Angelo Lynn, the longtime owner of the Addison Independent, received a call from a fellow newspaper publisher last year asking whether his revenue had recently fallen off a cliff.
Lynn knew his weekly paper, which covers 23 towns in Addison County, was struggling. After turning tidy profits throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Addy Indy had been losing advertisers for close to a decade. The pandemic dealt another blow, forcing Lynn to cut back his print editions from two to one a week.
But a review of his books over the winter revealed the full extent of the Indy’s troubles. In the last six or so months of 2023, the paper lost about $150,000 — or 10 percent of its budget. Lynn called around to other publishers and heard a similar story: Everyone was hanging on by a thread.
“It was eye-opening,” he said, “that we could lose that much money.”
Lynn cut his pay for several months and drew on the paper’s reserves. Advertising ticked back up this spring, quelling the immediate crisis. But as he celebrates his 40th year as the paper’s owner, Lynn is wondering for the first time whether it will survive.
Getting the paper out has always been more important than making money, the 70-year-old publisher said last month. Now, the reverse is true: Any publisher worth their salt needs to be focused on keeping the lights on.
“Never, in my lifetime, have I had to think that way,” he said.
At their best, local newspapers play an essential role in a democracy. They hold the powerful accountable, equip voters with vetted information and, perhaps most importantly, help people feel connected, even to those with whom they disagree. No wonder, then, that studies have found communities without strong news organizations are more polarized, with higher rates of corruption and lower electoral participation.
But while trusted news sources are arguably more important than ever before, they have also never been harder to sustain. The digital revolution destroyed the traditional advertising-based model, and each year brings more competition for readers’ attention.
Like everyone in the industry, Vermont publishers are working to patch together a new business model that can endure. Some are shifting to nonprofit status in order to encourage philanthropy and qualify for grant funding. Some are asking readers for help. And some are relying on sheer determination, hard work and long hours to survive while they hope for a lifeline — from government, donors or something else entirely.
“We’re providing a public service,” Paula Routly, publisher and editor-in-chief of Seven Days, told the audience at Vermont’s third annual statewide journalism conference last month. “But without some kind of intervention, I worry that we won’t be able to keep it up for much longer.”
The grim state of the newspaper business isn’t a secret, nor is it new. Some 2,900 American newspapers have shuttered since 2005, and two more fail each week on average. Roughly half of all U.S. counties now have only one local news organization. More than 200 have none at all.
On the surface, Vermont appears to have fared better than many states. While some newspapers have stopped printing physical copies in recent years, only a few have shuttered completely, and new ventures have sometimes sprouted up in their place — the online Waterbury Roundabout, for example, replacing the printed Waterbury Record. Vermont’s several dozen newspapers include century-old outlets such as the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus and Rutland Herald, as well as Seven Days, 29, and 15-year-old VTDigger.org. The state also has a healthy broadcast scene, with three TV news stations and radio’s Vermont Public.
But a deeper look at the state of Vermont journalism tells a more worrisome story. The number of people working in the industry shrunk from 1,446 in 2000 to just 358 in 2023, according to the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News. Some papers look like ghosts of their former selves, none more so than the daily Burlington Free Press, where print circulation plummeted from a high of 52,000 in the 1990s to 3,700 as of last fall. Its newsroom, which once employed more than 60 journalists, has only six reporters who work under a single editor.
That’s meant fewer eyes on government, from selectboard and city hall meetings to committee rooms at the Statehouse. It has also meant more work for the reporters still on the ground.
“Most of our state is not a news desert,” said David Goodman, a longtime journalist and author who lives in Waterbury Center. “But all the reporters feel like they’re in a desert, about to die of dehydration.”
The thirst was palpable during last month’s journalism conference at the University of Vermont, where nearly 100 reporters, editors and publishers pounded cups of coffee, noshed on free food and batted around ideas for how to save local news.
They heard about federal legislation that could help, such as a bill proposed by U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) that would curb postal rate increases for newspapers that are delivered by mail and hold the post office accountable for on-time deliveries.
They heard about how other states are responding to the crisis, such as New York’s first-of-its-kind journalism job tax credit.
They also heard from leaders of a national effort to invest $500 million in local journalism over the next five years. The campaign, known as Press Forward, has named the Vermont Community Foundation as one of its initial 25 chapters. The foundation hopes to raise at least a couple million dollars in Vermont, though many details are still being ironed out — including how that money would be distributed.
