End Of An Era: WCAX-TV's Marselis Parsons

Marselis C Parsons III - called Div by just about everyone who knows him - retired last month after a remarkable 42-year career in television journalism.

Parsons started at South Burlington's WCAX-TV as a general assignment reporter in April 1967. While it's natural for TV personalities to start in small cities and work their way up, Parsons was one of the rare ones who fell in love with Vermont and stayed here. He became news director and anchor of the 6 o'clock news in 1984, after the death of his boss, Richard "Mickey" Gallagher. When, 25 years later almost to the day, he closed the 6 o'clock news for the last time, he was literally choking back tears. But with characteristic humor, he called his farewell speech "Anchor's Away."

Parsons remained at one station throughout his career for several reasons.

"I thought, 'I'll do a couple of years here and then some day I'll be a foreign correspondent for CBS News and that would be great,'" Parsons said. "But things were changing. Foreign correspondents in the old days went to a particular post, just like foreign service officers did, and they stayed there. Now they fly in for 48 hours and fly out to the next crisis. They don't live in a community and get to know that community. And I found that the more I stayed here, the more I liked it. There are very few people in this state who won't take my telephone call. There are very few governors that I haven't gotten to know on a first-name basis. I know most of the people in business and hospitals and educational institutions. I know the presidents of most of the colleges -- though certainly not all of them. This state has problems just like any state, but here they seem to be manageable. Here the familiar becomes enchanting, or captivating. And I'm a little nervous about change."

Then why is he retiring?

"We're having my 25th year as news director and anchor," Parsons said. "It's time to turn it over to a younger generation. I think also the company is happy to no longer be paying me bags of money every day. And certainly sooner is better than later. It's time."

Parsons' retirement brought its own kind of media blitz: CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer kicked in with an on-the-air tribute. The Associated Press covered his last day. Vermont Public Radio's Bob Kinzel devoted a long, noon hour interview to him. And here he is again, being profiled in Vermont Business Magazine.

Why all the interest? Because hour by hour and day by day, Parsons has been telling Vermont its history for 42 years. In his long career, Parsons has covered every governor from Phil Hoff to Jim Douglas and every Congressman from George Aiken to Bernie Sanders. He has opinions - sometimes acerbic - about all of them. He humbly says that, "My opinions don't matter," but since he's had a front-row seat to Vermont politics for a very long time, his opinions are certainly interesting. We'll get to those a bit later.

Parsons has also covered more tragedy than he likes to think about. And it has affected him deeply. Just last year, for example, he had to report daily on the disappearance of 12-year-old Brooke Bennett, who was sexually tortured before she was killed and buried in a shallow grave.

"It's never fun doing stories like Brooke Bennett," Parsons said. "How can you find detachment? This is a small state. You know people. You see State Police Director Colonel James Baker making the announcement that the body has been found, and even he has tears in his eyes. Or losing another boy in Iraq or Afghanistan. We were doing the news magazine, 'Dimension,' when Melissa Walbridge was killed 1981. She was raped, stabbed, throttled and burned. They tortured her. She was 12. No, sometimes it's not fun."

But out of tragedy can sometimes come a little bit of redemption.

"It was two boys who killed Melissa Walbridge," Parsons said. "One of them's still in prison. And the horror is that one is not. He was let go when he was 18 because at that time, under state law, anything you did as a juvenile was wiped clean on your 18th birthday. And two young women from Essex said, 'This is an absolute outrage! We have to call the Legislature into session and change the law! Right now!' And (former Governor Richard) Snelling said, 'Oh, no. Acting emotionally. Not a good idea. Not how you do good legislation.' And something like 50,000 Vermonters signed a petition saying: 'Change the law! Now!' And Dick was forced into the position where he just had to do it. And it was the right thing to do. And those two women, who were just housewives and mothers of young children, led this petition effort. It got passed and they went back to being housewives and mothers. There were so pissed off. Weren't we all? Get on the bus, governor! We're changing the goddamned law!"

Strong words for such a mild-mannered man.

