Ask Us Anything
Publisher Paula Routly opens up about Seven Days’ three-decade evolution and quest to stay in business
COURTESY OF TERRY J. ALLEN
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Paula Routly
even Days’ first issue, published on September 6, 1995, was 28 pages long, mostly black and white, and had a “long-tab” format — meaning the paper had a vertical orientation and a fold. Compare that with the thick, colorful, compact paper you’re holding in your hands today — or scrolling online, something that would have been impossible for our website-free business to offer in the mid-’90s — and even our readers who weren’t born at the time can grasp how much our operation has changed and grown over three decades. From the beginning, we promised to be “the weekly read on Vermont news, views and culture.” That’s one thing that has stayed the same, even as pretty much everything else — our media landscape, editorial ambitions, ownership structure and business strategy, for starters — has undergone dramatic transformation in the course of some 1,500 issues. Not all newspapers get to stick around long enough to see that happen. An extensive report on American journalism published last fall by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism was mostly full of bad news: “Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished. Newspapers continue to disappear at a rate of more than two per week; in the past year alone, 130 newspapers have shut their doors,” The State of Local News
2024 reads. “In addition to these closures and mergers, papers are reducing their print coverage, including shifting from dailies to weeklies or ending print publishing altogether.” Thankfully, despite all we’re up against, that’s not the case at Seven Days. The Medill report surveyed the media landscape across the country, taking stock of information deserts, and identified a dozen “Local News Bright Spots” — outlets that “provide their communities with excellent reporting essential to democracy while progressing in the quest for stable, sustainable business models.” Seven Days is one of them. In a candid conversation with “Bright Spots” editor Autumn Brewington, publisher Paula Routly opened up about the paper’s editorial objectives, business model and what she wished she knew back in 1995. The resulting article, titled “How Seven Days Defies the Odds,” was published on October 23, 2024. It has been excerpted, updated and reprinted here with permission. CAROLYN FOX
Autumn Brewington: How has the appetite and opportunity for journalism in Vermont changed since you began publishing? Paula Routly: The Vermont media landscape has changed in the past three
AAN = Association of Alternative Newsmedia NENPA = New England Newspaper & Press Association PMA = Parenting Media Association VPA = Vermont Press Association
To chronicle three decades of Seven Days, we dug deep into our archives and inboxes, finding meaningful and whimsical milestones along the way. The result isn’t just a timeline of our paper but also the evolving story of the place we all call home. As the saying goes: To know where you’re going, you gotta know where you’ve been. Enjoy this blast from the past.
FILE: MATTHEW THORSEN
BY CATH Y R E S ME R NOVEMBER 8: Paula Routly reports in “Back Talk” that Bob Denver, aka Gilligan of “Gilligan’s Island,” visited the Seven Days office. The paper publishes its first two iSpys, the better of which reads: “I spy with my little eye a M who’s sexy, sweet, caring, hairless, a morning person, huggable, has a fetish for cows and is keepable.”
| 1996
1995 SEPTEMBER 6: The first, 28-page issue of Seven Days is published with an essay by Peter Freyne, a short story excerpt by UVM prof Phil Baruth and a pizza survey headlined “The Pies Have It.” (The winner? Leonardo’s.) The calendar spotlights Rusty DeWees. The paper’s sole comic strip is dug Nap’s “Duane.”
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SEPTEMBER 13: Seven Days gets an email address, sevendays@ together.net, and a classifieds section. The first of more than 1,000 mottos is: “Better read than dead.”
SEVEN DAYS SEPTEMBER 3-10, 2025
OCTOBER 18: The cover story is prescient: “Fermenting Revolution: Vermont’s Beer Biz Hops to It” spotlights Long Trail, Otter Creek, Catamount and Magic Hat. Writer Irving Shelby Smith predicts: “The word ‘Vermont’ may soon also say ‘great beer’ to the rest of the nation.” Peter Freyne’s “Inside Track” debuts in Seven Days.
NOVEMBER 15: Peter Freyne pens the cover story “Billy the Kid: William Greer, Football Folk Hero or Biggest Drug Dealer in Vermont?” The former Rice High School football star is accused of masterminding Vermont’s largest pot and hashish smuggling operation.
DECEMBER 20: Tom Paine’s short story “From Basra to Bethlehem” appears in the first Reading Issue. A few months later, it earns the paper a prestigious Pushcart Prize. See page 30.
JANUARY 31: In “Winning Ticket,” Paula Routly gives a thumbs-up to Man With a Plan, John O’Brien’s mockumentary about dairy farmer Fred Tuttle and his campaign for office. See page 31.
JANUARY 17: Seven Days launches its personal ads with a live “Dating Game” promotion. It runs every Wednesday night for 13 weeks above Nectar’s.