged people, other people will be able to differentiate when they're looking at Facebook, when they're looking at Twitter, when they're online, what's real and what's not, right? What can be trusted, what can't be trusted? So to take news literacy as another skill that you need in order to engage in civil debate, in order to be a sort of functioning citizen, and someone who's sort of been pushing this quite a bit in recent years is our governor in Vermont, Bill Scott, who in April when he stood up and signed those gun laws he made sort of a surprising and impassioned plea for people to be more decent, right? To try to sort of, that the level of dialogue happening online in particular was just in such a way that no one was even having a conversation anymore. People were just yelling at each other, insulting each other, and it wasn't really getting us anywhere. So I think that he deserves some credit for, you know, at least raising this issue and talking about it. He wrote an op-ed on, wrote an opinion piece in BT Digger recently. You know, I don't know that he's come forward with any particularly innovative ideas for how to integrate this into school curriculums or anything like that, but perhaps that's to come. All right, so now I'm gonna shift the talk to Vermont a bit. Well, for the rest of it. Here's our team at BT Digger. It's changed a bit since this photo was taken, but just to briefly give you a sense, we have environment reporters, this is Ann, by the way. We have a web editor, Mike Docherty, a columnist, John Margolis, and then a number of B reporters over here, criminal justice, healthcare, politics, energy, environment. This is Jim Wells, she was a former editor at the Burlington Pre-Press, who's now our special projects editor. Yeah, so we have about 20 people on staff when we're full. We have a couple of positions that we're hiring for right now. Just to give you a sense of that. And there's sort of an anecdote that I think helps explain how much things have changed in the moment right now in Vermont media now compared to 20 years ago and sort of the role that BT Digger is trying to play in Vermont media. When the state house was adjourned this last year and everyone was sort of on a deadline, this is, it's been compared among political journalists to like the Super Bowl. Is the final negotiations, it's been four months in the state house, this year was almost six months in the state house, and this is sort of the big push at the end. It goes until midnight, hard negotiations, backdoor negotiations, grandstanding on the state house floor. And this year at the state house adjournment, there were three news organizations there. Seven days had one journalist, NBC Five had one journalist there, and BT Digger had five journalists there. So I think that sort of gives a sense of, that we're a mission-driven news organization that sends all of our, whatever available resources we have, we send them to cover state politics. And I think that for a lot of other news organizations that don't have a lot of reporters, it just ends up sort of falling, it doesn't become a priority, right? You have to, for TV stations, they have to cover Prime, they have to sort of cover your classic TV news. So when you have three or four reporters, you just don't have the resources to really give state politics the coverage that it requires. And just a sort of example of this, just wanted to talk a bit about the Rutland Herald and the Burlington Free Press. The Rutland Herald are their news editor for 15 years. His name was Alan Keyes. He now works at BT Digger. The reason he left the Rutland Herald was because they were in deep, deep financial troubles. And as the news editor, he felt like it was his responsibility to report on that. And the publishers weren't very happy about his reporting. And he was shown the door after 15 years. And Ann Galloway, as soon as she found out about it, she called him and hired him. So he's our criminal justice reporter now. But when he showed up at the Rutland Herald, they had a three-person state press bureau in Montpelier. They had a four-person Southern Vermont bureau, and that's not including Rutland, that's the rest of Southern Vermont. They had six people covering Rutland City. They had one person in Bennington. They had a Sunday reporter who just wrote for the Sunday newspaper. They had a number of freelancers and stringers. They had an art section. They had a business section, each with dedicated reporters. And then they had nine to 10 editors. They had two city editors. They had a managing editor, an assistant managing editor, an arts editor. So that's 1995, and now 23 years later, they have no press bureau. They have no Southern Vermont bureau. They have no Sunday newspaper. They have four reporters, period, four news reporters, and two editors, although one of them was just let go, so currently they have one editor. Again, like the comparison is just remarkable. They had more than 20 reporters. They had nine to 10 editors. Now they have four reporters and two editors. So that just gives you a sense of when you saw that number early in the presentation about how many newspapers still exist, they may exist, they may publish, but it's in a way that is, just the amount of work they're doing is almost incomparable. And then the Burlington Free Press still fits out these papers some days. In 1990, they had 48 full-time editors, reporters, photographers, photo editors. They had a four-person state house bureau. I apologize for the misspelling there. They had correspondence in 10 out of the state's 14 counties. So these weren't staff members. These were correspondence who wrote, pretty regularly, wrote about city halls, wrote about news in those