In person, Parson has a slightly round, smooth face and looks much younger than his 65 years. He has a mellow, sonorous, NPR-ish voice. But when he answers his phone, it's with a crisp and sharp "Parsons!" and it's hard not to hear echoes of "Murrow!" or "Cronkite!" in the way he says it.

When he's not pontificating on the news, Parsons is bright, pugnacious, funny, open and just the slightest bit profane. He allows himself to get angry at injustice and hypocrisy. Like any good newsman, he knows how to put on the pressure - and do it with charm. He's the first profile subject I've ever interviewed who did his homework beforehand and knew my work. He asks good questions; he even challenged me with a few.

In so many, many ways, Parsons is the very model of an upright, old-fashioned newsman. Among the things he had in his office: two dusty New England Emmys which he won for his news show, "Dimension;" pictures of some of the many old boats he owns and loves; a television set; a computer; and a phone book that most other reporters would die for. He also had on his desk an old Smith Corona typewriter - remember typewriters? - and he had a good story to go with it.

"The Smith Corona is not for show," he said. "It's one of my father's gems. My father, who was in the foreign service, was stationed in Lisbon in 1944. He came back to the US and married in 1942, but then he took my mother back to Lisbon. After the Allied landing, he told her, 'You're pregnant. Better think about going to a hospital in the US' So I came home on the clipper inside my mother, and the typewriter came back in the cargo hold. Basically, we both came back as cargo."

I asked Parsons if the dusty Emmys belonged to the station or to him.

"I bought and paid for those, so I take them home," he said. "They charge you, of course. They charge you to submit your work for a Pulitzer, too. Back in the 1970s, when I applied for those, the station said, 'We don't believe in awards.' I said, 'Well, I do.' So I paid the initiation fee, I paid the entry fee, I paid to go to Boston to get them, and I was flabbergasted when I got two."

The newsroom's many other honors, including a Peabody and something like 40 prestigious Murrow Awards, are displayed on a wall at the entrance to the building. He helped the news department win the Murrow award for Best Television Newscast for markets 50 and smaller in the United States in 2003.

"We've run out of wall space," Parsons said. "The Murrow awards are the important ones, because they are team awards. Television is a collaborative medium. There are editors, writers, photographers, producers, technical people, reporters, sound, graphics, all working to produce a product. And I should say program and not show, because I don't like the word 'show.' This is not a soap opera, not a play, not a production, not entertainment. What it is is a program."

Even though he is one of the most widely recognized people in Vermont, don't call Parsons a celebrity.

"I dislike people who say I'm a celebrity," he said. "I'm a presenter of news, I read the news at 6 o'clock. I'm a guest in your house, but I'm not a celebrity."

News can become something of a religion for journalists, and it certainly seems as if it was that way for Parsons.

"What is news?" he asked at one point in the interview. Then he answered his own question.

"It's what is of great interest to the American people," he said. "Are you safe? Are you safe in your home? Is your job safe? Are your children safe? Is there a predator out there? Are you financially safe, especially in today's economy? Is your pension safe? Are public officials doing appropriate things with your public money? Are your kids getting an appropriate education – and 'appropriate' is up to you and your school board. In some cases it may be art, in some cases it may be calculus. News is sometimes, 'Oh, I didn't know that!' Like, did you know that there is a graveyard in New Haven, Vermont, where you can find people buried in these huge tomb mounds? In the top of them is a little glass brick. When they were buried, they were saying, 'Come out to the cemetery every now and then and look down through the little glass brick and see if you see me there.' Is that news? Maybe. Maybe not. It's certainly 'Wow, I didn't know that.' It's a good story."

Early on, Parsons said, transparency in government became a paramount virtue. That comment, too, came with a story.

"Babe Bove was a state senator back in the 1960s when I was covering the Legislature," Parsons said. "Whenever they said, 'Let's go into executive session,' he would say, 'That's it. I'm out of here.' And he would take a folding chair and sit outside the Senate chamber. He did not believe in executive session. He would say, 'The business of the people of the state of Vermont is all business. There should never be executive session.' I feel the same way. The Legislature may have some reasons. Maybe to discuss a contract, or the security of the state - and they haven't had to do that since the Brits left in 1812. And I can see where you might be buying something and don't want to give away the price. But outside of that, I don't think there's any reason for executive session. Not at all."

