The business of reporting on a primary and general election for a small-town hyper-local newspaper turns out to be a bigger job than this editor anticipated.
We took on a huge project early on with our plan to partner with Hardwick Community Television (HCTV) and ask a series of seven questions to all Vermont House and Senate candidates in the four counties and 11 towns we cover. Before the primary we were able to transcribe and include responses for the Caledonia and Orleans County Senate races and the Caledonia-2 and Orleans-4 House races, while HCTV posted those and all the rest to be streamed from their website before the primary.
The primary threw us for a bit of a loop when five additional candidates entered the race as write-ins, or as caucus appointments. We (and I mean me, the editor) kept thinking there’d be time to schedule those interviews with HCTV, transcribe them and put them up to view and read along with the ones we hadn’t transcribed before the primary.
Other work kept us busy, as it does with a small, part-time and volunteer staff, so we didn’t get to that until a few weeks before our last issue ahead of the election. That made for a monstrously large paper last week.
Several months ago we had the opportunity as a small newsroom to partner with the Associated Press, gaining access to their election data and widgets for our website at no charge.
We built a web page to display the local house and senate races in a simple format so our readers could easily view those election results as they come in.
It was so easy to do, we added statewide races, maps allowing our readers to select any state senate or house race and a national map from which to view the presidential race, U.S. House and Senate races and governors races across the country.
We discovered a simple widget to show only the leader in Vermont voting for the President, U.S. House, U.S. Senate and Vermont Governor’s race at the top of the dashboard.
With that figured out we decided to publish our regular issue for Wednesday on Tuesday as usual, then come in Wednesday to publish a special election edition.
With that figured out, we enlisted the Gazette’s interns and photographer Vanessa Fournier to gather election day news.
Raymonda Parchment visited the polls in Woodbury, Craftsbury and Wolcott, uncovering some interesting things you’ll read about tomorrow.
Intern Olivia Saras interviewed students about their opinions on voting and plans to vote if they were over 18. You’ll read what she learned tomorrow too.
Intern Megan Cane is headed to Walden and Stannard to gather news and photos there.
Our partners at the UVM Community News Service reporter Kate Lewton and photographer Catherine Morrissey are on a road trip to Cabot, Marshfield, Calais and Plainfield.
I visited the polls in Hardwick and Greensboro for photos that appear on this issue’s front page and a tiny bit of what Raymonda and I learned about last-minute mail-in ballots and today’s visitors to the polls appears in the feature story today.
I hope you follow our dashboard tonight and tune in to WDEV radio for their election coverage beginning at 7 p.m. where we will be sharing Greensboro’s results as soon as possible after the polls close at 7 p.m.
Overnight the writers will write, the photographers will process photos, the editor will edit and tomorrow Sandy and Dawn will produce a special election edition of The Hardwick Gazette for you.
Paul Fixx
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
