About Philip

For the better part of the last twenty years, Philip Baruth has been an exceptionally outspoken political commentator, analyst, and activist. His Vermont Public Radio commentaries have won just about every major award available, from Vermont Associated Press awards to an Edward R. Murrow prize in 2009. That same year Philip’s take on Vermont’s low birthrate statistics — “Birth Rate Blues” — won a first-place Public Radio News Directors Award as the single best piece of political commentary aired nationwide in 2009.

Viewers of Vermont Public Television will remember Philip’s work as a panelist on Vermont This Week, VPT’s signature public-affairs program; VPR listeners will recall Camel’s Hump Radio, a half-hour program he hosted from 2000-2003, bringing classic adventure stories to life for a family audience. Over the years, he has written about the state’s most pressing problems in the state’s most prominent formats: the Burlington Free Press, Vermont Life, Vermont Magazine, Seven Days, and on his own award-winning news-and-opinion website, The Vermont Daily Briefing. And if you’ve seen the short film Freedom and Unity on permanent display at the Statehouse Museum in Montpelier, then you’ve seen Philip’s work — he was asked to write the screenplay for the Vermont Historical Society in 2003.

One of the first in Vermont to document the Obama phenomenon in 2006, Philip helped to form Vermonters for Obama later that year, a group that would eventually become the spine of the Obama organization statewide. In the summer of 2008, Philip ran a statewide campaign to become a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver — a tough race against a very crowded field of activists — and was elected at the State Convention in Barre. He went on to cover the Convention for the Burlington Free Press, and his front-page coverage provided unprecedented access to a Party event often criticized for secrecy and lack of transparency.

More numerous still are Philip’s off-air contributions to the community. Currently midway through his second term as a Burlington School Commissioner, Philip sits on the Board’s Finance Committee, where he has been a very persistent advocate for leaner budgets and immediate handicapped accessibility throughout the District. He has served as a Trustee for Burlington’s Fletcher Free Library, and as a Steering Committee member for his Neighborhood Planning Association in the city’s Old North End.

And as a Vermont author, Philip has been asked to volunteer over the years with nearly every major charitable or non-profit organization in Vermont, from the Good News Garage to COTS to the Vermont Library Association to the Stern Center for Language and Learning to Everybody Wins Vermont, a literacy organization championed by Jim Jeffords.

Philip teaches Vermont Literature and creative writing at the University of Vermont, where he has served on the Faculty Senate and is currently Associate Chair of the English Department. He lives with his Swedish-born wife Annika, and their two girls Gwendolyn and Miranda, on Curtis Avenue in Burlington’s New North End.