How to Protect Our First Amendment
A free and healthy press is essential to ensure our democracy; you can help by supporting community journalism.
By Geoffrey Gevalt
Hinesburg Record Editor
As I think about this July 4, this 250th anniversary of our becoming a democracy, I think of one constitutional protection and one of its provisions in particular: The First Amendment.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Passed in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment is the foundation of our democracy. It protects our right to practice – or not practice – any faith we wish. It allows us to speak out without fear of reprisal, to protest, to assemble, to take government and power to task and to seek redress.
My personal favorite, of course, is its final provision: a free press, that is a press free from governmental restrictions.
Unfortunately the Constitution contains no wording that the press must remain financially healthy. Because it isn’t. In fact, the news business is in crisis. Never before have we so needed a strong, free press. Never before has our press been so threatened.
According to the Poynter Institute, 40 percent of the nation’s newspapers have shut down in the last 10 years. And I don’t mean that they have, like The Record, stopped printing and moved online. They have been shuttered. And our nation is now riddled with places where citizens no longer have a source of verified, professionally assembled information and news about their communities. News deserts they call them.
Those news organizations that are left – including radio and television – have been gobbled up by large corporations and hedge funds, have been bled dry of assets and have seen enormous cuts to their staff. In 2006, when I was managing editor of the Burlington Free Press, there were 58 people in the newsroom. Now there are six. This drastic reduction has happened in most newsrooms across America.
News organizations no longer are seen as valuable, essential. The leaders of our free nation refer to the news media as “the enemy,” as purveyors of fake news.
I firmly believe that the decimation of news organizations has been one factor in our nation’s rising incivility and our widespread absorption of misinformation, disinformation and AI-generated, made-up information.
As a community news organization, The Hinesburg Record believes we can do something about it.
Seeing the trends that diminished print readership, seeing the rising costs of printing an issue 10 times a year and seeing the need for more timely information about and for Hinesburg, the board of directors of The Record – now a nonprofit organization – made the difficult decision to end print and go all-in online. We created this site, https://hinesburgrecord.org, on the Substack platform (it’s free; with free email which saved us about $800 a year) and have set to work.
The news content of the new Record, if you will, is assembled and proofed by four people – Mary Jo Brace, Cathy Ryan, Laurie Wedge and me. Dozens of community members contribute columns, news stories, announcements and images. Most every day we post something new and every Monday morning we email to subscribers The Weekly Record, a summary of top news from the week before, along with important events coming up.
We are doing what we can to preserve and improve what we have been doing for almost four decades.
The Record has now gone one step further. Nationally, we are not only losing news organizations and seeing those that remain get drastically cut back, we are also not doing enough to put young, aspiring journalists in Vermont in a position to gain employment.
So The Record’s board decided to do something about it. The board dipped into The Record’s meager savings to finance a new Hinesburg Record Journalism Fellowship. Our first recipient, Claire MacDonald, was chosen from four fine finalists. She will be with us until mid-December.
We have begun to raise money to perpetuate this Fellowship. Already we have a pledge of $5,000, a donation of $5,000 and a commitment for similar levels of funding over the next two years. That is a start. By next June, we hope to have raised another $50,000 which will give us enough for full-year Fellowships through 2029.
This is one of those rare win-wins: the young journalist gets valuable experience, clips and training. They can show what they can do and get in the door for full-time employment. And you, the reader, get more content.
This weekend, as you celebrate the Fourth of July, think about the importance of the First Amendment – yes, our right to protest, our right to seek redress from our government, our right to follow whatever faith we want. And our right to a free, independent and strong press. It is up to all of us to make sure our news organizations are vibrant, healthy and informative. Our futures depend on it.
And you have a role in this. You can support local journalism. You can read and listen to what we create. You can become more informed about your community.You can go to hinesburgrecord.org and subscribe so you get our Monday email news summary and can comment on our stories. You can check in with the website on a regular basis and read new stories that we’ve posted. And you can spread the word about what we’re doing.
We are here. We work hard. We care. We strive for accuracy, fairness and timeliness. We do it for you and we do it because we believe in the importance of what we are doing, of maintaining a free and independent press.
Happy Fourth.
Thank you Geoff and everyone connected to producing the Hinesburg Record. In your short time of taking it from print to digital, it is already becoming an important source of local and timely information. On this occasion of the celebration of our 250th anniversary of our nation, your reminders of the importance of a free press are more important than ever. Thanks again to you and everyone involved with making our little community more informed.
thank you, and everybody who works on The Record. It’s vitally important.