Local news forecast: Cloudy with a chance of a ‘news desert’
October 2, 2023 | By Lisa ScagliottiUPDATE Oct. 8: A small group met on Oct. 3 to begin discussing the future of the Waterbury Roundabout. We will schedule another meeting soon and share details on the Roundabout, on our Facebook page and in our email newsletter soon. Original post is below.
A puddle near the roundabout traffic circle reflects ‘The Waterbury Special’ metal sculpture on the railroad trestle over Main Street. Photo by Gordon Miller
I don’t like the term “news desert.”
That’s the go-to shorthand people in journalism use when they refer to places where local news outlets have closed, leaving an absence of coverage of government, schools, businesses and general goings-on in a community or region.
I don’t like it because I think it implies that there is a lack of news to actually cover when it really means there’s a dearth of journalists working to produce local news stories for their communities.
In most cases the reason for that is most likely that the local paper has closed or downsized. Whatever the case, people living there have been left without a source of reliable, accurate information and reporting on their community, its institutions and their neighbors. A key source of connection has been lost, so they’re left to find things out and keep up with civic information and everything from obituaries to local elections, police reports to high school graduations, from the internet, social media and through random contacts with each other.
In 2020, the Waterbury-Duxbury community found itself on the verge of earning the “news desert” badge when the weekly print newspaper, The Waterbury Record, folded after 13 years on the newsstands and in people’s mailboxes. The pandemic was the proverbial last straw as its owners in Stowe scrambled to right their ship when advertising all but came to a screeching halt as so many businesses hit pause and held onto their marketing dollars. It was a regrettable but understandable business decision.
This online news site launched as WaterburyRoundabout.org as part of a journalism internship program at the University of Vermont in early May 2020. At the time my role was a very part-time editor working with students to generate local news stories for community newspapers. We turned our attention specifically to Waterbury as the spring semester wound down and the summer session commenced.
Along the way, we let the community know that a new source of news was working to fill the local information void. People signed up for a weekly email and a new Facebook page started gaining followers. My position at UVM was frozen, but Gordon Miller and I continued to build the website as volunteers along with help from student interns and several local freelancers.
By fall, the Times Argus had noticed the new local news effort and contacted us about collaborating to produce a new, small-scale weekly print paper using mostly Roundabout stories and photos. The daily paper would cover production, printing, and distribution including mailing it to local addresses. It paid a modest sum of $500 per week to the Roundabout for its contributions. It was called the Waterbury Reader and it was published weekly from November 2020 until just a year ago.
Since then, we have worked at trying to solve the same existential question that news outlets much larger and better-established than ours are wrestling with today: What is the combination of reader support, advertising, sponsorships and even philanthropy needed to keep this operation going?
The good news
Our website traffic is up over the last year with more than 6,000 visitors per week, and some busy news weeks this year have seen double and triple that readership. It’s not unusual for a single story or obituary to accrue thousands of views on their own.
Likewise our Facebook page has nearly 4,000 followers who read Roundabout posts.
Our weekly email goes out to just under 2,100 subscribers.
We have seen the list of readers supporting local news with monthly or one-time donations this year grow to about 200. (Many thanks to everyone on that list – your support sustains and motivates us to stick with this.)
We’ve seen local employers begin to post ads for job openings on our Local Jobs page.
We’ve had several companies sponsor multiple email newsletters and post website ads (thanks especially to SunCommon, Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea, and Birch and Pine real estate).
The not-so-good news
Despite all of this activity and interest, our monthly income still does not support even one full-time salary. In 2022, the Roundabout’s annual income was just shy of $50,000 (thanks in large part to the Times Argus collaboration). This year, our revenue relies heavily on reader contributions. But that support and minimal advertising three quarters into 2023 hasn’t added up to half of last year’s total yet.
What are we paying for?
Our revenue supports a part-time website and newsletter editor/designer, a very part-time photographer, freelance writers who generate an average of one or two stories per week combined. Student contributors from UVM receive academic credit or a stipend from their program; their work is free of charge to us except for our time spent assigning and editing their work.
As editor and the paper’s full-time reporter, I’ve received a weekly stipend of $300 for just two months this year. (Being paid that all of last year worked out to $5-6/hr.) Other incidentals include website hosting and email platform fees, a post office box, bookkeeping.
Clearly, this is not sustainable. From the start, this project dove in to cover the news at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic without putting together a business plan and assembling the pieces needed to execute one. We are well aware that the two print newspapers that left our community did so saying they couldn’t generate the advertising support to pay for publishing a weekly paper.
I keep hoping that the Roundabout will enjoy a different fate. That somehow there could be the financial support to allow an online newspaper here to thrive.
What would it take to be sustainable? Honestly, somewhere in the neighborhood of $125,000 a year to support our current staff and add a full-time reporter and a business/ad manager.
But first, dear readers, we need to put this important question to the community: Do you want this to continue? Should Waterbury-Duxbury and our school district have a source of local news here? If so, how do we rally the needed support?
Some news and an invitation
Two important final details to share here:
Waterbury Roundabout recently received word that it has been awarded a $5,000 grant from the Vermont Arts Council’s Creative Futures program. Over three grant rounds, the program has allocated $8.8 million from the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development that was part of the state’s share of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding for pandemic recovery. As a business that started in response to the pandemic, the Roundabout qualified for a small grant from the program. The funds can be used for regular operating expenses and we would like to put this funding to use to build a viable business path forward.
How will we do that? We’ve discussed hitting “pause” on covering the news for a while to focus on the business piece. But something about that feels wrong.
So, we’re asking for your help. We know we need more people involved. We’re ready to brainstorm. We would love to see a grassroots effort take shape to help steer the Roundabout to a viable future.
Let’s get the conversation started: Join us this Tuesday, Oct. 3, 6:30 to 8 p.m., in the Waterbury Public Library’s large meeting room. Come with questions, ideas, suggestions.
Because we all know that Waterbury and our local community is far from being a “news desert.” Our working list of story ideas is long and it grows every day. We love covering Waterbury and Duxbury and our schools and we want to do more. But if local journalism – and we mean actual news reporting – is to play a role in our community, it can’t be a volunteer pursuit indefinitely.
Lisa Scagliotti is the editor and co-founder of Waterbury Roundabout along with local photojournalist Gordon Miller. Julia Bailey-Wells is the site’s website designer and digital editor.