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Green Mountain Summer Journalism Institute participants during a classroom lesson Credit: Courtesy

This year’s Back-to-School Issue of Kids VT was written almost entirely by young people.

Contributors include Seven Days summer interns Sam Hartnett, Anthony Cinquina and Madeleine Kaptein. The latter two came to us from Middlebury College, through the school’s MiddWorks internship program. Sam graduated from the University of Vermont last May, and his tenure here was partially sponsored by UVM’s Center for Community News.

We’re also excited to showcase five articles produced by students in the new Green Mountain Summer Journalism Institute, founded and directed by Carolyn Shapiro. A lifelong newshound who’s now a freelance writer and editor, Carolyn has brought newbies into the profession as a journalism lecturer at UVM for the past three years. Full disclosure: She’s also married to Seven Days news editor Matthew Roy.

Carolyn was an editor for her high school newspaper in the Detroit suburbs when she got the chance to attend a summer journalism program at Northwestern University, her eventual alma mater. “Those six weeks on the shore of Lake Michigan, studying the art and craft of reporting and writing, got me hooked on journalism,” she wrote in an email.

The students during a lesson in audio reporting Credit: Courtesy

She modeled some aspects of her program on that experience but also improvised — there was no internet back then. Her version included two weeks of in-person classes and hands-on training (interviewing people in downtown Burlington, for example); talking with working journalists; and trying audio recording at UVM and video production at CCTV Studios. Then the students spent two weeks at home coming up with stories that mattered to them, reporting them, workshopping them virtually with editors and, finally, going through the last stage of polishing at Kids VT.

Tuition for this first summer session was free; Carolyn covered any expenses. She also enlisted volunteer editors who helped shape the student stories: Anna Hoppe, 20, a junior at the University of Vermont studying environmental sciences; Cecilia Luce, 19, a sophomore at Northwestern University pursuing a double major in journalism and environmental sciences; and Rose Howell, a senior at Burlington High School and coeditor-in-chief of its student newspaper, the Register.

At a time when Americans are turning to partisan podcasters, influencers and AI summaries to get their news, it’s refreshing and inspiring to see young people finding local stories and striving to get them right. Parents, we hope you appreciate their efforts as much as we do — and savor this beautiful fall season!

This article was originally published in Seven Days’ monthly parenting magazine, Kids VT.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Students Step Up”

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This article appears in Kids VT, Back to School 2025.

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Seven Days’ deputy publisher and co-owner Cathy Resmer is a writer, editor and advocate for local journalism. She works in the paper’s Burlington office and lives vicariously through the reporters while raising money to pay them. Cathy started at...