There’s a letter to the editor from Randolph writer Bill Scheller in this week’s issue. He doesn’t submit feedback often, but when he does, it’s short and sweet — my favorite. As I do with every letter writer, I called to verify his authorship and left a voicemail. He called back immediately, asking if I remembered his contribution to a group story we published many Thanksgivings ago.
Of course, I did! In year two of Seven Days, in advance of the holiday, cofounder Pamela Polston and I asked a group of Vermont writers to pick their favorite dish in the traditional meal and wax poetic about it in a few hundred words. We called it a “literary potluck.”
Scheller wrote about the nerve-racking ritual of making gravy. Abigail Stone took on the bird. The late, great poet John Engels celebrated cranberry. Author David Huddle dug into mashed potatoes. Other contributors included Ron Powers, Peter Kurth, Creston Lea and Phil Baruth — yes, that Phil Baruth.
The least-known among them was Samantha Hunt. Although she’d worked for us as a graphic designer right out of college, it was the first time we had published her writing — a snippet that involved sweet potatoes. She’s now the award-winning author of five books.
The inimitable Sarah Ryan illustrated the whole feast. She and Lea now make guitars together. There, in the centerfold of our then-fledgling newspaper, was a heaping serving of Vermont cultural history.
That 40-page paper on November 20, 1996, was our second focused almost entirely on food. I wrote my arts news column, “Backtalk,” and a story about New England Culinary Institute. Peter Freyne gave us the “Inside Track” political column and a piece about Leunig’s Bistro & Café host Bob Conlon. Food writers Marialisa Calta and Molly Stevens both contributed features to the edition, which we headlined with punny delight: “Happy Hollandaise.”
You can see it — and every issue of Seven Days — on our website. Click “Issue Archives” in the upper-right corner of the home page, pick a year and behold all the covers. Tap any one of them, and you can flip through the pages. I emailed the link to Vol. 2., No. 12 to both Scheller and Stevens.
“Wow. Blast from the past! That NECI story!” Molly wrote back. “And Peter Freyne! Amazing how long you’ve been putting out a remarkable newspaper week after week after week after week…”
Almost 1,500, in fact, as Seven Days approaches 30 years of reporting on and celebrating Vermont.
Last month the paper was recognized in an important report about journalism in the U.S. For the third year running, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism dropped an exhaustive study of the country’s news publishers. It’s mostly bad news: “Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished. Newspapers continue to disappear at a rate of more than two per week; in the past year alone, 130 newspapers have shut their doors,” the executive summary of The State of Local News 2024 reads. “In addition to these closures and mergers, papers are reducing their print coverage, including shifting from dailies to weeklies or ending print publishing altogether.”
The good news, at least for Vermonters? After surveying the media landscape from coast to coast, and counting and measuring its information deserts, the report identified 12 “Bright Spots.” Seven Days is one of them. You’ll find everything but Scheller’s gravy recipe in the Q&A editor Autumn Brewington did with me. I spent most of a weekend answering her questions about community engagement, reader revenue, employee ownership, and training the next generation of writers and reporters.
If you want to know “How Seven Days Defies the Odds,” as the story is headlined, give it a read at sevendaysvt.com/bright-spot. If you want to measurably improve our chances, become a Super Reader and support our work with a financial contribution. The best way to help is with a recurring monthly donation.
For those who have already given, we can’t thank you enough.
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2024.
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