Paula Routly: Why Publishing a Newspaper Feels Revolutionary

You can thank newspapers for the American Revolution. Two hundred and fifty years ago, print media was the only mass communication, and colonists shared information and ideas through pamphlets, one-sheet “broadsides” and other reading material. Because of religious imperatives and local schooling, they were a surprisingly literate bunch.

A pre-Revolutionary War edition of the *New Hampshire Gazette* Credit: Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society

In fact, the outcome of the war might have been different if the Kingdom of Great Britain had established better media relations in the New World. Its wildly unpopular Stamp Act levied a tax on press owners for every page they cranked out. Many of those printers were also newspaper publishers. Because the law would have put them out of business, they flouted it and used their papers to promote the cause for independence.

That was almost a century before Mark Twain allegedly said: “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” For 28 of the 74 years Twain lived, many U.S. newspapers were exempt from paying postage as part of a federal initiative to educate the electorate. Publications that were mailed for free to every corner of the country promoted new ideas, including the one that launched the American Civil War.

Our little newspaper is part of a long, proud tradition of rabble-rousing independent U.S. media.

Seven Days has never advocated for armed conflict, but our little newspaper is nonetheless part of a long, proud tradition of rabble-rousing independent U.S. media. And we still buy ink by the barrel. Every Tuesday night around 7 p.m., production manager John James ships a new edition of Seven Days to our printer in Canada. Within a matter of hours, 35,000 copies are printed, stacked, wrapped and arranged in the back of a truck that arrives on our Burlington loading dock no later than 6 a.m.

What the workers do each week at Québecor Media Printing is a marvel of labor and industry. And in today’s world, that’s not cheap. In fact, as of this week, printing Seven Days is going to cost about 10 percent more than it did. After payroll, it’s our single largest expense.

The reason for the price hike is a little more complicated than supply and demand. Thousands of newspapers have gone out of business in the past few years. So have paper mills. The state of Maine, which once had more than three dozen, now has six. Many of the plants that are still operating have switched from producing paper to packing material for clients such as Amazon. As a result, the cost of newsprint has skyrocketed. Labor and transportation have gone up, too.

A long-term contract with the press protected us from the financial impacts of those market forces. But when it came time to re-up for another two years, there was no escaping the new reality.

Why don’t we make Seven Days online-only and save $10,000 a week? Because there is still a measurable demand for the print product: Almost every copy gets picked up. And as the world has digitized, isolating each of us in our own customized information bubbles, the act of bringing this free, handcrafted product to the people every week feels, well, revolutionary. For more than 30 years, our local journalism, events and listings have kept Vermonters informed and engaged in their communities. And with each other. A few weeks ago, a young woman used the I Spys to propose to her girlfriend. Amazingly, that was the second proposal the newspaper facilitated this year. The other one was on our cover; both were successful.

Seven Days is unique, and we want to keep it that way.

So, too, presumably, does the most prestigious nonprofit news outlet in the country, ProPublica. Last month the Pulitzer Prize-winning org selected Seven Days to be a partner in its Local Reporting Network — a national program that pairs its editors with local newsrooms to pursue yearlong reporting projects that would not otherwise see the light of day. ProPublica liked our pitch.

It’s part of the organization’s 50 State Initiative, a commitment to selecting a partnership with one newsroom from each state by 2028. Read: a huge honor. We’ll tell you more about it soon.

Meanwhile, check out this week’s issue; the calendar includes multiple ways to observe the country’s semiquincentennial. It’s not a call to arms — but to lawn chairs. Local media looks different than it did back in colonial times, but we’re no less determined to keep our fellow citizens informed and connected.