Parsons is indeed old-school, said his former WCAX colleague Bill Felling, now the national editor of CBS News.

"Marselis a rare breed of newsman," Felling said. "He is still as curious about why things are today as he was when he started working. While he's a bit of a fuddy-duddy in that he has a very high standard of how things should be done, he really likes the fact that you give three minutes to a local school board. He knows how important it is to the members of his audience who have kids in that school. He actually believes that all news is local. He's a keeper of the flame in that the public service component of being a TV station is that you have an obligation to bring people the news they need in order to form opinions. WCAX-TV has never turned to reams of crime reporting. It isn't a tabloid station."

Felling remembered Parsons as a young reporter who couldn't stay away from fires.

"He drove around in an old Fiat sports car with a fireman's hat - the kind with a flap on the back," Felling said. "And a fireman's coat. He was a volunteer fireman and if there was a fire, he'd suddenly become an instant fireman. He'd come out in the middle of the night, or in the dead of winter, and there he'd be, spraying water on some barn. He loved that shit. He'd put out the fire and then he'd go back to the station and write about it. I just think he's a great guy. He's done more really, truly significant news in that state than anyone else. Not many can match his record."

Another old colleague, Gary Nurenberg, now a freelance television reporter in DC, said that growing up as the son of a diplomat gave Parsons a unique perspective.

"He brings a sensitivity that people with different backgrounds don't have," Nurenberg said. "Living overseas, he was able to see how other governments and other countries operated. It gave him an appreciation for American democracy that other people don't have. It made him a fan of US democracy. He became convinced that the only way to have a representative democracy was to have an informed electorate. And he's really dedicated this life and his career to that."

Nurenberg said that there was a time when the networks were sniffing around Parsons.

"I know he talked to networks, but I don't think networks offered him the opportunity to have as much of an impact on an audience as he could have if he stayed at WCAX," Nurenberg said. "The work he did in 'Dimension' was remarkable. He wouldn't have had that autonomy if he had been somewhere else. It was some of the best work on television in New England in the history of television in New England."

Nurenberg also praised Parsons' generosity to his employees.

"He's willing to let subordinates work on a story, giving them guidance, and then he lets them take the credit," Nurenberg said. "I don't know what the awards were, but we were at a huge award ceremony in New York. Whenever stations win these prestigious awards, the news directors go up to accept them. When WCAX won, Div sent the people up who produced and reported the story. It kind of broke tradition, but it was a way for these people to have a moment in the sun. And Div sat at a table and applauded. He believes in nurturing talent, in helping kids grow."

There was, however, a downside to working for Parsons, Nurenberg said.

"He's pretty demanding," Nurenberg said. "You had damn well better get it right. A lot of television news people hype things all the time. Div doesn't like hype. He dismisses it and won't stand for it. That's frustrating for people who would like to make their stories bigger than they are."

Parsons' generosity was also noted by John Van Hoesen, the former editor of the Rutland Herald who is now vice-president of news and programming for Vermont Public Radio.

"He's been willing to be outspoken on important issues to journalism," Van Hoesen said. "He's been a proponent of access to information. He's been willing to engage with his journalistic colleagues to explore and discuss those issues. That's something that I valued. He had a generosity towards his colleagues. When Richard Snelling died, the very first call I got was from Marselis Parsons. He wanted to make sure I hadn't missed it. He believed in in-depth journalism. Everyone was going to have that story, and everyone should do it well. We're all going to miss him."

According to Peter R Martin, the station manager of WCAX, Parsons' greatest strength lies in his ability to tell stories.

"He was a superb reporter," Martin said. "He's a storyteller in the best and broadest sense of the word. He can sense that there's a story. He can draw out from a very wide range of people facts and opinions and motivations and put them all together in a very compelling way."

