Windham County is what Randy Holhut calls “a media island”: It’s too far from Burlington, Boston, New York or Springfield, Mass., to merit much coverage from large outlets. “The big outlets only come to Brattleboro when something is burning, crashing or bleeding, and we’re a town that’s about a lot more than that,” he said.
Holhut is the news editor at the Commons, a free newspaper circulating 8,100 copies in Windham County. Its contributors cover stories that no one else will, from local kids on the basketball court to senior lunches and library happenings.
“You get an awful lot for your free newspaper,” Holhut said. “People know we don’t have the resources to be everywhere, but they appreciate us and what we write and that they have a local paper they can call their own.”
Holhut started at the Commons in 2010 after almost 20 years at the Brattleboro Reformer. “I’ve been working in media for 45 years,” he said, “and this is the first organization I’ve worked for where, if I say ‘I work for the Commons,’ people come up and thank me.”
But that may not be enough to ensure its future. Before the pandemic, the Commons had 12 people on staff. The health emergency and sudden lack of advertising forced layoffs, reducing that number to only four. Editor-in-chief Jeff Potter also designs and lays out the paper, effectively doing two full-time jobs, while Holhut works long hours and proofreaders are volunteers.
The Commons is one of many local news organizations struggling to survive. According to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, the U.S. has lost nearly 3,500 newspapers and more than 270,000 newspaper jobs in the past two decades.
In 2024, the Commons caught a break: It received a $100,000 grant from Press Forward, a national initiative that’s working to reverse the trend of vanishing local newsrooms.
Launched in 2023 by philanthropic entities such as the MacArthur, Knight and Ford foundations, Press Forward is galvanizing philanthropists to help local newsrooms invest in making their operations more sustainable. The Commons was the first Vermont newsroom to receive funding from the program.
It was an honor to be the first organization to get this grant. We now have the money and flexibility to plan for the future.
Randy Holhut
“It was an honor to be the first organization to get this grant,” Holhut said. “We now have the money and flexibility to plan for the future.”
In addition to national grants to local outlets, Press Forward has built strength by partnering with regional philanthropic organizations to gather support for local news. In 2024, they selected Vermont Community Foundation to host the Press Forward Vermont chapter.
This initiative is just one of the many ways the VCF connects its fundholders and donors to projects that make a difference. Together, the community foundation’s family of funds injects nearly $80 million into the state each year. Its knowledgeable philanthropic advisers work with generous individuals, families and businesses to direct resources toward the projects and causes that matter most to them. Now preserving local news is part of the mix.
“In the years following the pandemic, communities across Vermont have worked to stay connected amid significant shifts in civic life,” said Dan Smith, president and CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation. “Declining trust in institutions, along with increased mobility within and beyond the state, has made it harder for people to share common experiences and sustain the relationships that hold communities together.”
Across the state, one thing has become increasingly clear: Thriving communities depend on trust, local leadership and access to reliable information. Independent local media plays an essential role in supporting all three.
“No single newsroom or funder can solve this alone,” Smith said. “That’s why philanthropy plays a unique role in moments like this. It allows funders to come together to make strategic investments that support the whole news ecosystem, as well as providing patient, flexible support that allows local news to adapt, collaborate and remain accountable to the communities it serves.
“The question before us is not whether local news matters here. The question is how we sustain it,” Smith said. “Thankfully, this is the kind of work Vermonters do best.”
Working Together for the Common Good
The Commons was organized in 2004 and began publishing in 2006, becoming one of the first newspapers in the country to gain nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service. New issues are released every Tuesday, available at 250 pick-up spots in Windham County, with about 300 subscribers receiving home delivery.
“It was formed with this idea to be a locally owned newspaper and be accountable to the community,” Holhut said.
In addition to staff and freelance content, the Commons relies on articles from VTDigger, a nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news organization covering statewide issues. Through VTDigger’s Community News Sharing Project, funded by Press Forward Vermont, small local outlets such as the Commons can print relevant stories for free.
“Even though we’re online only, a lot of people read our work in print because of this,” said Gaye Symington, president of VTDigger’s board. Symington noted that this partnership would not be possible without Press Forward Vermont’s support. “Because of them, we don’t ask the small papers to pay for anything.”
Creating content isn’t the only challenge that the Commons has been up against. Its $100,000 grant from national Press Forward is helping the outlet pay for technology upgrades, sales staff, fundraising infrastructure and more long-form reporting.
“We’re really thankful to the national Press Forward initiative and VCF that they believe in local journalism and helping to preserve it,” Holhut said.
The Full Picture
Among the first to direct funding to Press Forward and join its advisory group was Barbara Benedict, adviser for the donor advised fund created by her mother, Lois Howe McClure, at the Vermont Community Foundation. As part of the family that owned and operated the Burlington Free Press for more than three generations, both Barbara and her mother witnessed firsthand the vital and active roles that fully staffed local news outlets can play in promoting inclusive, vibrant communities.
“What worries me is not just the loss of the news but the splintering of what used to be core entities serving as accessible hubs for news, advertising and public information,” Benedict said. “Every person needs a trusted local source — or collaboration of sources —that they can count on to connect them to all aspects of their community.”
Learn more about the recipients of this year’s Local Civic Journalism Awards and how their reporting is helping Vermont communities stay informed and connected.
Press Forward Vermont brings philanthropy together with community leaders to strengthen local news. The Vermont Community Foundation convened a Press Forward funders circle, enabling interested fundholders to pool resources in support of strategic investments in Vermont’s news ecosystem. An advisory group that includes representatives from the local news sector helps guide the work. “Our funders see real challenges to community connection and engagement and understand how important local news is to the fabric of civic life,” said Jess Schmidt, director of strategic initiatives at the Vermont Community Foundation.
