HARDWICK – For the most part, how we decide what to cover at The Hardwick Gazette is similar to the New Hampshire outlets in Paul Cuno-Booth’s story. As a small hyper-local, and mostly digital, news organization, we are never able to cover everything we’d like to, but each week we think we do a slightly better job of collecting and delivering what our community tells us it wants.
The issues we now see as most important in this area include local government and elections, police and fire activity, flood recovery and resilience planning, school redistricting, housing, medical care and post-secondary education, and this year, the local impact of federal policies.
We cover news in Hardwick and ten nearby towns, with one half-time reporter, who also helps with production, and me to report on meetings, events and activities I would likely be attending anyway.
A photographer mostly stays close to Hardwick, covering sports and events beyond that when they seem interesting.
Our sports reporter who grew up in Hardwick, but now lives in Texas, stays tuned in to what’s happening here, watching games and working with coaches whatever the season.
Hardwick, for which we’re named, and Greensboro, where our office is now, see more news coverage than other places, mostly because we’re there more than anywhere else. We try to cover most select board meetings in Woodbury and Craftsbury too. Walden and Wolcott get less meeting coverage, then Cabot, Marshfield, Calais and Plainfield less still. Stannard gets almost no coverage because the town doesn’t have a website, so doesn’t post meeting minutes or recordings we can easily access.
When we know there are big issues coming up, we will cover select board meetings in all those towns, and we generally don’t cover school board meetings, except when we know there are important issues at stake there.
In the medical domain, we keep an eye on Copley Hospital, and other hospitals to a lesser extent, Hardwick Rescue, and the Hardwick and Plainfield health centers.
With the demise of Goddard College, Craftsbury’s Sterling College has become the only post-secondary school in the towns we cover, so we think activity there is more important than ever. Over the last year, we’ve added some coverage of what’s happening at the Vermont State University campuses in Lyndon and Johnson too.
In addition to the sources for stories named by Julie Hirshan Hart in the accompanying story, every week we usually see one or more stories from community members, interns or businesses that choose to write about what’s important to them, so it’s not just us making decisions about what’s important.
Readers tell us they enjoy reading stories about their neighbors, so we’re planning to bring back the Our Neighbors section in our op-ed pages. Those pages are among the most important, with letters to the editor, cartoons, our regular weekly and monthly columnists, In the Garden, The Outdoor Story and the new Voices of Spirit column that has been sharing the perspective of a wide range of spiritual leaders, seems well-received.
I keep an eye on local social media and Front Porch Forums for help in what’s important to community members and for story ideas.
We’ve cultivated relationships with town managers and clerks, schools, libraries, civic organizations and businesses, to build our events calendar into the go-to place for what’s happening in the coming weeks throughout the area.
The Gazette’s production staff, reporter and board members with journalism and media experience, serve as an editorial sounding board when questions arise that I need a broader perspective on and offer suggestions as they feel compelled to.
We’re working to fill out the board of Northeast Kingdom Public Journalism that serves as the Gazette’s nonprofit publisher. As a nonprofit, our only responsibility is to the communities we cover. We’d very much like to expand board membership beyond the five Hardwick and Greensboro members we have now. Contact us if you have an interest in helping support this organization that’s devoted to the public good as the local representative of the only industry protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Beyond that, we’re planning community meetings in each town. Since the first successful one in Greensboro last year, we’ve got one coming up for Hardwick; to share our initiatives and gather input from the community about what’s working and what’s not, October 26 at the Jeudevine Library.
Paul Fixx volunteers as The Hardwick Gazette’s editor, reports on what he can, handles tech issues, oversees the part-time staff bookkeeper and advertising.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
