Chris Graff's new book, "Dateline Vermont"...some interesting parts.

[madfloridian]

Christopher Graff was fired from AP, and they finally gave him two reasons. First..Pat Leahy. Second...Howard Dean.

When I think of all the right wing biased articles from the AP leading up to the war, this just sickens me...that they would tell him he was fired because of these two good men.

Dateline Chris Graff

As everybody knows, Graff did make it as a journalist — 34 years later, he’s one of the most distinguished journalists Vermonters have ever known. And, yes, folks, Ol’ Chris does write about the firing in the book, detailing his dramatic change of life that began at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, March 20, 2006: “Larry Laughlin, the AP’s bureau chief for Northern New England, handed me the letter that began, ‘This is to inform you that your employment at The Associated Press has been terminated effective immediately.’”

According to Laughlin’s letter, Graff was fired for two reasons. One, he ran a “Sunshine Week” column on the Vermont AP wire about “freedom of the press” that was written by Patrick Leahy. The Senator had also written one in 2005 that was published without problem. The AP is a lead partner in “Sunshine Week” — a national initiative stressing the importance of open government — and AP’s national editors, writes Chris, “required the editors in each state bureau in 2005 and 2006 to develop a package of material to move on their state wires for newspapers to use during the week.”

The second reason Laughlin noted for Graff’s dismissal: that he had allowed Dave Gram, one of his distinguished underlings at the Montpelier bureau, to write a chapter in a Howard Dean book the Rutland Herald/Times Argus put out in 2003.

Shocking.

And I remember Garrett Graff from the Dean Campaign, but I never made the connection to Chris Graff. Here is another interesting tidbit from the book.

We all know what’s happened to Howard Dean since. He turned into a national political “rock star” as a Democratic presidential candidate. Graff covered the early days of that, but when his son Garrett Graff, fresh out of college, went to work at the Dean for America campaign press office in mid-2003, Chris’ AP bosses asked him to tell his son not to take the job. Writes the dad:

However, I said that he was an adult and I would not stand in his way. The AP decided that I had a conflict of interest and ordered me to neither write nor edit any stories about the campaign. My decision was both painful and ironic . . . it meant that after spending almost twelve years covering a politician, and becoming, in the process, one of the nation’s most experienced analysts of Dean’s behavior and policies, I would not be able to cover a presidential campaign that was accelerating and taking exciting, surprising turns.

Yes, it certainly did.

And doesn't that look like the Governor on the cover of the book with Graff? Not much close-up, but it does look that way.



Garrett Graff now does Media Bistro Fishbowl DC.

[madfloridian]

1. Someone at the blog gave this link to order...

I realized I had forgotten it.

http://www.thistlehillpub.com/product.php?productid=5&cat=1&page=1

Sounds like a great history of VT and its politics.