Can a Team of Devotees Keep the 'White River Valley Herald' Going? (2024)

Katie Vincent-Roller, co-owner of the White River Valley Herald, starts her Thursdays at 2 a.m. That's when Vincent-Roller, who works full-time as a high school language teacher, awakens to drive to the Valley News headquarters in Lebanon, N.H. There, she picks up 3,700 copies of the weekly regional newspaper she owns with her husband, Tim Calabro.

By 6 a.m., Calabro himself is on the road, chugging black coffee at the wheel of his Subaru Forester, delivering the newspapers. Since the pandemic began, Calabro has struggled to find people willing to make the early morning stops, and the paper doesn't have the money to outsource the task.

On a recent delivery route, Calabro, 41, weaved expertly along dirt roads, making his way to general stores and post offices to drop off stacks of newspapers. The Herald is also distributed via the U.S. mail: $46 a year for a print subscription; $51 includes access to the website.

On Ridge Road in Randolph Center, Calabro stopped the car to let Chet Abbott and his son — both friends of his — herd cows in the early morning sunlight.

"This is a good picture," Calabro said as he grabbed his camera from the back seat and sprinted outside to capture the serendipitous moment. He started at the paper as a photographer and still keeps an eye out for potential shots.

These days, he's not only a deliveryman and staff photographer but also editorial director, building repairman, selectboard correspondent and financial adviser for the paper, which is bleeding money. He routinely clocks 18-hour days and doesn't draw a salary.

Calabro and his tiny staff are paddling against the heavy seas of dwindling ad revenue, and they are barely keeping the Herald afloat. Two American newspapers fail on average each week, according to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The Herald, like many other Vermont publications, is casting about for a solution to the local news crisis.

Some papers, including the Vermont Standard and the Hardwick Gazette, have transitioned from for-profit to nonprofit business models in an effort to buoy their enterprises, a move Calabro is considering. Either way, he and his wife feel a responsibility to keep the Herald going.

"I would be really upset if this community didn't have a newspaper," Calabro said. "I would be OK not being the person who ran that newspaper, but I don't see anyone else who is particularly willing or capable of doing it. So, I kind of feel like I have to do this for as long as I can."

The White River Valley Herald was established in 1874 as the Herald of Randolph, a name it kept until 2020. Its current offices in Randolph were built in 1899. Today, staff hold meetings and draft the paper amid old typesetters and repurposed darkrooms. Artifacts of bygone eras litter the space: hundreds of black-and-white photographs and leather-bound copies of the paper dating back to the 1800s.

The paper has long covered local government and small-town life. Janet Roberts, who has been circulation manager for the Herald since the 1980s, remembers when it used to publish social news, announcing who had gone to whose house for dinner and who was back in town.

Calabro was still in high school when he scored a photography internship with the paper in 2001.

"I was hooked on photography immediately," Calabro remembered. "I had no idea that I wanted to be a newspaper person. That was a total surprise to me."

Calabro studied photography at New York University for a year and a half before he got homesick and enrolled at the University of Vermont. He kept shooting for the Herald, and after graduation in 2001, he accepted a job as a staff photographer.

M. Dickey Drysdale, who became the paper's fourth owner when he bought it from his father in 1971, was then the editor; a gifted writer, he helmed the paper for more than four decades. Media conglomerates such as Gannett approached Drysdale around the time of the Great Recession of 2008, hoping to buy the Herald.

"I remember Dickey telling me, 'Paul, I can't sell the paper to them,'" said Paul Kendall, a Randolph resident who was the owner's friend. "He told me, 'The community spirit goes out of those papers.'"

When Drysdale finally decided to sell and retire in 2015, Calabro, then just 32, expressed interest. Drysdale was eager to sell the paper to Calabro, who knew the community well.

Calabro was keenly aware of the challenges the paper faced in a rapidly changing media market but was motivated to keep the Herald operating. Without it, Calabro felt, Randolph and the surrounding area would lose the glue of its civic life. Still, he said he thought to himself: "Oh my God, is this the dumbest thing you've ever done in your life?"

