Front Porch Forum feature

I just published a big feature on The Verge: “How a Vermont became a model for online communities.” It’s a piece that’s been in the works for more than a year now, about a social network here in Vermont called Front Porch Forum.

The piece started back in the fall of 2017 — I made an offhand comment about it during a story meeting, which peaked our Editor in Chief, Nilay Patel’s interest. FPF is a network of forums that exists here in Vermont — each town gets a forum (for the most part), where they can post messages to. Most people use it for things like asking for recommendations (I’ve gotten reliable names for plumbers and carpenters through it), for highlighting lost pets, or in more extreme instances, helping with disaster recovery, as what happened in 2011 when Irene devastated the state. It was particularly helpful in my hometown of Moretown.

I began work on the article, and our staff photographer, Amelia Krales came by to take pictures of various locations in Vermont — Moretown, Westford, and Burlington. Her pictures are fantastic, and worth clicking on the story in and of themselves.

Between my other responsibilities at work, this was a slow-burning piece. That worked a bit in our favor, because last year was when social media had a pretty bad year — Facebook was engulfed in a bunch of scandals, while Twitter had its own issues. What makes FPF stand out, I think, is that it’s pushing social connections down to a local level, rather than a global one — and, they police their content, and are pretty proactive about booting people who are being abusive.

It’s a complete coincidence that it came out today, just after Cadwell Turnbull’s short story, Monsters Come Howling in Their Season, went up on the site, which deals very much with some similar (fictional) issues.

A lot of people helped with this: Josh Dzierza and Casey Newton edited, our features editor Kevin Nguyen took a pass. Adia Watts copyedited all 4000+ words, and Amelia took the fantastic pictures. I’m really happy with how it turned out, and I think it’s one of the better things I’ve written for the site.