From legislative action to government accountability, veteran reporter Annmarie Timmins finds the humanity behind the headlines

By Adam Drapcho and Julie Hart, Laconia Daily Sun

On this episode of The Granite Beat hosts Adam Drapcho and Julie Hart speak with New Hampshire Bulletin senior reporter Annmarie Timmins. A native Granite Stater, Annmarie is a homegrown journalist who has taught at both UNH and at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications and spent 25 years reporting for The Concord Monitor.

This transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Adam Drapcho:

I'd like to wind the clock back to the start of your career. Could you tell us what initially interested you about journalism and how you got a foothold in the profession?

Annmarie Timmins:

To be honest, I failed out of many other majors at UNH. I tried to major in history, environmental science, business, so I had tried everything. I had to fulfill an English credit so I took a journalism class sophomore year andI really loved it, which surprised me because I'm pretty introverted. But there was something about having the notebook as a shield between me and the world and I really loved it. And the greatest thing about the UNH program is that you have to do an internship for a whole semester, and that gives you clips that you wouldn’t otherwise get. I did my internship at Foster's Daily Democrat, and from day one I was expected to produce content as though I was a reporter, just like everybody else. It was a really great experience. I left that with many clips, but also with a connection to the Sea Coast journalism world, so I felt like I was able to go from one job to another after I graduated. I actually liked it so much at Foster's Daily Democrat that I extended my stay by two months through the summer at no pay, just because I really loved it. 

Adam Drapcho:

Rod Doherty was the editor of Foster's Daily Democrat for what feels like a generation and he made a large impression on a lot of journalists currently working in the state. Do you have a Rod Doherty story?

Annmarie Timmins:

I do. I was a very new reporter and covered a crash on Route 101 where a man died and his dog died. I came back to the newsroom and I didn't have the dog's name, and he said, “You need to call back and get the dog's name.” It felt so trivial to call a family grieving to say, “Would you mind just telling me what the dog's name was?” So I stalled, said the line was busy. Then he came over and stood there while I dialed the phone, and they picked up and were actually grateful that I asked because that dog was a family member. I think reporters will tell you this often that in these tragic situations, sometimes families don't want to talk to you. But a lot of times they do because they don't want their loved one just to be a name and an age in a story – they want them to be a person. So I got the dog's name.  And I tell you, I ask pets names all the time now.

Adam Drapcho:

How do you explain the New Hampshire Bulletin to people?

Annmarie Timmins:

We are a statewide news outlet or nonprofit, and really what that means to readers is we don't have a paywall. We don't have ads. We're all grant and donor funded, so all of our content is free to read and also free for anyone to republish. We have three reporters in the statehouse, which is unheard of now for news outlets, but we're trying to get outside the rat race of, this bill passed today or that bill failed today. We try to take what's going on at the legislature and tell it through people in the communities. For example, the governor just proposed axing 334 different professional licenses, so my colleague went out and talked to the foresters about what it means for them. So we try to put the human at the center of these stories. And because we're not filling a page of news, we don't have to produce four or five stories a day, we're really producing one really great story a day and then filling in with some smaller pieces. So we have a little more time to work on stories, which is a nice change of pace. That's not the 30-second elevator pitch I'm supposed to say, but it’s as close as I can get. I'll add that we are sort of an affiliate of States Newsroom, which is a network of the smaller news sites in different states.

Adam Drapcho:

What made you want to join the Bulletin?

Annmarie Timmins:

I left the Monitor around 2014 and was going in a direction where I didn't feel very proud of my work anymore. Because the economic model had really cut the newsroom, we'd gone from maybe 15 reporters to four or five, so you're just churning out content. I was the city editor and the full time news reporter, and I just got to a breaking point. It was the hardest decision of my career, but I left and I went back to school and got my Masters in school counseling and became a school counselor for a little while. That was too isolating though, you're locked in an office in a school, you can't go out and flit about in the community and hear what's going on like you can as a reporter. So I left that field and started doing communications for New Hampshire Legal Assistance in freelancing and really thought this was the best I was ever going to do again. And then someone sent me an ad for this thing called State's Newsroom opening an outlet in New Hampshire and I wanted to be a part of it. I didn't want to be the editor, but I really wanted to be a reporter. So I applied, I got an interview, I felt like I was going to get an offer as an editor and I freaked out. I recruited an editor from the Monitor and said, Do you want to do this with me? So he came over and we launched it about two years ago, and then we were able to hire two reporters. We've made it up as we've gone and it's really good. I thought the journalism at the Monitor was kind of the unicorn job of my career, and in the early days it was, but that model is so restrictive so this has been really a nice treat to come to online journalism where there is no paywall. We really can make our content free to anyone to read, which is really nice.