“This is about so much more than grant making and donations; this is about people coming together to think about Vermont’s strengths and challenges and creating something entirely new,” said Holly Morehouse, vice president for community impact at the Vermont Community Foundation.
One way news organizations are collaborating to find solutions to these challenges is through the newly formed Vermont Journalism Coalition, open to any media organization in Vermont that employs professional journalists, regardless of platform. Press Forward Vermont’s pooled fund and the University of Vermont Center for Community News are contributing funds over two years to get it started.
The journalism ecosystem has felt very vulnerable. It’s one person away from collapse in certain areas of the state.
Paula Routly, Seven Days Publisher
“This was a positive step to break down the silos between news organizations. Everyone recognizes we have common goals,” said Paula Routly, publisher of Burlington-based Seven Days newspaper, one of the organizations that helped found the coalition. “The journalism ecosystem has felt very vulnerable. It’s one person away from collapse in certain areas of the state, and it would be helpful if publishers and owners had resources and a place to go for help before that happened.”
The new coalition can advocate for systemic solutions that help all of its members; for example, a bill introduced last session in the Vermont legislature would require state agencies to spend a percentage of their marketing dollars with local media outlets.
The Next Generation of Reporters
Another problem local newsrooms face is lack of workforce — particularly a young workforce with training in journalism. Press Forward Vermont adviser the Center for Community News, housed at UVM, sees a solution in its student-powered newsroom.
The center serves communities across the state by partnering with trusted local outlets to provide professionally edited content written by students. It’s staffed by respected local journalists, such as former Seven Days reporter Courtney Lamdin. The center also leads a national initiative supporting student reporting programs across the country.
“There was immediately a lot of demand,” said Meg Little Reilly, the center’s managing director. “Trustworthy local news was starting to disappear at the local level, and we quickly saw the role higher education could play in helping our communities.” Students gain hands-on experience while local media outlets get critical reporting support. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
The busiest day of the year for the center is the first Tuesday in March, aka Town Meeting Day. “The students fan out to Town Meeting Day locations across the state and provide reporting for all of the local outlets,” Little Reilly said. “It’s a great way for students to experience democracy on the ground, and it allows these communities to get coverage when they otherwise wouldn’t.”
Now, the center works with 30 different outlets across the state and provides training, classroom materials and syllabi for students across the country.
As Press Forward Vermont supports collaboration and innovation across the news sector, the Vermont Community Foundation is also investing in something equally critical: understanding the unique challenges facing Vermont’s information landscape.
To better understand how local news is serving Vermonters, the Vermont Community Foundation commissioned the Vermont News & Information Ecosystem report as part of Press Forward Vermont. Authored by Impact Architects and released in early February, the research gathered perspectives from 441 residents, along with insights from community listening sessions and interviews with civic and journalism leaders.
The Community News Service played an advisory role in shaping the report, contributing its experience and on-the-ground perspective. Together, these voices offer a grounded understanding of where philanthropic support can help strengthen access to reliable information, community connection and civic life across Vermont.
Seventy-nine percent of survey respondents reported having access to a trustworthy and accessible local news source. The research identified 61 news and information providers statewide, with 80 percent independently owned and locally operated.
However, the report also uncovered significant challenges. Many newsrooms are sustaining that trust through Herculean efforts, often operating with limited staff and relying on one or two people, aging leadership, less experienced journalists, or volunteer labor. Financial pressures continue to intensify, driven by declining advertising revenue, shifting audience expectations around paying for news, limited public funding and the loss of federal support for public media. Together, these forces have made traditional business models increasingly difficult to sustain.
The findings also highlighted persistent gaps in representation and access. Some communities, including young people and others historically underrepresented, do not consistently see their experiences reflected in coverage. Barriers such as cost, format preferences, language access, broadband limitations and information overload continue to shape how people engage with local news.
When local news fades, communities don’t just lose coverage; they lose a shared understanding of what’s happening around them.
Dan Smith, Vermont Community Foundation PRESIDENT & CEO
“When local news fades, communities don’t just lose coverage; they lose a shared understanding of what’s happening around them,” Smith said. “We don’t all have to agree, but we do need reliable, local information so we can have real conversations and make decisions together.”
“We needed a local model because we have unique challenges and strengths,” said Benedict, a Press Forward funder. “I was really pleased to find out that the VCF was working with organizations to find the data for where we are in Vermont right now.”
Want to learn more about Press Forward Vermont?
Both a summary and the full Vermont News & Information Ecosystem Report are available at vermontcf.org/press-forward, where you can learn more about Press Forward Vermont’s work and how to support local news in your community.
One thing that the VCF’s Schmidt notes is unique about Vermont is that people around the state are more civically engaged in government and volunteerism than in a lot of other places in the country. Through surveys, the VCF confirmed that there is strong support in Vermont for local news and people value it as a way to keep them connected. Out of everyone surveyed, 94 percent of Vermonters agreed that local news was as essential as other public services, such as roads, libraries and post offices.
The Vermont Community Foundation will use this research to identify opportunities to strengthen news access and newsroom sustainability. It shows a clear path forward for Vermont, too. Vermont has a large network of committed news outlets, and there are many more places Press Forward Vermont can empower community journalism for years to come.
Said Schmidt, “We know Press Forward is going to be a big part of how we sustain local news going forward.”
