Trippin on the Shoestring

In this episode we share an interview we conducted in January with Sarah Lanzilotta, the owner of Ten Forward in Greenfield, about the challenges faced by the independent music venue during the pandemic. But first, a quick update about what we're up to here at The Shoestring and the goings on at Northampton City Council.

We sit down with investigative reporter Dusty Christensen of the Daily Hampshire Gazette to discuss his recent work on the internal affairs of the Northampton Police Department.

The Shoestring's Covid data columnist Joe Pater joins us to discuss how public information about the virus has been disseminated and how it hasn't. He compares the local response to that in his home town in Ontario, exposing the scattershot standards between different municipal responses and much more. Pater is a linguistics professor at UMASS Amherst.

The Shoestring talks with media scholar Victor Pickard about the failure of advertising revenue to fund local journalism, the need for publicly funded local media, and the case for media cooperatives.

We talk with Shoestring staff writer and labor correspondent Roman Nicholas about his recent expose on ServiceNet. In the piece, Nicholas spoke to shelter workers about the union bargaining process for better wages, high turnover, and staff burnout, raising questions not just about the non-profit’s labor practices but how they serve the unhoused community.

We talk with Molly Keller about her research on Northampton Police Department Officer Andrew Kohl who was recently featured in our Northampton Police Misconduct Trading Card series.

In this episode we talk with our labor beat correspondent R. Nicholas about workers and the process and challenges of organizing small businesses in the valley.

We invited former Daily Hampshire Gazette reporter and frequent Shoestring and Montague Reporter contributor Sarah Robertson to discuss the state of local news in the valley in this recurring series of discussions we are calling "Disappearing Ink."

The Shoestring has reported on over 50 Northampton City Council meetings in its regularly occurring column "I Go to City Council Meetings." Columnists Jules Marsh and Brian Zayatz along with the editorial team, reflect on what they have learned from their time spent in the chambers.