But beyond any specific idea or proposal, the conference’s most important takeaway seemed to be this: At a time when newspapers are facing an existential threat, Vermont’s news leaders aren’t putting their heads in the sand. Instead, they’re coming together, competitors and collaborators alike, to find a way forward.
Seven Days spoke to four of those news publishers to learn about the ways they’re trying to survive while keeping people informed.
Help Wanted
The Addy Indy is about as close as it gets to your old-school print newspaper.
Each week, the 77-year-old publication ships off a hefty print edition to homes and newsstands that contains everything from stories on town and school governments to local personality profiles and ambitious enterprise reporting. The paper also dedicates pages to the arts and detailed recaps of athletic events, photos of which often wind up on fridges of proud parents.
This March, the Indy and its staff of 20 were named the best weekly newspaper in the region at the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s annual contest. The paper is the gold standard of independent local journalism in the eyes of Lisa Mitchell, executive director of Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater, who said ticket sales spike whenever a show is featured prominently in the paper. “People read it cover to cover,” she said.
That includes Steve Hare, owner of the Middlebury gym Vermont Sun, who described the paper as his way of getting local information he can’t get anywhere else. “It’s the heart and soul of the community,” said Hare, himself an advertiser.
“We’re not just sitting idly by as we die.” Angelo Lynn
The Indy’s print edition, though, has become harder for its publisher to afford. Subscriptions and newsstand sales, which historically represented about 15 percent of the paper’s revenue, have fallen from a peak of 7,200 in the mid-2000s to about 6,000 today. Advertising dollars, meanwhile, had been falling for years before last summer’s nosedive.
In response, publisher Lynn and his staff have bolstered the paper’s online presence. Several thousand people now subscribe to free digital newsletters, and more than 40,000 people visit the website each month.
The paper is also trying to generate revenue through events, such as the Middlebury Maple Run. “We’re not just sitting idly by as we die,” Lynn said.
Indeed, the Indy’s plight reflects a cruel irony of today’s news business: The paper’s online presence allows it to reach more people than ever before, yet the outlet is making far less money from those efforts.
So, in February, readers opened their papers to find a four-page insert containing an unusual request. Those who donated at least $50 on top of their annual subscription fee of $65 could join a new club known as the “Addy All-Stars.”
The newspaper could no longer sustain itself on ads and subscriptions alone, the insert said. Instead, the launch marked “the start of a shift in revenue to a more stable three-legged stool — advertising, subscriptions and donations.”
The Indy was not the first for-profit paper to seek direct financial support from its readers. Seven Days, a free weekly, has been asking for donations from “Super Readers” for six years. But Lynn said he was still reluctant to take the step.
He worried, for one, about the ethical dilemma. Say a reader donates $1,000, then gets into a DUI car crash. Does the Indy write about them? Of course — the same way the paper would write about advertisers that mess up.
Do readers understand that? Lynn hopes so.
“The paper’s integrity is the one thing we have,” he said.
But the bigger mental hurdle was making the paper the center of the story. That’s a place few journalists like to be.
“We want the proof of worth to be in the content that we create every week,” Lynn said. “We don’t want the proof of worth to be in our marketing skills.”
Lynn decided that the best way to seek support from readers would be to focus on what the newspaper is worth — literally.
The February special section broke down what it costs to produce a single sports story, based on a rough estimate of $25 an hour in labor costs. The reporter spends two hours at the game and a third writing it up. A photographer spends two hours shooting and processing photos. The story gets edited, proofed and laid out on the page.
Add it all up, and the paper spends roughly $700 on a single story. That’s why each print edition costs at least $25,000, and often much more, according to Lynn.
He hoped the February special section would help readers recognize that for a $5 weekly donation — “the cost of a cappuccino” — they receive a product containing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of work.
“Readers have always looked at the newspaper’s value as informing and strengthening the community fabric, that sort of thing,” Lynn said. “But they haven’t looked at it in a dollar-and-cents way, because we haven’t been that transparent.”
The Indy received $10,000 from close to 75 new “All-Stars” within the first two weeks and has signed up another 75 since then. But Lynn isn’t sure he’ll be able to attract the 500 or so annual donors he thinks are needed to sustain the paper in the coming years.
