Seven Days hires award-winning reporter Taylor Dobbs

Award-winning journalist Taylor Dobbs is joining the news team at Vermont’s independent newsweekly, Seven Days. Since September 2013, he’s been a digital reporter at Vermont Public Radio, where he has distinguished himself online and on-air. Dobbs, 27, has won regional Edward R Murrow Awards for his coverage of the opiate crisis, a quadruple homicide and Green Mountain Power’s failure to document expenses. Earlier this month, he won a national Murrow Award for a video illustrating how the Iowa Democratic caucus works — using Legos.

At Seven Days, Dobbs will serve as an investigative reporter and will cover Vermont state government and politics. He’ll start December 6.

Prior to joining VPR, Dobbs wrote several freelance pieces for Seven Days and interned for VTDigger.org. He earned a bachelor’s in journalism from Northeastern University in 2013. Shortly before graduating, Dobbs got some very real-world reporting experience: In the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, he joined the manhunt for the men responsible and covered it all on Twitter. His on-the-scene reporting and photography were picked up by news outlets around the world.

“Taylor’s not going to sit around in a newsroom,” said Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly. “He’s eager, ambitious, inventive and plugged in.”

Dobbs grew up in Montpelier — less than a mile from the Statehouse.

About Seven Days:

Da Capo Publishing Inc, dba Seven Days, was founded by Pamela Polston and Paula Routly in 1995, and is now owned by Polston and Routly, as well as associate publishers Don Eggert, Cathy Resmer and Colby Roberts. In addition to its seven free publications, the Burlington-based company also produces several annual events, the Stuck in Vermont video series and hosts a ticketing website, job board and dating service. Its editorial staff has received numerous journalism awards from entities including the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the Parenting Media Association, the Vermont Press Association and the New England Newspaper and Press Association, which in 2017 named Seven Days the best large-circulation newsweekly in the region.

Seven Days has been named Business of the Year by both the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Burlington Business Association. In 2013, Editor & Publisher selected Seven Days for inclusion in its annual feature, “10 Newspapers That Do It Right.” In 2015, Polston and Routly were inducted into the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame. The same honor was bestowed on Seven Days’ consulting editor, Candace Page, in 2017.