Longtime Seven Days Columnist Hangs it Up

march 20, 2008  12:32 pm
Longtime Seven Days Columnist Hangs it Up
Peter Freyne, who started writing for the Burlington alt-weekly two months after it launched in 1995, announced in this week's "Inside Track" column that it would be his last, the Times Argus reports. After beating cancer last year, Freyne says he realized that writing about state politics had begun to bore and depress him. "That's why the column and the blog stopped two weeks ago. We finally acknowledged the unhappiness generated by writing them," he writes. "And you know what? We haven't felt this good in years!" While he's ending his column, he will remain affiliated with Seven Days as a contributing editor and blogger. U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy says that Freyne's retirement is a "big loss" for Vermont. "I went to his blog every day," Leahy tells the Times Argus. "He is the type of writer who clearly knows hypocrisy. But he also knows the difference between healthy skepticism and cynicism."