He and Vincent-Roller ultimately raised $400,000 and bought the Herald, including its two-story building on Pleasant Street. The paper barely broke even for several years. Then COVID-19 hit. Ad sales plummeted, sending the paper into a financial tailspin. Last year, it lost $80,000. This past February alone, it lost $14,000 — a lot of money for a small-budget community newspaper. In March, Calabro laid out the bleak situation in a letter to readers published in the Herald.

"We miraculously survived as the pandemic decimated our revenues and inflation brought all of our costs ever higher, however, 2023 was the business's worst year on record," he wrote. "If things don't improve the newspaper will cease to exist."

Calabro has had to make painful decisions to keep the business going. At its peak, the paper had more than a dozen full-time employees. Now, the staff consists of four full-time and five part-time employees, the majority of whom work on the business side of the enterprise. Calabro recently decided to close the office on Fridays and trimmed staff salaries accordingly.

Calabro often pens three or four of the stories in an issue himself. Sometimes, he uses AI to summarize selectboard minutes. He said he hasn't taken a vacation in years. When the paper shuts down for a week each summer to give staff a break, Calabro spends his time fixing up the Herald's building.

Despite the huge financial challenges, Calabro has continued the Herald's legacy as a dependable local news source that covers 16 towns across four counties. Jessamyn West, a self-described "community technologist, librarian and writer" and longtime subscriber to the Herald, applauds its deft reporting on controversies such as last year's resignation of nearly all of the deputies on the Orange County Sheriff's Department and an incident involving a transgender high school volleyball player that gained national coverage from right-wing outlets in 2022.

"It was nice to be able to read about these events in the newspaper without the authors having a vested interest one way or the other," West said. "That's not what it's like on social media."

Others agree. On a recent Thursday, Linda Thresher Grimes, a substitute teacher, was poring over that week's edition at the Wee Bird Bagel Café in Randolph.

"I like to read the obituaries," Thresher Grimes said with a laugh. "And this!" she said, pointing to a front-page story about a plan to develop high-end townhouses at Montague Golf Club in Randolph. "I wouldn't have known about it otherwise, and it doesn't make me happy."

Recent research from the Medill School of Journalism found that in communities lacking a strong news organization, voter participation declines and corruption increases, which contributes to the spread of misinformation, political polarization and reduced trust in media.

"When a community loses its local media, there's a huge cost to social cohesion and the democratic process," said Meg Little Reilly, managing director of the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont.

Since 2005, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers and is on pace to lose one-third of the remaining ones by the end of next year, according to Medill. In Vermont, the number of people working in journalism fell from 1,446 in 2000 to just 350 in 2021, according to the Center for Community News.

Several states are taking historic steps to incentivize investment in local news. Last month, the New York State legislature passed a first-of-its kind journalism job tax credit that will be incorporated into the state's 2025 budget. Last week, Illinois passed similar legislation.

Since Calabro published his SOS letter in March, readers have sprung into action. In the past two months, the paper has received $30,000 in donations, and a volunteer group has formed to help Calabro consider his options.

"I am just so tired and worn out," Calabro said. "Adding extra things to my plate is just not something I have the capacity for."

The group has started talking with lawyers who have expertise in creating media nonprofits and is hoping to file an application — a lengthy and technically complex process — with the Internal Revenue System by the end of July. Calabro thinks a hybrid approach may be the paper's best bet at financial security. Relying solely on donations — or ad revenue ­— seems unsustainable.

"The Herald is a great example of a news organization that would have failed were it not for a passionate community member who's gone to really great lengths to figure out how to adapt," Little Reilly said of Calabro. "If anyone can figure it out, I think it's him."

For now, Calabro is continuing to do whatever it takes to get his scrappy, beloved paper to the people of the White River Valley.

A few months ago Calabro was driving the morning delivery route when a tire fell off his car in Chelsea. He pulled over and knew he'd have to walk to get help. He grabbed a few bundles and started off toward Will's Store and Free Verse Farm Shop. He'd go the extra mile to deliver the news, even on foot.