Paula Routly

1 week ago | sevendaysvt.com | Paula Routly

click to enlarge Americans love a marathon — a test of will, endurance and aerobic fitness. More than 5,000 ran in the Burlington one on Sunday, including a relay team of five fearless Seven Dayzers. Thousands more cheered them on, bearing witness to the collective effort. It was a lot sweatier than the passeggiata four days earlier on Church Street — an evening stroll modeled after a ritual practiced in Italy, Spain and Latin America.

2 weeks ago | sevendaysvt.com | Paula Routly

click to enlarge In the past few months, federal agents have deported migrant farmworkers and caused high school exchange students who thought they were safe in Vermont to leave. A legal resident of the state was almost successfully "disappeared" outside the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester. People have been detained for hours at the U.S.-Canada border.

3 weeks ago | sevendaysvt.com | Paula Routly

click to enlarge Every reporter — and publisher! — with an ounce of ambition has dreamed of winning a Pulitzer Prize, the highest recognition of achievement in U.S. journalism. But there's no special treatment for small media outlets in this national competition. Writing quality aside, the subject matter has to meet a standard of gravitas — a natural disaster, revelation or surprise — that transcends geography.

1 month ago | sevendaysvt.com | Paula Routly

click to enlarge When I was 19, I hiked about a third of the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile footpath that stretches from Mexico to Canada, through some of the most breathtaking landscapes in the western U.S. In 1979 cellphones had not yet been invented, so there was no GPS or calling 911. Cheryl Strayed had not shouldered a backpack and written the bestseller Wild.

1 month ago | sevendaysvt.com | Paula Routly

click to enlarge Back in February, three weeks into President Donald Trump's second term, we dispatched news reporter Kevin McCallum to the Midwest to cover U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his then-fledgling "Fight Oligarchy" tour. It was a last-minute decision — with expensive flights — that thoroughly upended editorial plans for the forthcoming issue.