Adam Drapcho:

You said the Bulletin gets funding through States Newsrooms. Where does that funding ultimately originate?

Annmarie Timmins:

It's everything from the $100 check my mother writes to States Newsroom every year, to nationally charitable organizations that will give lots of money. It's very big donors to smaller donors – they're listed on our website. Everything seems to be going well financially. We do know that they are expanding, we might be at 35 states now, and we were among the 22nd outlet to launch, so it's really been growing. But it really comes from those large organizations that fund journalism. It amazes me that they can fund so many outlets. I think it's encouraging that people believe journalism still matters.

Adam Drapcho:

I'd like to ask you about a story you published on March 6 about the death of a five year old in Laconia a few years ago. The death was ruled a homicide, yet no charges have been brought. Could you tell us how you came to learn about the story involving Dennis Vaughn and how you went about gathering information for your report?

Annmarie Timmins:

I had gotten a call saying there's something going on and Laconia people are hanging signs for this child who had been murdered. We've heard about recent murders of children but this name was new to me, so I started asking around and couldn't believe that this case hadn’t gotten attention. I talked to the people doing the fundraising, I talked to the people doing the public awareness campaign, and then the key was finding the lawyer representing the mom of Dennis against DCYF. That was important because this case is both the murder of a child but also a failure of a system that we've seen again and again. The lawsuit laid out 25 instances of DCYF calls to this grandmother's home, as she had guardianship of Dennis and his siblings. When you do have a lawsuit you have quite a bit of protection as a journalist, a lawsuit gives you that financial or legal grounding, so that was really helpful. But I also didn't want it to be just another DCYF story. I wanted to write about why this child was forgotten. It took a couple calls to the police department to get them on the phone, because the Attorney General's Office will not talk about this case and they're leading the investigation. But I was able to get the Chief of Laconia on the phone, and to my surprise and delight he said, “We're frustrated too, we can't get the AGs office to move on this.” And then the mayor of Laconia said the same thing, so that just gave the story a little more power. It wasn't me and the mom saying what's going on here, it was the community and the people raising the money, people doing these signs; they didn’t know this child, but they felt this is a child who has been forgotten. 

So I was doing a lot of interviews. I talked to the Manchester Police Chief, because I think anyone will remember him standing up there and really leading the publicity campaign for finding Harmony Montgomery and then finding her killer. He has been a real model of, I'm going to do this if no one else is going to do it. And that contrast between Manchester and Laconia was striking to me. It was police dispatch calls, lawsuit interviews, it was one of the hardest stories I've had to do, because I just to the end could not believe that the AG’s office had not moved on this and had not said anything. I was sure that I was missing something or getting something wrong, but the truth is they're just not talking about it and they won't say why. I wanted readers to also ask why this child has been forgotten. How can justice be so subjective, that if this one city doesn't stomp its feet and make the agency's office do something, that victim goes unnoticed? Is it really just that? Is there more to it? Is the AG’s office holding back? Do they want something more than they have to bring charges? So it felt like a government accountability story to me, and just who gets the attention and who does not. 

These children who are killed have very similar lives. They were DCYF involved, calls had been made, complaints had been found unfounded. So there are a lot of similarities there. It just really raised the question, Is justice really that subjective? Does it depend on where you live and what your local agency will do or how much they will push the Attorney General's office to be more public and push investigation?

This article is part of The Granite Beat, a project by The Laconia Daily Sun and The Granite State News Collaborative, of which Laconia is a partner. Each week Adam Drapcho and Julie Hart, will explore with local reporters how they got some of the most impactful stories in our state and why they matter. This project is being shared with partners in The Granite State News Collaborative.