There is a chance, then, that the Indy’s staff will devote a lot of time and energy to an underwhelming fundraising campaign. But the alternative — silently letting the paper implode — would be an even worse outcome, Lynn said. “The headline would be: Why didn’t you say something?”
“Maybe the community is not going to step up,” he added, “but it’s important for us today to tell the story.”
— C.F.
Digging Deep
No media outlet was more prolific in its coverage of last summer’s historic floods than VTDigger.org, the statewide nonprofit news organization founded in 2009 as an online-only, volunteer outlet.
As water spilled into the first floor of its Montpelier office building, Digger’s dozen-plus reporters and a staff photographer fanned out across the state, publishing 29 stories within the first 24 hours. The website posted 200 more flood-related stories over the next four weeks, drawing more than 1 million unique visitors — far beyond a typical month’s 650,000.
That such a young outlet launched as a one-woman show can provide wall-to-wall breaking-news coverage has been a bright spot in local journalism. Now one of the state’s largest newsrooms, Digger has filled a void left by Vermont’s legacy newspapers by providing daily coverage of state government, public policy and major news from many cities and towns. And through its Community News Sharing Project, Digger allows more than a dozen smaller news outlets to freely publish its work, which includes data-driven investigations.
Digger’s success has made it a darling of the nonprofit news world, living proof that philanthropy can help local journalism thrive.
“Journalism is so important, and we’ve seen what happens when it goes away.” Sky Barsch
But after years of growth, Digger finds itself facing the same financial challenges that plague its for-profit peers. The $3-million-a-year operation receives about $500,000 in large grants each year and sells advertising and sponsorships. The bulk of its revenue, though, comes in the form of donations from charitable foundations and individual readers, which, just like advertising, can ebb and flow with the economy.
The outlet has lost a combined $1.7 million over the past two years, forcing it to downsize its newsroom by three reporters through attrition; it now has 13 reporting positions and seven editors. Even with the reduction in staff, it will have to raise 10 percent more in donations this year, or about $2 million, if it hopes to break even.
Steering Digger through this rocky period is Sky Barsch, a 43-year-old Middlesex resident who was hired as CEO in 2023. Barsch came to Digger with a unique mix of journalism and nonprofit experience. She began her career as a reporter at the Times Argus, then served as the associate publisher of Vermont Life and later owned and edited Vermont Sports, an outdoors magazine. Most recently, she led the advertising and marketing team at Chalkbeat, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit news outlets.
Barsch said she is focused on balancing Digger’s revenues and expenses, with the hope that it will one day be able to build back its newsroom. “Journalism is so important, and we’ve seen what happens when it goes away,” she said. “I’m committed to making sure that never happens for Vermont.”
The recent shortfalls follow a period of rapid growth at Digger that began in 2020 when it won a $900,000, three-year grant from the American Journalism Project. The grant was meant to help build out Digger’s business office, with the idea that, over time, it would be able to generate enough money through local donations and underwriting to replace the grant.
High readership during the height of the pandemic helped Digger post its largest-ever fundraising total in 2021, $2.3 million, and by mid-2022, Digger’s newsroom was bigger than it had ever been.
But headwinds were gathering. Digger’s growing ranks, composed mostly of younger journalists early in their careers, felt their salaries did not reflect the fact that they were working for a leading media organization. Citing low pay and a high rate of turnover, the newsroom unionized in 2020. A three-year contract reached in late 2021 that year set the floor for reporter salaries at $40,000, secured one-time raises of between 10 and 18 percent on top of annual cost-of-living increases, and allowed reporters to start getting overtime pay.
Then, in spring 2022, founder and editor-in-chief Anne Galloway stepped down, casting uncertainty over the outlet’s future.
Galloway started Digger in 2009 after she was laid off from the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. Her dogged coverage of the Jay Peak EB-5 scandal helped Digger earn its reputation as a serious outlet worthy of support.
“We really needed a person like that in journalism, a person who was thorough and wasn’t willing to be intimidated,” said Win Smith, the former owner of Sugarbush Resort and a longtime Digger donor.
