John Hochreiter, the elected Assistant District Governor, will introduce this year’s District Governor Jamie Milne. Here’s some background from Jamie's personal Rotary page: Jamie is the owner of Milne Financial Planning, a fee-only financial planner and investment advisor.  Jamie first joined the Barre, Vermont Rotary Club and served as President for the year 2001-2002. He is currently a member of the St. Johnsbury, Vermont Rotary Club serving as Secretary and was President for the year 2012-2013.  He was Assistant Governor for the years 2013-2017.  Jamie is a Paul Harris Fellow. 

 

 

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The Zoom Room opens at 11:45 AM.  After our opening Pledge of Allegiance and opening Password Todd will hand off the virtual podium to Johm Hochreiter to introduce our speaker. 

 

 

Carol Olwert announced that Headrest, the non-profit organization which runs the 24/7 Crisis Hotline (1-800-273-TALK) that serves NH and VT, will be hosting a series of "Virtual Lunches" throughout the month of September - themed around Suicide Prevention Month. The sessions will take place every Tuesday at noon and are expected to last about 30 minutes. Here are the speakers and topics for the month ahead: 

Tom Csatari offered a Happy Dollar in honor of his daughter’s landing a job as a social worker at the Byrne Center at DHMC after getting her MSW. 

 

Nick Harvey, aka “iPad”, won the raffle, $10.00 off the price of a meal at Jesse’s when social distancing ends. 

 

 

REMINDER: Here’s the link to make your donation in lieu of paying for meals at Jesse’s!  https://hanovernhrotary.ejoinme.org/COVID-19

 

 

Emily Barr who manages the Graham Media Group, seven local TV stations in major Midwestern cities including Chicago, Houston, and Detroit, offered an insightful and somewhat chilling presentation on the status of locally owned TV broadcasting. She opened her talk with a history of televised news, reminding us that before the mid-1990s when cable channels began to proliferate, 75% of viewers got their news and programming from locally owned stations that broadcast the major networks. At that time only one station, CNN, offered 24/7 news coverage. With the expansion of the number of networks resulting from the expansion of cable, several 24/7 news outlets began broadcasting and, in an effort to secure viewers, several of them began taking on a slant when they reported. Now, as more and more viewers are cutting their cable cords, network news is having less influence and more news is being streamed on social media platforms. Emily observed that this reliance on social media has propelled “Fake News” as sources for reports become increasingly difficult to detect and "news outlets" offer "news reports" that are completely fictitious but seem to gain traction among large groups.

 

At the conclusion of her talk, Emily offered advice on how to gather information about the news, particularly the news gathered from social media. She recommended looking carefully at the source, becoming a “fact-checker” by Googling suspicious reports, and reading long form essays from reputable and long-standing publications that are not beholden to the time crunch that drives the 24/7 news cycle. 

 

In the Q and A session, Emily shared one piece of information I found especially unsettling: news channels CAN refuse to broadcast false information included in political ads that are underwritten by PACs, but they CANNOT refuse to broadcast false information included in political ads that the candidate officially endorses. Worse, while her media group will carefully screen political PAC ads for accuracy, many revenue starved news stations will not. 

 

Emily’s concluding remarks resonated: If there is no free press there is no democracy. 

 

 

September 16 – Todd Allen will introduce John Helminiak who will help commemorate the 75^th anniversary of D-Day and the 70^th Anniversary of the Berlin Airlift

 

September 23 – Todd Allen will introduce Arnon Mishkin of Fox News Surveys who will, I am confident, have some timely news to share! 

 

September 30 – Todd Allen will introduce Peter Gregory of the Twin Rivers Outaquechee Regional Commission

 

October 7 – Todd Allen will introduce Rory Gawler of the Dartmouth Outing Club

 

Do YOU have any ideas for speakers? We’d love to hear them! Sad to say that October is just around the corner and Winter will not be far behind and from what I’ve read in the media we’re looking at mid-Spring before this ends… but I am in the process of checking my sources! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wayne Gersen