From 2002 until last year, Vermont's republican governor vetoed almost all of the major initiatives passed by the state's progressive legislature. In January, governor Peter Shumlin, a democrat who lives near Brattleboro, took office. Already, Vermont is setting an example for Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The public is invited to hear speeches by a Nobel prize winner, a congresswoman, and others at an event organized by a non-profit organization in Northampton. The three-day National Conference for Media Reform starts April 8 in Boston.

Joseph Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University. He won the 2001 Nobel prize for economics. In his 2010 book, “Free Fall,” Stiglitz says big banks pay their CEOs too much, and blasts the federal government for giving the banks billions in taxpayer money in recent years.

The consequences of growing corporate control of mass media were underscored as never before at the fourth National Conference for Media Reform, held June 6-8 in Minneapolis. Some 3,500 people heard Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig and others hammer major news outlets for suggesting that scientists seriously disagree on whether global warming is caused by human activity. Other speakers argued that more diversity in media ownership—and therefore of coverage—would hasten the end of war in Iraq and enhance organized labor's attempts to reduce economic inequality.

There are only seven Web sites that more people use than Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that lets anyone edit most of its articles. None of the sites that are more popular than Wikipedia have as their main purpose producing information about the world. The top sites, Google and Yahoo, mainly function as links to other sites. Facebook and Myspace, which people use to keep in touch with their friends, are third and fifth most popular, respectively.