Galloway had built a strong enough team, including editor-in-chief Paul Heintz, a former Seven Days reporter and political editor, that Smith said he felt comfortable continuing to donate to the outlet while it searched for her replacement. But other contributors wanted to see how Digger would fare in Galloway’s absence, according to Barsch; the outlet ended 2022 with $600,000 less in contributions than the previous year.
Barsch said her hiring in spring 2023 seemed to give the outlet’s donors confidence that Digger was stable. Then the floods hit, and the need for philanthropic support in Vermont increased exponentially.
Unable to raise enough money to cover their growing expenses, Barsch and the nonprofit’s board members began cutting costs.
They tried to avoid any changes that would degrade the outlet’s journalism, she said, since that’s the nonprofit’s mission — and main selling point to donors. They downsized the physical space of their Montpelier office and closed their Burlington one. Barsch also asked for and received a $250,000 grant from the American Journalism Project to help the outlet weather its leadership transition. But it wasn’t enough.
So as reporters left, Digger chose to leave their positions vacant. Last December, it announced a series of beat changes that effectively codified the shrunken newsroom by giving the remaining reporters more coverage responsibility. A press release announcing the move said it was intended to “better align [Digger’s] financial resources with coverage needs around the state.”
The union wasn’t thrilled. “When people were given job titles with two or even three beats, we immediately raised a concern of sustainability,” said Sarah Mearhoff, a political reporter who cochairs the union. Seven months later, conversations between the union and management about burnout, workloads and turnover are ongoing, Mearhoff said.
Among those tasked with ensuring the outlet can survive is Gaye Symington, who was named president of the Vermont Journalism Trust, Digger’s parent organization, last year. Symington, a seasoned executive and former speaker of the Vermont House, said she has appreciated Barsch’s work during her short time at the outlet.
The CEO has struck a good balance between honoring what Galloway built and also “making it clear there was a baton being passed,” Symington said. “It’s hard to walk into an organization and say, ‘OK, time’s up, we cannot live beyond our means.'”
Barsch, for her part, thinks her role moving forward will be to serve as an “ambassador” between Digger’s journalists and the people who want to fund their work.
All of the outlet’s stories now contain a message at the bottom asking for cash. The website’s nonprofit status means it is not “beholden to the whims of shareholders or wealthy executives,” the note says. “It also means we rely on you, our readers, to support us when you see messages like this one.”
The plea seems to be paying off: Digger is on track to reach this year’s $2 million fundraising goal, which, combined with grant and advertising revenues, should allow it to cover its reduced expenses, Barsch said.
Whether Digger can keep raising money at that same rate when more and more news organizations are putting their hands out remains to be seen. Barsch said she isn’t worried about competition for resources, though. The more news organizations frame their work as a public service worthy of support, the more the public will think about journalism in that way, she said, “and the better off we’ll all be.”
— C.F.
Running on Willpower
In 2007, the Vermont Community Newspaper Group, owner of the Stowe Reporter, the Shelburne News, South Burlington’s the Other Paper, the Citizen of Charlotte and Hinesburg, and the Morrisville News & Citizen, launched the Waterbury Record. But in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the owner cut the Waterbury paper loose, saying the paper had never been profitable.
Two months later, Lisa Scagliotti, a former reporter at the Burlington Free Press, founded an online news site called the Waterbury Roundabout.
Ever since, she and photographer Gordon Miller have been documenting selectboard debates, school budget votes, flood disasters and local parades — unsure how long they can sustain the effort it takes.
“I need somebody to help me grow revenue, but I don’t have money to pay someone to help me grow revenue.” Lisa Scagliotti
The Roundabout took in less than $50,000 last year, not enough to pay an adequate salary to any of the three paid members of the team — Scagliotti, Miller and digital editor Julia Bailey-Wells. Scagliotti, who is 58, says she’s making about $400 a week for up to 60 hours of work. Her house doubles as her office.
“We’re kind of going on this sense of obligation,” Scagliotti told Seven Days. “I don’t know when to stop. I don’t know how to stop.”
Liz Schlegel Stevens, chair of the town’s Board of Civil Authority, said she can’t overstate the role the Roundabout plays in keeping residents connected, especially in times of crisis, such as the recent flooding. Scagliotti’s boundless energy and curiosity, Schlegel Stevens said, make the Roundabout an invaluable source of local information, from flood recovery resources to holding public officials accountable.