Some people have wondered whether Parsons might have been forced into retirement - maybe to avoid paying him those "bags of money" he was joking about. But when I asked, Martin replied with a fervent, "Heavens, no! For 25 years he's played a pretty key role in the 6 o'clock news. He will be missed."
Cross-Cultural Education
Parsons was born in Rye, NY, the oldest of two boys. His father had a distinguished career in the State Department and as a diplomat in numerous overseas posts. During the critical years of World War II, his father was stationed in Lisbon, an important American hub in Europe. (Think of "Casablanca.") He also served as vice consul in Naples, first secretary in Oslo, consul general in Johannesburg and then as counselor of embassy and deputy chief of mission in Copenhagen. So Parsons grew up around the world.

His father didn't believe in sending the children to "compound schools" - private overseas American schools. He wanted his sons to absorb the various cultures in which they lived. So in his youth, Parsons spoke Afrikaans, French, German, Danish and Norwegian.

"Now I can barely get along in French," Parsons said. "If you don't practice it, you tend to lose it."

His full name is Marselis (pronounced Mar-SEE-lus) C Parsons III. But he has always been called Div.

"I like to tell people it's because of some ridiculous nickname I got when I was in Norway, but that's probably an apocryphal story," Parsons said. "John McClaughry once sent me an e-mail that said, 'I found out in Iranian mythological history that a div is a wind devil that brings you nothing but trouble. That fits you perfectly.' Or something like that. It has nothing to do with golf, because I don't play golf. So it's not 'divot.' It's not religious, so it's certainly not 'divine.' There used to be a Norwegian word for imp that was like div. But I'm not sure."

Being a diplomat's child meant there weren't many opportunities to take traditional kid jobs like mowing lawns and newspaper routes. But Parsons' went to high school in the US, where his first real jobs were adventurous - construction and the merchant marine.

"It was a cheap way to get me to come back to Denmark when I was going to school here," Parsons said.

Parsons always loved boats, and he thought the merchant marine was a good way to see if he really wanted to go to sea.

"Unfortunately, my eyes weren't good enough," he said.

He applied to Princeton University but was rejected. So he chose Lafayette College in Easton, PA, and studied foreign affairs. His plan was to follow his father into the foreign service. But it was the 1960s, and his father counseled him against it.

"When I was in college, there had been a shift in the State Department and in the way things were run," Parsons said. "Even though my father was a Roosevelt Democrat, he felt that under Mr Kennedy - for whom he had a lot of admiration - foreign policy was no longer being either implemented or supervised from Foggy Bottom, but from the Executive Office Building. Bobby Kennedy had more influence on the State Department than Dean Rusk. My father told me, 'You ask an awful lot of questions. You don't seem very happy with American foreign policy. And remember, if you do go overseas, you should say, 'My country, right or wrong.' I had some difficulty saying that. We were in the middle of Vietnam, there were Freedom Riders, all sorts of difficulties."

But in college, besides contributing stories to a small radio station in eastern Pennsylvania, Parsons joined the Naval Reserve.

"I joined partially to get out of ROTC," he said. "I thought maybe I'll go to sea that way. Most of my uncles on my mother's side had been in the Navy, and it was a tradition to go into the service. But also, the draft was still going. You knew you were going to go into military service. And you knew you were probably going to go to Vietnam. So I thought the most painless way was to get into the Navy. I don't like snakes, and I thought, 'There are not too many snakes on destroyers’."

Instead of calling up Parsons - who already had experience on an aircraft carrier and a destroyer - the Navy dismissed him for being exposed to malaria as a child in South Africa.

"That was an automatic disqualifier," Parsons said. "According to the doctor, they never should have accepted my enlistment."

Entering The Media

After college Parsons moved up to New Hampshire, where his parents had retired. He did a little radio work and then applied for a job at WRLH-TV, a small television station in Lebanon.

"It was quite a ride," Parsons said. "The guy who hired me was Nelson Crawford, and he had a store that sold televisions. They barely had a telephone. He said, 'Why don't you just sort of interview people every night and we'll eventually have a news department?' Then he said, 'Do you have any other skills?' I said, 'Yeah. I had a few.' 'Like what?' I said, 'I think I can write reasonably well.' He said, 'I don't care about that. What did you do in college?' 'Well, I worked in the merchant marine, and I had a job in construction.' And his eyes lit up. He said, 'Really? Can you operate any heavy machinery?' I said, 'Yeah, I know how to run a small bulldozer.' He said, 'You're hired.' Because the road to the top, where the station was, needed a lot of work. So I spent my first few weeks as a news director riding a bulldozer."

