The 'Bridge,' Montpelier's Free Newspaper, Fights to Stay Afloat After the Flood 

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• Anne Wallace Allen
• From left: Justin Turcotte, Cassandra Hemenway and Phil Dodd

Well before floodwaters swamped Montpelier in July, the Bridge — the city's hyperlocal, free newspaper — was weighing drastic measures to cut costs.

The nonprofit newspaper's board of directors considered a monthslong break from printing the 24-page publication, which is mailed once every two weeks to addresses in the Montpelier zip code and placed in newspaper boxes around town. Advertising revenues had dropped precipitously and were not enough to sustain the 10,300-copy print run and the four part-time paid staff positions.

The flood hit the Bridge hard. Although its hilltop offices were untouched, many of its advertisers had to close, at least temporarily. With a deluge of news to cover, the Bridge started publishing stories every day on its website and launched a GoFundMe campaign seeking to raise $25,000.

The small paper's supporters came to its aid, and the GoFundMe plea has raised more than $11,000. Meanwhile, the Bridge learned last month that it had won a $25,000 grant from the Vermont Arts Council. A front-page story about the paper's financial problems, along with vigorous fundraising efforts by board members, yielded another $10,000 in donations, a welcome infusion of cash.

Several large advertisements in the current issue — including a full-page ad for Monteverdi Music School and a half-page ad for a flood-recovery benefit concert — have helped restore a sense of financial normalcy for the moment, according to editor Cassandra Hemenway. And a handful of flooded downtown businesses have reopened to much fanfare, a welcome sign of life for the Montpelier community.

"It just bodes well for everybody in town," Hemenway said of seeing businesses reopen. "It is a measure of how the town in general is doing."

As Montpelier continues to regain its strength, Hemenway and the board are hoping to ride the wave of recovery. They want to continue covering local news as they always have: with free printed copies available at newspaper boxes and in the mail.

But it's an opportunity to chart a more sustainable future, too. Even in good times the paper, which has an annual budget of about $250,000, has relied on dwindling advertising revenues, donations and unpaid labor to keep publishing. The board plans to meet in the coming weeks to map out a survival strategy.

A group of central Vermont residents founded the Bridge in 1993 as an alternative to the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, then a daily afternoon paper.

"It felt like the coverage from the Times Argus was declining," said Bridge cofounder Phil Dodd, who writes news stories for the paper and serves on its board. "They were supposed to have four Montpelier stories a day, but there was a lot more to cover."

The Bridge found a business model that kept it going for decades. But in anticipation of dwindling ad revenue, in 2018, the board started a foundation and held what it hoped would be an annual fundraising event. The pandemic disrupted those plans.

Earlier this year, inspired by the nonprofit Charlotte News, the board made the newspaper itself into a nonprofit.

In the past decade or so, that approach has emerged as an increasingly popular option for news organizations around the country. As a nonprofit, an outlet can accept tax-deductible donations and mail printed copies at a lower postage rate.

Vermont has a nonprofit online-only news organization, VTDigger.org, and a handful of small nonprofit papers, including the Commons, which covers Windham County. The Waterbury Roundabout, a startup online news site, takes donations through the Vermont Journalism Trust, the nonprofit fiscal sponsor that oversees VTDigger.

These newspapers and websites fill a void created when larger, more established news outlets start shrinking.

Free distribution is one of the hallmarks of nonprofit media outlets. "We don't want to put a tollgate on information," said Randy Holhut, editor of the Commons, which is also distributed in parts of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. "We think journalism is a public service."

Economic accessibility is key for the Bridge, which proudly describes itself "local, independent and free," Hemenway said. "Our board of directors holds that very dear."

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• Courtesy Of John Lazenby
• Cassandra Hemenway

The 4,500 copies of the paper that aren't mailed are distributed at 57 locations in central Vermont, including at 29 boxes — six of which were lost in the flood. Vermont Works for Women, a Winooski job-training organization, is making 10 replacements, free of charge.

For most of paper's 30-year run, its coverage has been on the lighter side. Local historian Paul Carnahan contributes a feature called "Then and Now" that describes the history of a Montpelier building, accompanied by photos of the building now and in the past. Cofounder Greg Gerdel writes an occasional piece — "For this, I am paid zippo," he noted. Sometimes, letters to the editor end up on the front page. An August issue included an elegy in verse to local businesses by resident Sandy Vitzthum. The paper also prints real estate transactions.

Montpelier Mayor Jack McCullough said the paper provides a perspective he can't find anywhere else. He and his wife read the education column by Mary Mello, a retired local teacher, and he follows Carla Occaso's "Heard on the Street," about business developments. He reads the Times Argus, too.

"There's no reason we can't have more than one," he said.

The Bridge occupies a roomy warren of offices on the campus of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, which accepts ad space in the paper in lieu of rent payment. With two of the Bridge's four paid positions vacant, the office is a quiet place; Hemenway often works from home.

The paper has no paid reporters; it relies on a mix of paid and unpaid freelancers, as well as volunteers. Luckily, Hemenway noted, the Montpelier area is rich in retired writers. The latest issue includes a story by veteran environmental journalist and fisherman John Dillon, who retired from Vermont Public Radio in 2021. He wrote about the future of the Winooski River, the North Branch of which overflowed in July, inundating downtown Montpelier.

"Every now and then he'll contribute something, as long as it has something to do with the river," Hemenway said, adding that Dillon, like many other contributors, evades her attempts to pay for the stories. Photographer John Lazenby, who used to shoot for Vermont Life magazine, also volunteers.

But using unpaid help has its limits. Hemenway is the one who covers city council meetings.

"A lot of the stories other people don't want to write, I end up writing," she said.

Hemenway's job description calls for her to work 30 hours a week at a salary she said she couldn't live on if her husband's job didn't pay the bills. A few part-time employees recently departed, and the board is looking at ways to reconfigure the paper's staffing.

Since she started in 2021, Hemenway has published more hard news in the paper. She has a master's degree in journalism and moved to Vermont in 1994 to take a job at the Hardwick Gazette.

At the helm of the Bridge, Hemenway has covered Vermont College of Fine Arts' decision to move its residencies to Colorado and the resignation of two top managers from the Hunger Mountain Co-op after an employee was arrested on an array of charges. A contentious debate about homeless people in Montpelier's Confluence Park played out on the front page of the paper last year. Since the flood, Hemenway has provided a torrent of updates for business owners and residents about flood damage and recovery efforts.

The paper continued printing on schedule — at Québecor in Canada — but failed to mail copies of one issue after the flood because the post office was swamped, she noted.

The GoFundMe campaign and the Arts Council grant will keep the paper in business, and in print, through the end of the year, Hemenway said. But she foresees more fundraising ahead, including a gala planned for November. Ad revenues dropped 15 percent between January and May, she said, and the strong support in recent issues can't be relied on to continue.

"We still have to think about how this business model is going to work for the next year," she said.