GUILFORD — The form and frequency will be slightly different, but the Guilford Gazette will live on through the inspiration of loyal contributors.
The Guilford Gazette was originally established in 1995 as a service learning project for students at Guilford Central School. For almost 20 years, Guilford middle school teachers and community volunteers instructed students to interview elders, write articles, take photos, design copy, and even sell ads in order to produce a printed recollection of Guilford life.
Their hard work produced three publications a year, including a special issue introducing town meeting topics and election information. This integrated curriculum brought a life-skills approach to academic learning.
In 2013, when Guilford residents voted to send its middle school students to Brattleboro Area Middle School, the Guilford Gazette was not retained by Guilford Central School.
This was a loss that Guilford residents did not take lightly and without reflection. “The Gazette was our only consistent source of local news and history” said Carol Levin, who is now advertising director for the revived paper.
In September 2013, Guilford Librarian Cathi Wilken organized an initial meeting to discuss the possibility of publishing the Guilford Gazette outside of a classroom setting. This meeting attracted a diverse group of residents, including volunteer Susan Bonthron, who worked on the original Gazette about 18 years ago.
“I was not about to see this crucial community correspondence and icon be discontinued,” Bonthron said. She joined this new committee and has offered multiple services, including editing articles.
This group's first action was to continue the Gazette's nonprofit status in order to be eligible for grants and donations. A move to transfer “ownership” of the Gazette from the school to the Guilford Library Board of Trustees was unanimously approved, and the production process began.
With the help of 31 advertisers, local writers, town officials, and a small number of volunteers, the annual town meeting issue of the Guilford Gazette was published in February.
Committee member Lisa Ford said that while the first non-school issue lacked the student base of writers that residents had grown accustomed to reading, “this issue proves that Guilford community spirit is alive and there is still a strong appetite for local information.”
The next issue is scheduled to come out mid May, with plans to publish four times a year. Each issue is distributed to all who live in Guilford and available to others who might be interested in receiving it.