How two nontraditional newsrooms in Vermont are winning readers
Could their examples hold the key to fixing âThe Expanding News Desertâ?
By Mark Shanahan Globe Staff,Updated December 28, 2020, 12:44 p.m.
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Anne Galloway wondered if her journalism career might be over.
It was January 2009 and the Sunday editor of the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus was among 16 employees abruptly laid off when the newspaperâs owner slashed positions in a round of budget cuts.
âI knew I wanted to stay in journalism,â says Galloway. âBut there werenât many jobs in the offing.â
Or any. All over Vermont, the story was the same: Newspapers were downsizing as readers in ever greater numbers were getting their news for free on the Internet, and advertising revenue â which sustained print journalism for two centuries â had dwindled to a trickle during the recession between 2007 and 2009.
not bugs. The Whos are just small people.”
Helen’s vision would win out in the TV special a decade later, but the Whos in the book do resemble talking insects, the descendants of Ted’s early ad contracts with Standard Oil’s premier bug spray. Her influence over the book is comprehensive ― the narrator wonders if the Grinch’s shoes are a few sizes too small before concluding that, actually, it’s his heart that is undersized.
After wrestling over different religious themes for the ending, Ted and Helen decided to cut out the Bible altogether and let the Grinch settle down to dinner with the Whos, slicing the roast beast as everyone lives happily ever after.