On September 6, 1995, Seven Days newspaper overcame long odds and surprised skeptics when its inaugural 28-page issue hit the streets of Vermont. Cofounders Pamela Polston and Paula Routly, both arts writers and editors, had no prior publishing or business experience. Polston, a former punk rocker, and Routly, a former ballet dancer, borrowed $68,000 from friends and set out to create what they described as: “the newspaper we would want to read and write for.”
In the three decades since, the arts-and-news weekly has bucked national industry trends and steadily grown in size and influence to become Vermont’s largest-circulation print newspaper and a go-to source of award-winning, rigorously reported local journalism. The paper often runs 100-plus pages a week.
In the beginning, Seven Days was focused primarily on arts and culture reporting. Two months after the paper’s launch, it became the home of “Inside Track,” Peter Freyne’s must-read political column. He kept at it for 13 years until illness forced him to retire, in 2008. That’s the same year that the Gannett-owned Burlington Free Press shrunk its reporter rolls, and Seven Days started staffing up. It has since built a news team that has tackled some of the most ambitious long-form reporting projects in the state, and boasts a list of contributors that includes cartoonists Harry Bliss and Alison Bechdel and writers Joe Sexton and Jonathan Mingle.
Seven Days and its staff have won top honors from national and regional journalism associations in almost every competition category, from investigative reporting and free-speech advocacy to arts criticism and food writing. The New England Newspaper and Press Association has twice selected Seven Days as Newspaper of the Year.
This week’s 120-page Birthday Issue – the 1,527th edition of the paper — documents Seven Days’ journey, against all odds, in the era of AI news summaries, social media influencers and rising threats to press freedom. The issue and website include:
Seven Days is an independent media company now owned by Routly, the publisher and editor-in-chief, and 15 employee owners. It also publishes a quarterly parenting publication, Kids VT, a quarterly real-estate supplement, Nest, and All the Best, an annual compilation of the winners of its Seven Daysies readers’ choice awards. The paper produces multiple events, including the Vermont Tech Jam career and tech expo and the Spectacular Spectacular talent show for performers ages 5-16, as well as a youth civics initiative, the Good Citizen Challenge.
Seven Days’ business success is just as notable as its editorial achievements: It has been named Business of the Year by both the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Burlington Business Association. In 2019, the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp. presented the local media company with the C. Harry Behney Economic Development Achievement Award.
At a time when the U.S. is losing more than two newspapers a week, Seven Days’ improbable rise is a rare media success story.