WRLH, which had started broadcasting in 1966, had a very small staff.

"We have more people here at WCAX in sports and weather than we had for the entire television station," Parsons said. "We had a staff of seven, maybe eight. We have eight people in weather and sports at WCAX right now. "

Parsons shifted over to WCAX-TV - a CBS affiliate and the first television station in Vermont to air local programs - in 1967. It too was young and growing.

"We went to an hour news in 1968, when there were probably 150,000 people in our metropolitan area - Chittenden, Addison and Frankilin counties," Parsons said. "And New York had 15 million in their metro and they were only doing half an hour. And New York would say, 'Big doings today in Washington or Beirut or Bombay.' And the owner of our station would say, 'Don't you ever presume to cover Bombay or even Boston! Let the networks cover that. Cover Vermont, northern New Hampshire and northern New York. That's all.' Usually, there is no news in our broadcast, except weather and sports, that happens outside the range of our antenna. Unless it's the Congressional delegation. And we have 50 percent more viewers than Katie Couric in this market."

Even with a limited mandate, Parsons has gone north of the border for stories several times. He was once confronted by soldiers when he covered a kidnap crisis in Quebec in 1970. That was when the Quebec separatist movement was in full swing and martial law was declared.

"I stood on the streets of Montreal, and Canadian soldiers pointed machine guns at me and said, 'What the hell are you doing here?' I've also gone on occasion for the Canadian elections and to discuss tourism issues."

WCAX

The television industry divides stations by location into 210 "markets." It then assigns them rank by size. WCAX - which is big enough to have its own Wikipedia page - is the 92nd-largest market in the US.

Parsons is mildly affronted that the station gets no credit for reaching thousands of people in Canada.

"Canada may as well be in Mars," he said. "Most American advertisers only want the American market. Coca Cola is Coca Cola the world around. But see that truck out there in the parking lot? It may be an Avalanche in the US, but in Canada it may be called the Laurentian. So you can do all the advertising you want for the Avalanche, but it doesn't do anything for Canadians. Still, every time I go to Montreal - 'Hey! I see you on the news! Hey! I see you on Channel 3!' And a lot of Canadians have camps or families in Vermont. If we did get credit for our Canadian audience, we'd be the 10th or 11th largest market in the USA. Montreal is a big city. But we don't cover north of the border."

If you're curious about other markets, New York is number one. Then comes Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston. Miles City, Idaho, is the smallest market. It's 210.

WCAX opened for business on September 26, 1956. Its first owner also owned a Burlington newspaper. Eventually, he turned the television station over to his stepson, Dr Stuart T "Red" Martin, who ran it until he died in 2005. Then his oldest son, Peter, took over.

Even though Parsons has been the face of WCAX for almost half a century, he doesn't own a piece of the station. In fact, he was surprised by the suggestion that he might.

"I've been an hourly for most of my time here, and on salary for the last 15 or 20 years," Parsons said. "I would love to have a piece of Channel 3, but it is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Martin family, who are good employers."

WCAX has influenced Parsons' personal life as well as his professional one. He met his wife when she was writing ads for the station. They were married at Mountaintop Inn and have one daughter.

The Martin family has a reputation for political conservatism, and some vocal Vermonters - most notably the late Vermont Business Magazine and Seven Days columnist Peter Freyne - have nicknamed it "WGOP." But both Martin and Parsons claim the news has no slant.

"We take great care to be evenhanded, to be fair and to be thorough," Martin said. "I don't think the 6 o'clock news and Marselis Parsons would occupy the place they do in the life of the state if they were politically biased. For 25 years, Marselis has played a pretty key role, in that our news generally is probably the only statewide news delivery system. It's a way by which the state talks to itself. You can't occupy that role if you're not fair and thorough and balanced. "

Parsons said he gets as many complaints from Republicans saying that the station is too liberal as he does from Democrats saying it is too conservative.

