Jen Rose Smith Credit: Courtesy

For some Americans, the U.S. midterm elections can’t come soon enough; many Vermonters have already voted. In contrast, the job of the journalist — learning about and covering the candidates — takes time. It requires observing electoral hopefuls in action. A good reporter will go the distance on the campaign trail, talk to supporters, and watch and listen carefully as they field questions in real time. This approach inevitably yields more insights and revelations than a sit-down interview with a polished politician.

What Kevin McCallum laid out in last week’s story about Vermont’s contest for lieutenant governor, “Fighting Words,” prepped readers for a heated televised debate.

This week’s cover story is about the race for the state’s top job, between incumbent Gov. Phil Scott and economist challenger Amanda Janoo. I’m pretty sure that no one — least of all Scott or Janoo — expected the contest to be so competitive. Reporter Alison Novak set out to answer the question on the minds of many Vermonters: Who’s Janoo?

We’re publishing Alison’s cover story, “Home Stretch,” in the same issue as the Seven Days Voters’ Guide. The goal is to shed some light on those eager to represent you.

Already voted and ready to move on? Hitch a ride 660 miles north with Richmond travel writer Jen Rose Smith for a rare look at a giant, ring-shaped lake in northern Québec created by a meteor more than 200 million years ago. One of the world’s largest impact craters, the Manicouagan Reservoir was made visible in 1968 by flooding engineered by Hydro-Québec.

Hitch a ride 660 miles north with Richmond travel writer Jen Rose Smith.

A picture snapped aboard the space shuttle Columbia 15 years later launched Jen’s obsession with the natural landmark. “The resulting photo resembles a dreamscape: a great doughnut of water 45 miles across, with a snowcapped peak at its center, tributaries furrowing away into the surrounding boreal forest and mountains hugging the edge,” Jen writes in her piece this week.

“It’s really not close,” she concedes. “Yet when imagined from the Columbia’s low-Earth orbit, as I have done often over many years, the crater is just right there. A certain cruising altitude makes all the world look snug.”

In short, she had to go, so in July Jen and her husband, Daniel, planned a three-day backpacking trip in the trailless mountain range adjacent to the reservoir, the Monts Groulx. In a tight, 2,500-word story, she chronicles the journey, starting with a 15-hour drive along the north coast of the St. Lawrence River to Baie-Comeau, once home to a thriving paper mill, and up along the Route des Baleines, aka the Whale Route. Native Canadian guides, miners, blackflies and hydroelectric dams all find their way into the narrative.

It’s no wonder Jen won the top prize for U.S. travel journalists last week. Funded by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, the 2026 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition singles out the nation’s most eloquent explorers. As the reigning Travel Journalist of the Year, the judges noted, Jen combines “literary elegance, immersive reporting, environmental awareness and cultural sophistication across a remarkably diverse portfolio.”

Jen’s nine submissions — from a 12-month period — ranged from a first-person piece about bike-packing across Morocco to a breaking-news segment for CNN about the growing tensions between the U.S. and Canada.

She experienced none of the latter while reporting on this trip.

Major outlets such as National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post regularly commission Jen’s work, but the experience of being published nationally sometimes feels like “writing into a void,” she told me.

Not so when sharing travel tales with her neighbors through Seven Days. I’m quite sure she’s not doing it for the money.

Our Québec Guide at sevendaysvt.com/quebec is full of Jen’s great travel stories, which include all the info you need to plan a visit north of the border. When you’re back, Seven Days will tell you everything you missed at home — including, in three weeks, election results.

This article appears in October 14 • 2026.

Paula Routly is publisher, editor-in-chief and cofounder of Seven Days. Her first glimpse of Vermont from the Adirondacks led her to Middlebury College for a closer look. After graduation, in 1983 she moved to Burlington and worked for the Flynn, the Vanguard Press, the Burlington Free Press and Vermont Times – in that order. In 1995, she and Pamela Polston started Seven Days newspaper. Routly ran the business and built the news side of the operation, which she edited for years. She has spearheaded...