“I just don’t know what we would do if Lisa weren’t willing to light herself on fire every week for this community,” Schlegel Stevens said.
As larger state media organizations contract, trustworthy local news sources are more important than ever for maintaining a healthy democracy, and must be supported, she said.
“Philanthropy needs to invest in local journalism. It is the number one tool that we have to fight misinformation,” Schlegel Stevens said.
But running a news site with just two helpers leaves Scagliotti feeling constantly overwhelmed.
“I can’t be doing the reporting, the writing, the editing, the posting, the sharing and the answering all the emails, the rewriting all the press releases and trying to sell ads,” she said. “I can’t do all that.”
And yet that is exactly what she has been doing for four years, making the Roundabout the go-to local news source.
At a recent Waterbury Selectboard meeting, Scagliotti was one of just a handful of people in the audience, taking careful notes by hand in a room cluttered with flood relief supplies. The value of in-person reporting was on full display. When a discussion lapsed into jargon, Scagliotti asked follow-up questions that clarified the bureaucratic complexities of calculating flood damages. She also interviewed community members about the precise locations of road washouts.
Her reporting has paid off in terms of eyeballs. The number of online visits to the Roundabout has grown from fewer than 100,000 a year to more than 300,000.
“The amount of traffic on here startles me,” Scagliotti said. “That’s what kind of gives me hope. I feel like people are using this thing.” But trying to monetize those clicks has been frustrating.
“I need somebody to help me grow revenue, but I don’t have money to pay someone to help me grow revenue,” she said.
There are bright spots — if only Scagliotti had the time and resources to build on them. For example, the Roundabout now attracts help-wanted ads. Recent listings included a restaurant kitchen manager, EMTs for the local ambulance service and a road foreman in Fayston. But the revenue is limited — the Roundabout charges just $50 for an ad that stays on the website for a month.
Donations also seem a promising source of money. The Roundabout is a nonprofit, and readers can make tax-deductible contributions through the Vermont Journalism Trust, VTDigger’s nonprofit parent organization. A prominent button on the Roundabout website invites donations, as does a newsletter with links to recent stories that is emailed to 2,200 subscribers. The result: 400 one-time or recurring gifts so far.
The Roundabout was recently awarded $20,000 by a national nonprofit called Local Independent Online News. It noted that Scagliotti had “bootstrapped and built this resonant publication to become a beacon for civic discourse and community life.” But the national group’s audit of the Roundabout’s operations found some weaknesses.
Scagliotti has relied on unpaid undergraduate students from UVM’s Community News Service for some feature reporting, but they require time-consuming oversight and editing. The audit suggested the students might be “yet another distraction from your core mission” and suggested Scagliotti consider changing or abandoning the program to free up her time for other priorities.
Scagliotti acknowledges that she hasn’t found a sustainable formula, and she worries about the site’s future. Two organizations — the Vermont Community Newspaper Group and the Times Argus, which briefly tried a free mailed edition for Waterbury — have concluded that there isn’t a strong enough advertising market to sustain a print newspaper in town.
While an online news site is a different animal, Scagliotti worries that the landscape has become too inhospitable for either species of media to survive.
“Were the print newspapers right when they walked away?” she mused.
— K.M.
Pressing On
It’s not easy to reach readers with an online-only publication in a rural area. That’s why the folks at the Hardwick Gazette are working to bring back a print edition of the 130-year-old weekly paper.
Founded in 1889, the Gazette struggled after the turn of this century, as all print newspapers did — with the added challenge of serving lightly populated towns in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Hardwick’s home to just 1,247 people, and surrounding communities are even smaller.
The paper’s most recent owners, Ray and Kim Small, bought the Gazette from longtime owner Ross Connelly in 2017 after he tried, and failed, to give the business away in an essay competition.
Then the pandemic slashed ad revenue. In April 2020, the Smalls suspended the paper’s print edition; it’s been online-only, and free, ever since. Late last year, the Smalls donated the paper and some operating funds to a new nonprofit, Northeast Kingdom Public Journalism.
“My goal — and the board’s goal — has been to return the paper to a vital place in the community.” Paul Fixx
Paul Fixx, 65, a local IT consultant and former Gazette ad salesman, joined the nonprofit’s board and this year became the paper’s unpaid editor.
