VTDigger helped save local journalism in Vermont. Now it’s fighting to stabilize after its own bad news.

The challenges at the acclaimed newsroom have sounded alarm bells: “Is VTDigger In Trouble?” local journalist John Walters asked in a column earlier this year. “I see many troubling signs, and I am concerned.”

But current executives argue the organization is on sound financial and editorial footing with a CEO search underway and a veteran Vermont editor stepping in to temporarily lead the newsroom.

“There’s a real sense of moving forward in the organization,” said Gaye Symington, chair of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the board that governs VTDigger, though she acknowledged the pressures bearing down on the organization.

“So much of this comes down to resource constraints,” she said. “There is no more doing more with less — we are doing as much as we can.”

Founder Anne Galloway launched VTDigger in 2009 after she was laid off from her job as a reporter at Vermont’s Rutland Herald and Times Argus newspaper. Galloway created the online publication at a time when just a handful of similar nonprofit newsrooms were getting off the ground, including the Texas Tribune, MinnPost, and ProPublica.

“I was always making it up as I went along, just out of necessity,” said Galloway, who left VTDigger in 2022. “We started with nothing.”

Over the years, the outlet transformed from a one-reporter startup into the state’s news outlet of record, filling the void of the diminished Burlington Free Press and becoming an essential news source for Vermonters. Its investigative reporting into allegations of fraud at Jay Peak Resort beginning in 2014 became a national story. More recently, it’s chronicled historic flooding in the state and the effect of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on residents.

But growing pains have emerged, too. In 2020, a $900,000 grant from the American Journalism Project gave the startup the ability to expand operations. Roughly two months later, the editorial staff announced they were forming a union “to negotiate for better protections and fair policies, and make Digger a place people stay,” the guild said at the time.

Looking back, Galloway acknowledged the organization “grew too fast,” and didn’t offer standardized policies such as paid parental leave. “I knew we weren’t doing everything perfectly,” Galloway recalled, “but I had tried to do what I could.”

VTDigger voluntarily recognized the guild, and both sides ratified the first contract in December 2021. It enacted policies for parental leave, overtime, and paid time off, and helped set salary minimums for reporters. The organization has been able to maintain a core group of reporters in recent years, which multiple staff members said was likely due to the work of the guild.

Negotiations for a new contract, which began last year, largely stayed out of the public eye — until reporters began to lobby about protections against AI. Outgoing VTDigger CEO Sky Barsch said that her philosophy has been “to use technology to work to even have a greater impact,” but “never as a replacement for human judgment.” But when talks stalled, the guild called on the public to show its support.

Amid the fight, a Reddit post called on people to “target” Barsch, editor Geeta Anand, and VTDigger board members, according to Galloway and Kevin Ellis, a former Vermont Journalism Trust member.

“When you’re using that kind of language in a Trump environment, that’s frightening,” Ellis said in an interview. (The word “target” was later changed, Vermont’s Seven Days reported.)

Norm Welsh, administrator of the Providence News Guild, which represents unionized VTDigger employees, maintained that the talks were “relatively smooth.”

“I think it was a normal course of negotiations,” Welsh said. “I don’t think anything was meant personally.”

That’s not exactly how Galloway and other former leaders see it.

“If the guild continues to be unreasonable like this, news organizations like Digger will go out of business,” Galloway said. “It’s going to be hard to attract good leadership with the kind of antagonisms that have become so endemic to the organization.”

Barsch said that the negotiations aren’t the reason she is leaving on June 1, but admits “there were hard moments.”

“I came in at a time where the financial picture wasn’t great,” Barsch said. “I gave it my all for three years.”

Anand — whose tenure will end in June, after only a year — told the Globe that there were a number of reasons for her departure, including the challenging contract negotiations, Barsch’s decision to leave, and a health issue that she had been dealing with. The ability to return to teaching at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she most recently served as dean, helped finalize her decision, which was a difficult one. “I think Digger is fantastic,” she said.

The guild and management signed a new, four-year contract on Tuesday, which includes raising the minimum salaries for reporters from $40,000 to $53,000 and several protections against the use of AI, including a 60-day notice of implementing new, substantive uses of the technology.

“The agreement we’ve built together will make VTDigger a better place to work — and only strengthen the journalism our members produce every day” the guild said in a statement.

On top of the executive departures, there has been meaningful turnover on the editing side. The majority of the editing team from a year ago no longer works at VTDigger, including former editor-in-chief Paul Heintz, who now works at the Globe.

VTDigger executives said they didn’t believe it was unusual to see turnover among editing ranks when senior leadership changes, and Symington added that VTDigger now has a full slate of editors. The outlet hired longtime Vermont journalist Susan Allen to serve as interim editor-in-chief, and will conduct a search for a permanent editor once a new CEO is in place.

The expansion of VTDigger’s staff over the years has also been a financial balancing act for an organization that makes money from donations, grants, and advertising. The organization has roughly 9,200 paying members, Barsch said, and averages about 500,000 readers per month.

“What really gives me hope is that I am, for the first time in my career, hearing people talk about local news as a public good,” Barsch said. “People are stepping up to support us.”

VTDigger generates roughly $3 million in annual revenue. Public tax filings show that the outlet lost more than $1 million in 2022, largely due to a $1 million jump in expenses. Barsch joined the organization that year, and VTDigger narrowed the annual deficit to a nearly $730,000 net loss in 2023, and then a $75,000 loss in 2024.

Though the organization has yet to finalize its 2025 tax filing, Barsch told the Globe that VTDigger increased its revenue in 2025 by about 10 percent from a year earlier, primarily from donations. But costs also increased, and Barsch estimated that VTDigger lost between $100,000 and $130,000 last year.

“If you cut everything, you would have a profit. But we’re not here to make a profit,” Barsch said. “Vermonters need more from us, and we know we can do it. We want to do it. It’s just figuring out the resources to be able to do it.”

Aidan Ryan can be reached at aidan.ryan@globe.com. Follow him @aidanfitzryan.