The last time Seven Days published a Media Issue, a 112-pager in 2019, the Waterbury Record and the Brandon Reporter were still in business. The late Ken Squier was a regular presence at his radio station, WDEV-AM. Many of us local newspaper publishers were worried about the statewide expansion of an online platform powered by user-generated content called HereCast — now GoneCast. In other words, it was a long time ago. BP — before pandemic. And we thought things were hard then! COVID-19 forever changed the Vermont media industry — and not just because it accelerated so many of the trends that were already eroding the revenues we relied on. Advertising dried up overnight as people traded in brick-and-mortar shopping for Amazon and streamed Netflix instead of going to movie theaters, clubs and performing arts venues. Even in Vermont, virtual life threatens to replace the real one. At the same time: The state’s reporters never stopped delivering the news, and local media consumers saw and appreciated their efforts. Remember the governor’s weekly televised press conferences, during which journalists from every corner of the state posed questions on behalf of their anxious communities? All of that, coupled with widespread attacks on journalism writ large — sometimes from the president — convinced some proud, for-profit Vermont news publishers, including Seven Days, to admit they needed help to keep going. Their readers responded, in many cases, with financial support. In 2026, the statewide media landscape sure looks different. This issue of Seven Days has 24 fewer pages, the Addison County Independent and the Vermont Standard in Woodstock both have charitable trusts, the nonprofit online news site VTDigger has a union, and Vermont Public Radio and Vermont Public Television have merged to become Vermont Public. Information sources that do not report local news — but rather aggregate, reference, repackage or respond to it — have proliferated in the past seven years. Front Porch Forum just keeps getting bigger. Ditto an Upper Valley e-newsletter called Daybreak. And everybody is trying to figure out how Compass Vermont, a one-man show on Substack, is generating as many as three stories a day. The publisher appears to be using coverage from local and national outlets — and AI — to generate articles on a platform that bills itself as “Vermont news from all directions.” There’s a lot to report on, and ironically, none of us Vermont news publishers has been doing it very well. Generally speaking, reporters aren’t keen to write about their colleagues at competing outlets that might one day hire them. And many of us in the business know each other and are actively exploring ways to collaborate. It’s awkward, to say the least. Case in point: In this Media Issue, we have VTDigger founder Anne Galloway reporting on Vermont Public. She left Digger in May 2022 but opted not to be a source in our story this week about its union. We’re pushing past our discomfort because someone has to do it: Vermonters deserve to know more about their media. Ownership changes, financial struggles and new formats at local outlets directly impact citizens, many more of whom are now active financial supporters of our respective efforts. This kind of news is no less important to the state’s overall well-being than the reporting Vermont journalists do on our broken health care system, housing crisis and education reform. As we often say to sources when trying to convince them to participate in a story: The best way to solve a problem is to shine a light on it. Credit: Source: Vermont Local News INformation Ecosystem Report by Impact Architects Enter the Vermont Community Foundation, which recently commissioned a study of the local media ecosystem. The resulting 74-page report contains some encouraging data points: Of the 441 Vermonters surveyed, 79 percent said they had a “trustworthy and accessible local news source.” Eighty-one percent said they “learned new information about a topic” from those outlets. Sixty-nine percent gave credit to local media for a connection to arts or cultural events. A whopping 94 percent agreed that local news is just as essential as libraries or the postal service. While the report relies on data from a rather small group, many of whom say they pay for local media, it’s encouraging that in Vermont we’re apparently not rebuilding trust in journalism, as is the case in other places; for the most part, trust is already here. It’s not a coincidence that 80 percent of the state’s 61 outlets are locally owned, compared with 40 percent of daily newspapers nationally. Publishers who live in and care about the communities they cover are a different breed from corporate suits. The Vermont Community Foundation’s report is itself a good sign. It makes a compelling argument for local journalism and suggests that some heavy hitters are on board. The foundation hosts the Vermont chapter of Press Forward, a potential conduit for national philanthropic support of local journalism. With Press Forward resources, VCF hired an outside firm, Impact Architects, to conduct the research for the report. Unbelievably, one of the company’s first tasks was to compile a list of Vermont news outlets — before last year, none existed. The question before us is not whether local news matters here. The question is how we sustain it.Dan Smith Also brand-new is the Vermont Journalism Coalition, a nonprofit trade association that supports, protects and advocates for its member print, television, radio and digital outlets. The org’s part-time coordinator is paid through the University of Vermont’s Community News Service, with help from Press Forward and VCF. All of this activity suggests people are catching on to the correlation between reliable, fact-checked local information and healthy civic engagement. Better now than never! “The question before us is not whether local news matters here,” VCF president and CEO Dan Smith said. “The question is how we sustain it.” Want to do your part? Support the news outlets you rely on. They’ll have a better chance of being around for our next Media Issue. We hope you learn a thing or 10 from this one. The original print version of this article was headlined “State of the Media” The post From the Publisher: State of the Media appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less