This “backstory” is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2024.
I blow a lot of deadlines, but my reasons are always very legitimate. They include, to name a few: Someone Hasn’t Called Me Back Yet; A Public Agency Is Dragging Its Feet on a Records Request; I’m Not Very Excited About the Story; I’m Very Excited About the Story; You Assigned Me Too Many Stories at Once; and Writing Is Hard.
This summer, I missed my deadline for a story about cyber scams targeting elderly Vermonters. It was assigned as a short trend piece by news editor Matthew Roy, who was managing a series on the state’s aging demographic.
We agreed that I would get it done in advance of a vacation I had planned — which of course became a convenient excuse for failing to. But the real reason I missed the deadline was that my relationship to this assignment was stuck in some muddy middle ground between I’m Not Very Excited About the Story and I’m Very Excited About the Story.
I found the cyber scam phenomenon immensely interesting, particularly the psychological dimension. But I hadn’t managed to find someone who had been victimized to speak about their experience in a way that would make it real for readers. The story had to show the potentially devastating effects of digital deception.
Then, while I was on vacation, the paper received a news tip from a community nurse who was working with an elderly scam victim. “I have a story,” her email subject line read.
Talk about timing! I replied to the nurse while on vacation, then asked Roy to extend my new deadline. Roy, who knows a good story when he hears one, obliged. With the extra time, I visited the nurse and the woman, Martha “Mickey” Pullen, at her home in Strafford. Next, I talked to a Vermont Legal Aid attorney who was helping Pullen sort through a tax nightmare as a result of being scammed. It had sent her into a deep depression.
The attorney mentioned that he’d worked with one other woman who had been duped in a similar way. Maybe she would talk, too?
Jeanette Voss had lost nearly $1 million in an elaborate, monthslong scam during the pandemic. She’d thought about contacting a reporter at the time, Voss told me, but she felt too overwhelmed. Three years later, she was in a better place emotionally. She sensed that speaking publicly about it could help others avoid similar anguish — and perhaps help her heal.
Roy and I reimagined the story as a longer narrative that could recount the experiences of Pullen and Voss, blow by blow, in a way that brought the scams to life. We upgraded it to a cover story to ensure readers wouldn’t miss it.
Just before we published, Voss told me that she was planning to send the story to her loved ones to inform them, for the first time, about this harrowing chapter of her life. I was shocked to learn that she had been holding in all that shame, guilt and anxiety for years.
But I could understand it, too. The hard stuff takes time.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Best Excuse for a Blown Deadline”
This article appears in Dec 25, 2024 – Jan 7, 2025.
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