counties. So that's separate from the 48 full-time editors. That's another 10 people in counties around the state. And they had a Sunday circulation about 70,000 newspapers. In 2018, they have 12 editors, reporters. They have one person who's both a photographer and a videographer. They have no correspondence around the state. And they have a Sunday circulation of 11,000 newspapers. So that's compared to 70,000. So I think that when you get down to how, what's actually happening in these newsrooms, you really get a sense of, even where the newspaper is still coming out, it's a very different operation indeed. And Vermont still has a number of dailies. The Caldonia Record, Valley News, which is both New Hampshire and Vermont. The Times-Argus, the Bennington Banner, and Bralover Reformer. Valley News, Bennington Banner, and Bralover Reformer are all partners at BG Digger, which means that we share content with them. We share some coverage with them. We share reporters with them in a couple of cases. So they're all publishing still. But again, they, on a smaller scale than the Rutland Herald and the Burlington Free Press, have had their newsrooms gutted as well. And actually a number of our reporters previously worked at these newspapers, but amid downsizing, needed another job. And then there's BG Digger, led by journalists and powered by the public. In 2009, Anne was the only employee. People at the State House recall her with her computer. And that was BG Digger. Anne Galloway with her computer at the State House. She had no budget. And then she got a grant from the Knight Foundation, which kind of kick-started it as something a bit bigger than she is, allowed her to hire someone to start actually looking at how to turn it into a business. Today we have 20 staff in an annual budget of $1.5 million. And our main competitors are not the newspapers. Burlington Free Press continues to be quite competitive on a statewide scale. But otherwise, we think of Seven Days and VPR as being sort of our main competition. Seven Days, they have about three dedicated reporters who do a lot of daily news coverage, politics news coverage. They scoop us, we scoop them. It's a healthy competition.  VPR, they do radio very well, obviously, but they also have their reporters do stories online. So if you go to vpr.org, you can find longer versions of what they're putting on the radio. Our proper news reports, they talk to lots of sources. Essentially, they're trying to do the same kind of thing we are, but not the traditional newspapers. So it's a very different media environment. And just a bit about sort of how BT Dagger operates here. So we're online only, and I think one of the most important parts of that is that our business model doesn't include tens of thousands of dollars every month on printing a newspaper, right? It's very, very expensive. So we've sort of, by cutting that out of the equation, almost all of BT Dagger's money is going towards people, people and reporters, business staff, et cetera. And obviously, more readers are moving online too, so it makes sense to go where the readers are. This talks a bit about who our readership is. So as far as ages go, more than half our readers are between 55 and 74, about 10% between 18 and 34. Education level, majority, 86%, have a college degree or higher. Income level, about 70%, earn over $60,000 a year. And the other metric that we have in our media kit is how many of our readers vote on a regular basis. And as you can see, a very slim part of our readership is not voting. So the idea there is just to show that our readers are engaged. And then this just talks a bit about our reach. Talked about some of the biggest newspaper in the state, Billington Free Press, is distributed to 11,000 people on a Sunday. So we're getting online reaching every month, almost a quarter of a million unique readers. Monthly page views, almost a million. And that number is steadily going up, although probably not a huge amount of going up to do, right, Vermont's not a huge place. The amount of interest in nitty gritty Vermont news outside of Vermont is not huge. So it's not the kind of operation that can sort of scale up forever, but we're getting to a point where we're getting a significant number of people in the state reading B.T. Digger. And then talking a bit about the sort of coverage we do, we have about 12 reporters who are broken up between Beats Bureau's and partnerships. Beats are reporters who are focused on, we have healthcare, criminal justice, politics, environments, and others probably. We have a Burlington reporter as well. We have an education reporter. So sort of the classic news Beats. And then we have some partnerships with the Ralph or former of the Bennington banner where we share reporters with them. So those reporters are reporting in those places, but they're trying to report stories that are of statewide interest to people who might be reading B.T. Digger. And we do a mix of news and investigation. So one thing that Ann has talked about about when she started is she was doing about three stories a week. And really deep stories, very insightful, groundbreaking, et cetera. But there just wasn't enough stories going up to bring people back on a regular basis, right? So we tried to strike a balance sort of between the daily news grind, which is just covering what's going on on the given day. And then deeper investigations, which is really where we think we deliver the most value. But in order for people to get constant value out of the news that we're creating in order for them to come back on a day-to-day basis, in order for them to deliver value to the underwriters, there's a certain amount of news that we have to create. So I'm