"Peter Freyne had no clue as to my father's history," Parsons said. "He just thought if you worked for Red Martin you were a diehard conservative Republican. But who influences you more? Your family or your employer? My father was a Roosevelt Democrat. Freyne never bothered to check."

Reporter Gary Nurenberg also believes that Parsons has no conservative slant.

"I've known Div for more than 35 years, and we've had hundreds of conversations," Nurenberg said. "And I have no idea what his politics are."

WCAX can be seen by most of Vermont, plus upstate New York and northern New Hampshire. It's main transmitter is on Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest peak.

"We used to run translators on Equinox and Mt Ascutney so we could beam our signal down to Brattleboro and that area," Parsons said. "We gave up Ascutney a few years ago, because satellite and cable are so prevalent. Eighty-four percent of our viewers get us by cable or satellite. We lost a certain number of people when we went digital - especially in the Upper Valley."

Today the WCAX newsroom is impressively large - it supports 40 people. But WCAX has also cut five jobs, and everyone else has taken a pay cut.

"It's not easy," Parsons said. "That pay cut goes down to the lowest paid hourly employee, and most of them are hourly employees. All the reporters are hourly employees. They survive on their overtime. We used to give them 50 hours a week. Now it's 43 hours. So there's a cut right there of 10 hours a week. I'd rather not say what the average hourly wage is, but it's competitive with the newspapers, and sometimes better."

The early morning news staff starts work before 2 am. The first of the station's four half-hour news shows goes on the air at 5 am. Then there's the noon show, the hour-long 6 o'clock show, and the 10 pm and 11 pm news shows. That's a lot of hours and a lot of people.

"You're running 21 hours a day during the week and weekends as well," Parsons said. "Television is a collaborative medium. You have to have photographers, editors, writers, photographers, producers, technical people, reporters, sound, graphics... You need technicians who can operate trucks that can send the story back by satellite truck or microwave truck. Although now we are getting to the point where you can put a story onto a computer and send it back by telephone at three or four times the real-time rate. So if you have a two-minute story, it will take eight minutes to send it. But it works. I don't understand how it works, but I don't know how my refrigerator works, either."

"My Opinion Isn't Important"

Parsons was new to the state when he started covering his first governor, Philip Hoff - the first Democratic governor elected in Vermont in over 100 years. So it was natural to ask what he thought of all the politicians he has watched so closely. After all, most of them - including Governor James Douglas and US Senator Patrick Leahy - praised him when he retired.

Parsons discussed them mainly in terms of their relationship with the press.

"I grew up on Phil Hoff," Parsons said. "He was engaging. Just a super guy. I didn't know beans about Vermont. I could barely find my way to Montpelier. And my boss, Richard Gallagher, who was very conservative - he used to write editorials for the Manchester Union Leader before he came here, and he thought the only person worth voting for on a national scale was Barry Goldwater, and he never voted again after that until his death - would say, 'Ask Phil this,' or 'Ask Phil that.' And I would ask. And Phil would say, 'Well, I guess we know where that came from.' And then he would say something like the equivalent of WGOP. Finally, I went to him and said, 'Look, governor. They may indeed be conservative or Republican questions, but Gallagher is my boss, and the question is not whether it's a Republican question but is it an unfair one? Is it a biased question?' And Phil would say, 'No, it's not. It's a fair question.' So I said, 'OK, then do me a favor and don't embarrass me by saying you know where that question came from. It diminishes me in front of all my colleagues. I'm learning as fast as I can.' From then on, he was great. He was very kind to me, and I asked him some pretty tough questions."

In 1991, when Parsons broke the news to a shocked state that Governor Richard Snelling had died in office, it marked the end of another remarkable relationship.

"Dick Snelling was quite full of himself," Parsons said. "A difficult guy. A smart guy. Very smart. Capable guy. But impatient, often arrogant, and difficult. He didn't think the press reported his successes as lauditorily - is that a word? - as we should have. With sufficient praise. I remember when he was running once, he went down to cut the ribbon at an expanded airport in Springfield. So we put up a map of Springfield behind the announcer - which was me. Snelling was furious. He thought it should be a picture of him. He spent half an hour complaining - in person. He was mad."

