If you haven’t yet contributed to The Hardwick Gazette, please consider doing so now.
Our nonprofit mission is important. We believe everyone should have access to fact-checked local news, community information and advertising.
That requires others who can afford it, to step up and fund our mission.
It’s been great to see and hear the response from our community of Gazette readers following publication of the April Fools’ issue. While we’re able to see how many people read and download each issue and view individual items online, seeing your comments, receiving emails and hearing from you during the normal course of a day, goes a long way to make what we are doing worthwhile. Readers who’ve shared their appreciation of that issue have also shared the value of every other week’s paper as the sampling of anonymous comments we compiled as a letter to the editor today reveals.
Each week brings a flood of story ideas to our email inboxes with press releases, community events, cartoons, sports news and what have you. Then we go looking for more to fill in the gaps; providing you with important area news and the most comprehensive community events information in the area.
Last year we worked hard to build our news capabilities by working with interns and partnering with organizations like VTDigger and the UVM Community News Service.
We hired one of those interns part-time this year. That has increased our ability to gather news, fact check it and write about it, but it’s also increased our costs.
Changes to federal funding have added another layer to our hyper-local coverage as we feel compelled to look into what implications they have for our area communities and individuals.
Vermont Public published an article on April 7, listing 10 programs bringing over $37M to Vermont that have been paused, suspended or completely canceled. They include $6.9M in cancelled Health and Human Services grants funding vaccine access and education programs, detection and prevention of infectious diseases, and programs to address health disparities; a grace period to submit project reimbursements for schools was rescinded for $16.7M in COVID era relief funds and $1.7M in local food purchasing assistance that paid Vermont farmers and brought local foods to schools and child care settings has been cancelled.
You can find the Vermont Public piece at https://www.vermontpublic.org/local–news/2025-04-07/tracking–changes–and–cuts–to–federal–funds–in–vermont–under–trump–doge–musk
We are looking at all of those areas to identify local impacts and others that have laid off or suspended Vermont employees who depended on their federal government jobs to support Vermonters in all walks of life.
Real, fact-checked nonprofit journalism costs more than ad-supported social media platforms and community bulletin boards like Front Porch Forum.
I am a volunteer as editor of The Gazette and have been for the past 16 months, so I’m not asking you to do anything I’m not doing too.
Please consider becoming a monthly contributor today, or reaching out to your employer if they offer a corporate matching gift program to multiply the power of your donation to The Hardwick Gazette.
Paul Fixx, editor
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