the news editor and I'm always like pushing people to report what's going on that day. We try to reach, we try to do eight to 10 stories a day, which between 10 to 12 reporters is, we're busy. But also trying to balance that with investigation. So trying to give people time to really dive into issues, to pour over documents, to do interviews on the record, off the record, just to try to find out about things that other people aren't reporting. We've started doing more podcasts and videos. Our podcasts, our sort of flagship podcast is called The Deeper Dig. And that's produced by Mike Docherty, who is our community editor. And he does a pretty fantastic job if you're into radio and to podcasts. So I would certainly encourage you to check it out. It's a weekly podcast where he, for an hour, sort of explores one of the bigger stories of the week, but sort of talks to some of the people who are part of that story. He talks to the reporter who's been reporting it and sort of go behind the story and find out about what's going on in a way that you wouldn't in a news story. And then we've been doing videos as well. Things like today there was outside burning Sanders office. There was a rally against Brett Kavanaugh. So things that sort of people might want to see but couldn't turn out for would be the kinds of things that we might try to give a video for. And money. Still important, even for a nonprofit news organization. So this is from, this is a year old, I apologize, but it's the freshest one that I could find. It sort of shows the breakdown in our revenue, about a third of our revenue comes from grants. So that's from organizations like the Knight Foundation, Neiman, people, you know, national organizations who support local news operations. Oftentimes through a donor match. So if you visit our website twice a year, we do fundraising campaigns and oftentimes we'll do news matches. So whatever we can raise ourselves will be matched by a group like the Knight Foundation. Underwriting is about a third. So that's a fairly classic advertising model where we're reaching out to companies. Right now we're reaching out to political candidates to try to get them to advertise on our website. So pretty much anyone who has advertising that they want to place, convincing them that BG Digger is the place that they want to do that. Contribution, so this is the membership model coming from individuals, coming from pretty much anyone who, you know, the pitch here is, if you believe in what we're doing, then support what we're doing. And news revenue, that's coming from our partners, the Ralbert Reformer, the Bank to Banner that I talked about. And then we have about 20 other weekly newspapers around the state who use our stories for their sort of statewide coverage. So places like the Colchester newspaper newspaper and just a lot of sort of smaller community papers who still want to have some statewide coverage. And events, 1%, not huge amount of events and then expenses, as you can see, 81% is going towards program expenses. So that's essentially staff, staffing costs. So 80% of what we make is going towards that. We spend about 16% on fundraising and 3% on general administration. So a huge amount of what we make is going into the people who make it, which makes it a very lean operation and different from a lot of legacy organizations who are spending a lot of time. And then a few things about what we're working towards. A partnership with UBM, which is working with them to set up journalism classes and to train journalists hopefully who will then stay in Vermont. I think that's very important to us. Radio news briefs, this is a syndication that we've started doing last month with WDEV and we'll start doing with VPR where we send them the news that we're working on today so that they can broadcast it in the afternoon. As sort of similar to an AP relationship, the AP is sort of on the decline, at least in their Vermont coverage. So sort of trying to step into that void and give radio stations some fresh news for the afternoon primetime drive. Politifact is an organization that does sort of fact-checking of what politicians are saying. We're gonna become Vermont's Politifact partner. And then we've also set up a growth fund, which is sort of supposed to take BT Dagger to the next level to create a what's the word for a lasting fund and endowment, there we go. An endowment that will sort of bring some stability to BT Dagger and hopefully turn it into something more like the institution rather than being a starter. Yeah, so the website's btdagger.org and thank you. Yeah, so I'm really happy to take questions for 20 minutes. Yeah, so please. You date the podcast, but the Deeper Dig is it spelled BT Dagger? Nope, just one. And if you go on our website, it's over on the right side of the website. There's a link that goes through to Deeper Dig. The question was whether Deeper Dig is spelled with one G or two. And then I was saying that it's also available. The podcast that I was speaking of. If you look over on the right side of the homepage, you can find it there. We have a microphone system, so bear with us. Yeah, no problem. During the Ronald Reagan administration, I believe he either by himself or through the Federal Communications Administration eliminated what was called equal time. And that was before cable news, cable TV. But it was designed to ensure that a program would have somebody on one side of the spectrum and somebody on the other side of the spectrum and have equal time. He would either appear on the same program or back to back or something. What effect do you think that that has towards where we are today? What is big news and disinformation and partisan politics? I think