Former Governor Madeleine Kunin presented different issues.

"She was a first," Parsons said. "The first woman who really succeeded in great political office. Was she a good governor? I don't know. I'm not really sure. She complained almost as much as Snelling about reporters. She didn't care for our capitol reporter at the time and would have breakfast with me periodically to complain. I admired Madeleine for being a pathfinder. I think there were failings. She was overly concerned about how things would play politically."

Parsons liked former Governor Howard Dean - with reservations.

"Howard is an engaging guy," Parsons said. "A lot of people respected Howard for continuing Snelling's policies and getting us out of the recession. But I'm sure we pissed him off more than once, and I'm sure he's pissed us off. Take signing the Civil Unions bill in the closet. I heard about it from a producer at CBS News. I said, 'What are you talking about? He's going to sign it this afternoon.' He said, 'No.' So I called Sue Allen, who at that time was Howard's press secretary. I said, 'Why do I have to hear this from CBS News in New York? Don't you have the moral courage to stand up and say the governor is not going to sign this publicly?' Or something like that. So we staked out the House clerk's office, and got a picture of the bill being walked by the deputy clerk to the governor's office, and the governor's legal advisor taking it and shutting the door in our face. That was a cheap thing for them to do. And then Howard accused us of playing to the Republican opposition. No! Not fair for the guy who was later to say that he supported Civil Unions all the way. Was that really true? Did he really support it all the way?"

Parsons was as bewildered as many others in the state when Dean began running for president as a fiery liberal.

"He had to play to what was going to play on the national stage," Parsons said. "But I remember the joke from some Republican or another: 'My god, I haven't seen as many Republicans in one room since the last Howard Dean fundraiser.' The Howard Dean who said he was a strong supporter of Civil Unions? That's not the Howard Dean I remember."

Governor Jim Douglas?

"He's good at a lot of things," Parsons said. "He's funny. He's engaging. He is clearly able to articulate a more moderate or conservative view than the Legislature, which is pretty blue, pretty Democratic. That's great. Individual people have voted for that balance, and I think it's good, personally. Has he been a good governor? I think most Vermonters would say he's been reasonably good. Vetoing the gay marriage bill is clearly something a majority of Vermonters were vocally opposed to. Are most Vermonters in favor of gay marriage? Our polls indicate it's right down the middle. Fifty-fifty. Is he personally a decent guy? Yes. Is he a little too hard-line on some things? I think so. There are issues where he has been more to the right than the rest of the state would like. But has he been dishonest? I can't say that."

Every governor has been unhappy at one time or another with their press coverage, Parsons said.

"They express it in different ways," he said. "The current governor doesn't call to complain. Sometimes they get their chief of staff to call and say, 'You know, you didn't do us justice here,' or 'You went a little too far there.' But I'm reluctant to give opinions about these people. My opinion is not important."

Parsons does have an opinion, however, on Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt). He's a big fan.

"Bernie is better, frankly, at meeting the press," Parsons said. "Bernie holds a press conference every two weeks. And almost any question is fair. How many press conferences does Pat Leahy hold? How many forums on the biggest issue of our time does Pat Leahy hold? What's the biggest issue of our times? Health care reform? How many press conferences? Zero! Leahy says he meets people and they talk about it. Give Bernie credit. At a time when every member of Congress was taking a raft of grief from their constituents all across the country, Bernie held town hall meetings in Rutland, Manchester, Brattleboro... I didn't see Pat Leahy hold any of those. Bernie is never afraid of confronting his constituents on a difficult issue, whether it's Iraq or health care or student loans. I'm impressed with Bernie. How could you not be? And he's up here all the time. Then there's Pat Leahy, the 'Imperial Senator,' who's always saying, 'It's good to be back in Vermont.' Well, what have you done for Vermont, Patrick? I'm not just talking about money. Bernie relates to the people he represents. If your benefits don't come through, you go to Bernie. It's interesting."

Don't Study Journalism

It's no secret that journalism is on the ropes - newspapers and magazines are shrinking, advertising revenue is disappearing and many journalists are out of work. Although people think that television is floating in money, especially during election times, it's not doing much better than print, according to Parsons.

