The First Amendment is Our Most Important Freedom

A word of caution about the demise of a free press; support your local news organizations.

By Geoffrey Gevalt
Hinesburg Record Editor

As I think about this July 4, the 250th anniversary of our becoming a democratic nation, 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 healthy. Because it isn’t. And never before have we so needed a strong, free press. And never before has our press been so threatened.

According to the Poynter Institute, 40 percent of the nation’s newspapers have shut down. And I don’t mean that they have, like The Record, stopped printing and moved online. They are shuttered. Our nation is dotted with places where citizens no longer have a source of verified, professionally assembled information and news about their communities.

In addition, 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 in 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 rate of reduction has happened in most news organizations in America.

And I should add that never before has the news media been referred to as “the enemy” by leaders of our free nation.

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, we believe 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.

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 much 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 our meager savings to finance a new Hinesburg Record Journalism Fellowship. Our first recipient, Claire MacDonald, will be with us until mid-December.

We have begun to raise money for this Fellowship. 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.

This is one of those rare win-wins. The young journalist gets valuable experience, clips and training. You 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 follow whatever faith we want but also our right to a free press that is vibrant and healthy.

Think about how you can support local journalism. The best way you can do that – and the first thing you can do – is to read more and listen to more of what we do. We’ve worked hard at it. We’ve strived for accuracy, fairness and timeliness. We care.

You can go one step further, of course, by reading the stories on our website – hinesburgrecord.org; subscribe to get our Weekly Record email summary; and spread the word: tell people about what we are doing.

Happy Fourth.