it's a big question. I mean, I think a lot of news organizations still sort of uphold that principle because they don't want to be seen as partisan themselves. So if you look at BPR, our coverage, we, I think currently six candidates for governor and Vermont, you might not know that because a lot of them are independents. There's some sort of Earth Party as well and the Liberty Bell Party. So we don't admittedly give much coverage to the two independents and the others, but as far as Phil Scott and Christine Holquist, it's important to us to cover both equally because we think that that is what makes readers trust us. So I guess for news organizations like us that are trying to give unbiased news, I would hope that they're upholding the same principle that the fairness rule had. It certainly allowed a lot of work, I mean, it certainly give organizations the freedom to break with that trust and to pursue a partisan agenda, right?  I think that's absolutely true. And I think that there's probably strong debates to be made on both sides of that issue, whether or not the government should be dictating to media outlets, what they cover, but not in the back. Oh, sorry, I want to take one from the front first. I think you also have a spot on PBS. I usually miss it because it's just as I'm switching from the news on EPR to watching the evening news on PBS, and I sort of had to go on to do other terms at that point. That's right, it's called The Digger Minute. It's once a week that our community editor, Mike Docherty, goes on and just sort of gives a rundown of a minute in the news, and they do the same thing with BPR once a week, and I think it's an effort by Vermont PBS to just engage some of the other non-profit news organizations and sort of, you know, create some sort of culture collaboration between those organizations so that we're not all just doing our own thing, yeah. It's great for us because then people like you who might not see a BT Digger online, you know, become aware of us at the very least. So yeah, Mike, if I understood you correctly, the legislature of German, none of the daily newspapers had anybody there. And I'm just wondering with the news coverage, do you think that has encouraged any misbehavior by public officials? I mean, do you think that they are using that lack of scrutiny to do things that they might not do with those more coverage? Yeah, I mean, I think at the statewide level, there's still enough coverage and enough scrutiny that there's not a sense that nobody's watching. But there was a really interesting study that came out about a month ago about how in places, in these news deserts that I'm talking about, places that have lower news coverage, taxes are higher. That decisions, and there's been some studies on accountability in other areas, such as corruption and that kind of thing, that just sort of shows that at a very local level, where there's literally no one covering it, that there is a direct relationship between that and decisions that might raise taxes, decisions that might sort of create fuel on accountability in some other ways. So I think that at the statewide level, there's still up in the media box in the state house, there's still a few people watching, it's still clear that we're there, whether or not, if there was literally no one there, would that sort of cause lawmakers to misbehave? I'm not so sure, but I think that it's probably more important at the granular level at select board meetings, or the lack of select board meetings, because you can make decisions without any accountability whatsoever. So yeah, I mean, I certainly think that there's a direct relationship there. So I noticed your demographic numbers there. They skew highly to people like us in this room. That's right, thank you all. And I wonder what are you doing about the population that gets almost all of their news from the internet and how are you addressing that, or is there another organization like you that they go to? I think that's a very important thing for them to get news like you present and do that, but what do you do about that? Yeah, I mean, that's probably, I would say the most important question for us right now is how do we not, we're very happy to have high levels of readership among older populations, but we'd like that to be a bit more level, right? And I mean, one thing that we're doing is trying to engage more through social media. That's not a very novel approach, but there's many different ways of how to do that. There's another thing called search engine optimization, which is using Google essentially and making sure that when people are searching for news about Vermont that they're finding BT Digger, you mentioned that we're trying to engage with people who are getting their news online or an online only news outlet. It seems like those two things should go together fairly well, but so one question for us is to what extent are younger people reading the news at all? Are they sort of engaging with national news and not really paying much attention to what's going on on a more local level? Is it sort of, I think there's a lot of studies also showing that general engagement, I mean, if you just look at voting, the sort of the turnout for voting is dropping drastically as well. So, is it part of a more general trend of not caring that much about the decisions being made in the state? Do we need to engage on an issues basis as opposed to a sort of broad coverage that all people want? Should we be focused more on the clean energy movement and sort of try to focus on that? There's a lot of questions that we're pursuing to try to answer that question of how do we get a younger demographic to care about the stories we're telling? Or is