"This is the one mistake print journalists make all the time," Parsons said. "They say, 'You're making a killing off of these politicos.' But we have to sell the ads, according to federal law, at the lowest unit price. So we're not making a killing."

Political ads want to be as close to the newscasts as they can get, Parsons said.

"We don't allow them in our news programs," Parsons said. "They're in our sports program in our weather, but not in our news. But because they want to be near them, we have to push out some of our bread and butter clients like the banks and the furniture maker and the car dealer."

It's only been during the past two election cycles that WCAX-TV has taken "527" ads. (A 527 group is a political action group that is not a political party, and therefore it is not regulated by federal voting laws. These ads are created primarily to influence voters - think of "Swiftboating.")

"Finally, for economic reasons and because everyone else and their brother was taking them, we took them, too," Parsons said.

It's the most cliched of questions, but what advice does Parsons have for young people who want to be journalists - particularly when journalism itself appears to be endangered?

"Please don't study journalism," he said quickly. He waited for me to be surprised before he amplified his meaning.

"I remember when someone said to Ted Koppel, 'You said in some trade magazine that we should shut down the journalism schools. You must have been misquoted’," Parsons said. "And he said, 'That's right. I was misquoted. What I said was they should be burned down.'"

Journalism is fundamentally a trade like plumbing, Parsons said.

"We'll teach it to you," he said. "But what I want you to study is the law. Medicine. Government. Economics. Study the things you will cover. Marshall McLuhan is dead. Don't waste your time. Go and find out how your local selectboard works. How the Legislature in Vermont works. Don't study journalism."

Journalism will survive, Parsons said.

"Magazines will survive," he said. "Newspapers will survive. Television will survive. Radio will survive. If they cover issues that are of interest to their readers and viewers. Is the method of delivery going to change? Yeah, probably. Our method of delivery has changed. We used to have to bring all our stuff back to the station by 3:30 pm to put it into the soup and process the film. Now we can send stories and take pictures with an iPhone. I get my e-mail on my iPhone. I get information on my iPhone. Miniaturization. But if you publish information that is relevant to your audience, people will read it. I worry about the Internet because people get their information from sources like YouTube, where there is no reliability."

The Future Lies On The Road

In keeping with the way it is done at most television stations, Parsons' job has been split into two. Anson Tebbetts is now the news director and the anchor is Darren Perron.

Parsons, however, expects be back on the air soon. That's because his model has never been Brian Williams, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News; it's always been Charles Kuralt. In fact, Parsons keeps in his address book the opening quote from Kuralt's first 'On the Road' segment, which was shot in Vermont: "It is death that causes this blinding show of color, but it is a fierce and flaming death," Kuralt said in October of 1967. "To drive along a Vermont country road in this season is to be dazzled by the shower of lemon and scarlet and gold that washes across your windshield."

"Kuralt stayed on the road for the next 13 years," Parsons said. "He was logging up to 50,000 miles a year on back roads and byways with a two-man camera crew. He wore out half a dozen campers. Then he brought the same outlook and sensibility to CBS's 'Sunday Morning' for 15 more years. He captures images in writing which were then supplemented by spectacular pictures by a photographer named Izzy Blackman. The two together complemented and supplemented each other. That's why the idea of the team is important."

What does retirement mean to Parsons?

"I'm going to do whatever I damn well please," he said. "I'm going to do some sailing and motorboating, because I love old boats and I have a few of them. My father retired to New Hampshire, and hopefully I'll retire to there, at least some of the time. My family owns my parents' house there and I'm still trying to keep it going. It's a special place. And I'd like to go out on the road a bit. When we had the magazine, I went out a lot. We found good stories and had a lot of fun. Aren't we the storytellers? Aren't we the town criers of today? I want to go back to doing that. I'm hoping to go out and do stories on the back roads."
Joyce Marcel is a freelance writer and author from Dummerston. Her new book, a collection of her columns called, "A Thousand Words or Less," is now available. Learn more about her and how to order the book at her Web site: www.joycemarcel.com.