By Justin Trombly
A new online media outlet for Winooski has earned a $10,000 jumpstart in an effort to give Vermont’s most diverse community its own news source.
The Winooski News, housed within the University of Vermont, received those funds this fall from the Vermont Community Foundation. UVM is matching the money and providing the outlet with student reporters and an editor as it looks to grow.
"We’re attempting to create a freestanding, community-supported newspaper in Winooski,” said Jacqueline Posley, the outreach coordinator. “Right now, it’s in what I call an ‘incubation period’ in UVM."
The outlet formed about a year ago, aiming to solve a problem facing many communities in rural states: news deserts.
Just outside Burlington, the city of Winooski hasn’t had its own newspaper in decades. Residents have had to rely on larger outlets, who might not see the newsworthiness in what’s going on in town.
"One of the biggest goals of Winooski News is to kind of change that,” Posley said. “Every person in Winooski is a puzzle piece, and that's what Winooski News wants to showcase: that puzzle.”
The absent news coverage has been compounded by the realities of a city where a good portion of the population is made up of resettled refugees and residents whose first language isn’t English. More than 30 languages are spoken by Winooski residents, such as Somali and Arabic, and that can make it harder for folks to find and understand news.
“There are a bunch of different people who speak a bunch of different languages, and perhaps the Nepali community would want to create a newspaper but they don't have the funding, the resources and the backing to do that,” Posley said.
Winooski News aims to address that by hiring translators for its stories. Some of the outlet’s stories have been translated already, but the $10,000 award will help fund a broader effort, Posley said.
Students produce the majority of Winooski News’ stories, videos and audio recordings. Around five students staff the outlet as interns with UVM’s Center for Research on Vermont.
Recent stories have examined the search for a city manager, the hiring of a city diversity officer, the “Milk with Dignity” campaign, Halloween festivities and the Republican National Committee’s lawsuit against the city. Cory Dawson, editor of the Community News Service — a sister publication of the Winooski News — edits and assigns the stories for the Winooski outlet.
Junior Sofi Mendez wrote about the “Milk with Dignity” effort, an initiative by migrants’ rights activists in Vermont to improve working conditions on farms. Mendez translated the story into Spanish.
“The accessibility aspect of this story was super important,” she said, explaining, “I often think about the representation of minorities in the media and writing this specific story in Spanish made sense.”
Mendez, who was born in Paraguay, has found reporting in Winooski an educational experience.
“I am an immigrant, and I am already hyper-alert and educated about human rights violations in agricultural supply chains because I have been looking into problems immigrants face in the U.S. since I moved here,” she said. “(But) before looking into the story myself, I didn't really know about a migrant population in this state, and less even about the human rights crisis they have been facing and organizing against.”
The eventual goal, Posley said, is to have Winooski residents write for the outlet. That effort, too, would be boosted by the grant money.
Published about every two weeks on Saturday, the outlet has 300 subscribers and is growing.
“So far people are very happy,” Posley said. “There has not been an effort in Winooski for a newspaper in a very long time, and I think it has led people in Winooski to think they are the forgotten cousin of Burlington."
Justin Trombly is a writing intern supervisor with the Center for Research on Vermont.
View published article in The Winooski News