it a way that we're telling the stories? A lot of our stories we still tell mostly through typed words, right? That we often write 800 to 1,000 words about the issue of the day. Should we be focusing our resources on trying to make videos that tell those stories? Should we have just data graphics that tell it rather than trying to sort of tell it as a written narrative? Yeah, but we're all very used to that format, the written narrative, so that's sort of what we're most comfortable producing. Shifting to something where we're telling all our stories in a video format or something like that would be a huge decision for us. And maybe it would, all the people who do appreciate what we're doing right now wouldn't want it in a video. So, and then do we have the resources to do both? Can we do a video and print? And the answer to that probably right now is no, so great question and let us know if you've got any ideas. Yes? Yeah. I'm sorry, could you speak about your experience in Cambodia and who you were a journalist there, who were you writing for and was it any English and what was your most significant experience there? Yeah, sure. So, I started there, I taught for a year, I taught like six to nine year olds, I left right out of college, something to do. And I hadn't been out of the country much, so just sort of trying to broaden my horizons. And then I started writing for the Phnom Penh Post, which is one of two of the major English language newspapers in Cambodia, the other one is the Cambodia Daily. I started a weekly news magazine for Cambodians that was bilingual in combined English that was sort of meant to do something very similar to what you're talking about, which is tell the news in a way that younger people would want to read it, so more pictures, smaller sort of chunked stories rather than long stories, just trying to engage young folks. We had an online platform for debate, that kind of thing. And then I moved over to the Cambodia Daily, I became the politics reporter during the 2013 election, which was a very exciting election in Cambodia. The opposition was very strong. The opposition leader came back from France a few weeks before the election. It was electric, the opposition had never been stronger. They won almost half the vote. The ruling party declared that they won. There were mass protests throughout the city and I was covering those tens, perhaps more than 100,000 people out on the streets at the same time. So that was as far as the most interesting thing that I covered at that period. That certainly, I may never cover anything as exciting as that, maybe not in Vermont, I don't know. It's hard to envision exactly what might reach that level. And then the ruling party declared victory, the protests died down a bit. The ruling party got very sort of heavy handed. Over the past five years it's sort of been a quickly deteriorating landscape there. The opposition leader was put in jail. He was recently released to house arrest. The media environment, the newspaper that I worked out, the Cambodia Daily is closed now. They still do a bit of online stuff, but we had something like 40 staff members, including 20 journalists, and those jobs have all been lost. So the newspaper does not exist as the newspaper anymore. Our competitor was purchased by a friend of the prime minister and has been watered down very much. So the media environment is really struggling. Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which are both funded by taxpayers, are sort of the most robust news organizations reporting on Cambodia. And that's great, although they don't quite do the sort of robust daily coverage that we were doing. Yeah, and then I moved back with my wife, Su Kim, and our son in exactly a year ago, we moved back to the States and moved to Vermont about nine months ago. Is that enough? Yeah, I know, I have a question about how you have such good in-depth coverage on political matters and what's happening at the state capitol. I wonder is there any way you can sign that into doing something with WCAX? I understand. So then people are asking you what's up. But there is, I'm just asking you if there's a possibility you can find some opening there for that kind of reporting is very well done. Thank you. So Neil Goswami, who you probably recognize if you know CIX, he's a pretty great reporter and he knows what's going on. I mean, he's got a great understanding. He came from a print background. I don't know if you knew that. He worked for the Times Argus as well. And he has talked to my colleagues about just sort of TV as a medium just doesn't allow for in-depth storytelling. It allows, he gets like, he'll cover the state house for a day and he has to describe what happened in a minute and a half. And it's like, how do you really explain what's going on? So, I don't think for him at least, I don't think it's the quality of reporting. I think it's the decision being made by producers as far as how much time they wanna give those things. So whether or not BT Digger could convince CIX. I mean, the other thing is they could do like, after this I'm actually going to Vermont PBS to do Vermont this week, right? Which is they choose to give a half hour of their programming just to talk about state politics. So if CIX felt like, if they did something like that where they actually had like a Vermont politics show that seems like that might be, but it doesn't seem like that's the direction they're moving in. I think they're giving less and less time to what's going on in state politics. And I'm sure that has to do, I describe what's going on in print media but the same things happening to CIX. They've had a ridiculous number of layoffs in recent years and they're a very