Waterbury Roundabout is a local news site launched in May 2020 as a volunteer effort in collaboration with the University of Vermont's Reporting and Documentary Storytelling program.
It relies on professional journalists in the community to steer news coverage that includes regular contributions from UVM student reporters.
Our goal is to follow important local news developments from our schools and town government, businesses, neighborhoods and community organizations. Particularly in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, timely information on public health is critical along with insights into its impacts on our community.
Local news outlets are critical sources of information for the communities they serve, and the Roundabout especially aims to fill the recent gap in coverage of Waterbury and Duxbury. The Roundabout will be the place where readers can learn about the people who live and work in our area.
We are pleased beyond expectations at the warm response this project has received to date. We also recognize the challenging economic climate in which we are cultivating a new news-gathering enterprise but we are encouraged to put Waterbury Roundabout on a track to become sustainable.
Moving ahead, we envision a small, dedicated, paid staff knowledgeable about our community that can provide consistent attention to the news each week. They would mentor university and even high school student journalists to give them firsthand experience learning to cover a Vermont community.
We hope to achieve this with financial support through donations, sponsors and grants.
The New England Press Association Scholarship Fund, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, created the Local Community News Fund of New England and will serve as our fiscal sponsor allowing the Roundabout to receive tax-deductible contributions from individuals, businesses and foundations.
We hope this can set us on a path toward putting down roots as the community's source of local news for the foreseeable future.
We hope you will help us get started.
Lisa Scagliotti
Editor, Waterbury Roundabout
