I can see both sides of Vermont’s return-to-office debate — the subject of a news story, “Remote Control,” in this week’s issue of Seven Days. Starting December 1, state employees who are working remotely will have to show up at the office in person at least three days a week. What used to be a standard, unquestioned requirement of holding a job has become a deal-breaker for a significant portion of Vermont’s labor force.
Proponents of the plan lament the workplace learning and collegiality that has been lost since the pandemic made this kind of arrangement possible and then routine. They’re also worried about the economic decline of towns that used to host office buildings filled with people who would go out for lunch, buy gas and maybe pick up a few things at the local store.
On the flip side: Those working from home are liberated from the oftentimes senseless chore of commuting and its accompanying greenhouse gas emissions. The seemingly impossible search for affordable housing has led many Vermonters to settle far from their offices, in towns that benefit from having residents who work where they live. Remote employees find accessible childcare and other services in those places, and the resulting business bolsters rural Vermont.
Most rookie reporters Are looking for a working newsroom full of experienced writers from whom they can learn on the job.
Like so many local employers, Seven Days has faced the same dilemma since the coronavirus sent us all home five and a half years ago. Although the paper never required reporters or sales reps to work at the office, even before March 2020, they all had desks at our Burlington HQ. In truth, we never imagined we could produce the newspaper without toiling together in the trenches — until we had to. Instead of poring over hard-copy pages, looking for errors or misplaced ads, now we scrutinize the paper — very carefully — on our respective screens.
Quite a few people still gather in the office on Monday and Tuesday, when we ready the paper to be printed. Wednesday is also busy, packed with story-planning meetings. But on Thursday and Friday, the main office is pretty empty. In an adjacent room, a gaggle of news reporters is almost always hard at work, sitting close enough to hear each other’s phone conversations and compare notes. This is what most rookie reporters missed in school and today crave: a working newsroom full of experienced writers from whom they can learn on the job.
Other employees, though, aren’t getting enough of that hands-on, in-real-life mentoring. The arrangement works OK — for a while — if there’s no turnover. But in order to truly understand Seven Days, newbies need to know what their colleagues do and feel a connection to them. And, increasingly, they drive home to St. Albans and Vergennes — too far away to get together with coworkers after hours.
The urban-rural migration makes sense. From January to August, the median price for a house in Chittenden County was $605,000, compared to a statewide average of $450,000, Anne Galloway reports this week in Nest, our quarterly real estate supplement. Across the board, the price of Vermont homes has almost doubled in the past decade.
Last Wednesday I hosted a party for staffers at my place in Burlington to celebrate Seven Days’ 30th birthday. The icing on the cake … was newsprint gray. Custom baker Erinn Simon cooked up a confection that looked exactly like a stack of newspapers, down to the rough paper. Everyone who sent me a thank-you email noted how fun it was to be together. Maybe even essential.
This article appears in Oct 1-7 2025.
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