Challenges and opportunities in Vermont's small towns

Rachel Hellman

Rachel Hellman reports on the challenges and opportunities in Vermont’s small towns for Seven Days, a weekly paper and news site based in Burlington, Vermont. Previously, Hellman was a freelance journalist and her writing, which focused on the societal and environmental impact of climate change, appeared in The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Fortune, and U.S. News & World Report. As an intern for CBS News, Hellman assisted in producing a groundbreaking nationwide investigation into the changes that police departments in the U.S. have made over the past five years regarding race and policing. Since graduating magna cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis in 2020, she has worked on a carpentry team for the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, on an all-women farm crew in central Vermont, and as a commercial pie baker in Brooklyn, New York.

Seven Days

Seven Days is a free, award-winning weekly paper with a print circulation of 35,000, the largest in Vermont, and a news site. Founded in 1995, Seven Days has been an improbable success story, thriving as traditional print media declined and filling a news void. It's been called “The New Yorker of the north” and for good reason: Seven Days delivers news with depth and context, such as a 5,000-word piece that revealed that people wait months to see specialists at the area's largest hospital. The state launched an immediate investigation in response.