diminished organization as well. Thank you. Yeah. You said something about the stories that you've covered. Can you tell me what, what do you define as the stories you would cover because the example you use where you don't cover the other candidates you just covered the main ones. I mean, I would like to know about those other candidates. And by covering on certain candidates that gives them exposure and people don't even know about the others. So you would just kind of gear their votes to those that are in the, you know, exposed. Sure. And there's been, I don't know, do you know Charles Laramie? He's one of the independents running this year, but he's been very sort of forceful sort of pushing this issue that he should be getting equal coverage. I mean, and, you know, I could probably, it's quite a can of worms to open up to talk about this because the main reason we see is that if there are six, it's very easy to sign up. You need 500 signatures in Vermont, right? So if you can get 500 signatures, then you can enter the race. And then whether or not we're being unfair by not covering them, I think that, you know, we're trying to give people information that will help them decide who will be Vermont's next governor. So I don't know whether or not, nothing against the earth party, but I'm not sure that the earth party candidate has a chance of becoming Vermont's next governor. And do we wanna give them one sixth of the time or one sixth of the space on our website because they managed to get on the ballot? And perhaps the answer is yes, but we also, you know, covering six campaigns takes a lot more resources than covering two campaigns. We will do stories on the independent candidates before the election. We're including them in our voter guide, which is a guide that you can go to to find out about every candidate in every race across the state. The way that we do that is we send emails to the candidates, ask them the same questions, basic questions, what are your stances on the sort of important policy issues of the day, tell us a bit about yourself, and then that information will all be available to our readers so that you can see whatever the six candidates have to tell you about their positions and who they are. As far as our day-to-day news coverage of the campaign, it will continue to be focused mostly on those people unless one of the independents, I mean, I think Bernie Sanders is a great example that if you make, I mean, he went through so many elections where everyone was ignoring him, right? Like, I think he lost like 12 elections before he won one, something like that. So, I mean, if you're an independent candidate who turns yourself into part of the story, who's having campaigns, who has supporters who's coming out and showing that you are part of the conversation, then both Digger and TV stations, everyone will start covering you, right? So, I mean, there's no clear answer, and I think that's part of the problem. And we've been talking this year about trying to come up with a coherent policy to say, we don't have the resources, nor do we think it's valuable to cover every person who's on the ballot. We will make sure that information about those candidates is available on our website for anyone who wants it. But here's how we're gonna cover the campaigns in a way that's both fair and allows people to sort of see the competition between the two people who, by all accounts, seem to be the only real candidates for who's gonna be coming up. I don't know if that was satisfactory, but it's something that we're thinking a lot about, and I think it's a very fair question. If there is maybe one more question? Yeah, this is something that's been on my mind. I like watching our reading on the internet of various news sources from my figure, but also New York Times, Washington Post, other news organizations. But I don't subscribe to these ones like New York Times. New York Times and Washington Post and others limit you to a certain number of views per month.  So, okay, but I guess I'd like your comments, but I wish there was a way that you could put an umbrella organization or something like that, that to go to New York Times to read a few columns a month, it would be $150 a year or more. I, that doesn't fit, you know, and then I want to read Washington Post again. I wish there was something that I could go on to that would credit me so that I could give to them. I don't really, you know, have a reasonable way. Well, like a coalition of like 10 national news outlets that you could put a certain number of views between all of them. I just kind of wish there were something like that. I know there are a lot of these organizations that are hurting, but those of us. Yeah, I mean, part of it is that it's a doggy dog world out there, right? And people need the subscribers and the idea of getting a few pennies from a subscriber who is buying 10 views a month across 10 websites is not gonna help anyone's revenue generation. But you know, what I think my argument is, I'm not talking about a few pennies. If you look at the number of people that are doing the same thing I'm doing across the nation, who would probably have 10 thousands is not more. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a fantastic idea. I support the idea. And I'll mention it to people when I meet them. I wish there was something we could have never heard of. I mean, I'll admit that I subscribe only to the New York Times. It's like, because I can afford to subscribe to about one website, so that's the one that I do. If that could give me some access to the Washington Post, I'd be much happier because then I could repost, but at the moment it's choice-forwarded. Thank you, very much. Thank you.