Seven Days Wins Big at New England Newspaper Convention

Yaniv Bazini of the UVM men’s soccer team, from Joe Sexton’s January 29 cover story, “Year of the Dogs.” Credit: Courtesy of UVM Athletics

Seven Days won 37 awards at the New England Newspaper Convention two weekends ago in Portland, Maine. On behalf of the paper, news editor Matthew Roy collected 14 framed certificates for winning work published between August 1, 2023, and July 21, 2024, in categories ranging from investigative journalism to food writing. The paper took top honors in reporting on the arts, crime and courts, education, and climate change. Ditto “local personality profile” and “racial, ethnic or gender issue coverage.”

The judges singled out our special supplement in advance of last year’s eclipse and our related epic cover story, which pulled together reports on the cosmic convergence from 10 vantage points around the state. “Coverage befitting the enormity of the event,” one judge noted.

They said our headlines rule and so does the paper’s overall design. Senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger of “Stuck in Vermont” fame won two first-place prizes.

Twenty-three more awards — 14 for second place and nine for third — rounded out the haul, which Roy brought back to the Seven Days office in a very big box. Why does it matter? Every week our team at Seven Days labors together against time and human error to put out the best newspaper we can. It takes planning and creativity, discipline and vision. These annual awards banquets are one of the only chances we get to look back on our work.

From this vantage point, almost two years out, some of the winning pieces, such as Joe Sexton’s exposé of child abuse at Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, now feel like ancient history.

More recently, our reporters have been turning out next year’s award contenders. These include several cover stories, which showcase the in-depth writing at which Seven Days truly excels. Derek Brouwer teamed up with Vermont Public’s Liam Elder-Connors to describe what it’s like to be homeless in Burlington on the coldest nights of the winter. Jonathan Mingle untangled the forest-products industry, from logging to local sawmills and tariffs on wood. Just last month, Colin Flanders laid out a case for why alcohol is arguably a bigger public health problem in Vermont than opioid addiction. The letters poured in — so many Vermonters were moved by the report, which was not “news,” exactly, but interesting and shocking and full of real people sharing their stories.

Yes, we report on terrible problems in Vermont, but also triumphs: At the end of January, in a swirling narrative that put readers right on the field, Sexton wrote about how, against all odds, the University of Vermont men’s soccer team won the NCAA national championship. Last month Jordan Barry, Rachel Hellman, Melissa Pasanen, Ken Picard and Eva Sollberger hit the road in search of Vermont’s most interesting general stores — that is, the ones that are creatively adapting to existential business challenges.

The cover stories aren’t the only ones worth reading. Every issue of the paper is filled with well-reported news, arts, food and travel stories, plus incisive reviews and previews of performances you don’t want to miss. Event listings — in the calendar, music and visual arts sections of the paper — are the connecting tissue of Seven Days, along with the ads, comics, puzzles and New York Times-endorsed personals.

Those lighter elements of Seven Days are a refuge for people who are tuning out the news right now because it’s so chaotic and frequently depressing. No judgment — we’re here for you.

We also hope you’ll show up for us: It’s expensive to produce and deliver this free newspaper, and we’re pinching every last penny to do it. There are lots of ways you can help pay for it.

If you’re a business owner or decision maker at a local company, please consider advertising with Seven Days. If you’re an event organizer, switch to Seven Days Tickets. If you’re a regular reader who picks up the paper every week at one of 1,000-plus drop spots around the state, become a Super Reader by donating to our efforts. And when you’re shopping or choosing a service provider, support our advertisers and let them know you saw them in Seven Days.

If we work together, we can all win.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Making It Count”