He has focused on improving the paper’s journalism. By the time the Smalls donated the paper, it had come to rely mostly on a network of unpaid community correspondents and columnists. The quality suffered.
“We were a glorified press release,” Fixx said. “My goal — and the board’s goal — has been to return the paper to a vital place in the community.”
Fixx and the board hope a nonprofit model will appeal to donors. Recent contributions include a $5,000 gift from a local family foundation, while more modest contributions have been made online, delivered by mail or thrust in person toward grateful staffers.
“I had a woman at a community dinner just hand me $60 in cash,” said Dawn Gustafson, who has worked at the paper for 39 years doing layout and administration. The Gazette has raised about $55,000, but Fixx says more is needed.
“How we’re going to find a similar amount to finish out the year is what I spend half my time trying to figure out,” he said.
That’s where producing a printed paper may help, Fixx said. He believes a physical newspaper would broaden the Gazette’s advertising base, recover readers who did not follow the paper when it went online and perhaps attract more community support.
Older residents tend to prefer the printed newspapers they grew up with — and they make up a good share of the Northeast Kingdom’s population. The median age of residents in Greensboro, for example, is 67, making the town one of the oldest in the state.
The Gazette provides a digital flip-book, which allows readers to see the full-page layout online. There’s a satisfying “swish” sound when they click to turn the virtual pages.
A recent survey of readers found that 80 percent prefer the flip-book to scrolling and clicking on individual stories, according to Sandy Atkins, who has been designing the paper for 20 years.
The Gazette’s nonprofit board hasn’t yet figured out how to get the real-life presses rolling again. It’s a costly proposition for an organization that can’t even pay Fixx a salary. The semiretired computer software professional has been dipping into his personal savings to make payroll for the small paid staff, he said.
Fixx hopes to secure grants to fund the salaries of at least a full-time editor and a business manager. He’s eyeing support from the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships at UVM and the Vermont Community Foundation’s Press Forward initiative, though details of that undertaking are still being hashed out.
To keep the dream of a printed paper alive, Fixx has hit on an interim approach. Every Tuesday evening, after the week’s stories are edited and posted to the website, he stays late to assemble about 10 newspapers.
They’re physical copies of the digital flip-book that Fixx prints on a laser printer, then staples together to create something approximating a tabloid newspaper. Hand-assembled copies are available for perusal at a variety of public spaces, including libraries, a hair salon and a laundromat.
“I like that I can sit with a cup of coffee and flip through the pages,” said Tobin Porter-Brown, owner of Front Seat Coffee in downtown Hardwick. “I think there is a lot of value in that tangible experience.”
On a recent day at Front Seat, that week’s edition sat on a windowsill. A placard explained it was one of a few printed copies and asked readers to consider supporting the paper.
The front page included stories about the ongoing recovery from last year’s flood, a rally in Stannard organized by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a $4.5 million grant award for the redevelopment of the Greensboro Town Hall.
Porter-Brown, who advertises on the Gazette website, said he’d love to see the paper return to print and thinks a vibrant, civic-minded place such as Hardwick would support it. While he enjoyed seeing his young son’s photo in the paper recently, he’d understand if the Gazette decided that salaries were more important than paying for newsprint.
“They need to do what’s going to make sense for them,” Porter-Brown said.
Right now, that means keeping the operation bare bones. To save money, the Gazette is paying just $200 in rent — including high-speed internet — for shared space in the Greensboro Town Hall. The paper sometimes fills its pages with VTDigger stories and columns that the organization provides for free.
Summer intern Raymonda Parchment, a senior English major at Vermont State University, is working without a salary. While print media is “not the biggest priority for my generation,” Parchment said she was drawn to the Gazette after noticing that the quality of the stories had gotten markedly better under Fixx’s leadership.
“There was a shift where the questions being asked, and the headlines, were more engaging,” she said.
Parchment can afford to work without pay because she’s living rent-free at home in Hardwick before finishing college. She thinks producing a vibrant online news site while exploring a return to print gives the Gazette a good shot at survival.
“I think they’ve achieved a really nice balance and are headed in the right direction,” she said.
— K.M.
Correction, July 25, 2024: A previous version of this story misstated the year VTDigger’s newsroom formed its union.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Breaking News | Vermont’s Local News Publishers Are Endangered. Can They Be Saved?”
This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2024.
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