• Courtesy Of Katie Palatucci
• Hotel Vermont's Ice Bar in 2022

Two weeks ago, Seven Days turned 28. Not a remarkable number in terms of divisibility, but a heck of a long time to run a local newspaper against all odds.

We started this endeavor in 1995 with $68,000 borrowed from friends. No angel investors alighted to help; for years the company didn't even have a credit card.

Because we didn't have any money to lose, we quickly learned how to make it. The goal was as black and white as ink on newsprint: We needed to generate enough cash through print ad sales each week to cover the costs of creating a newspaper — including the print bill, which had to be prepaid.

I'm proud to say that hustle remains, from the newsroom to the "managers' meetings" where we often hatch ideas for new products. Over the years we've added specialty publications such as our parenting quarterly, Kids VT, and events including the Vermont Tech Jam — on October 21 at Hula in Burlington! If you've read our articles online, gotten one of our email newsletters or watched an episode of "Stuck in Vermont," you know that we've also amped up our digital offerings.

One thing you might have missed: Seven Days is in the ticketing business. Gone are the days when almost every presenter in Vermont sold tickets to their events through the Flynn Box Office and you could go there and buy them from a human being. Now just about everyone, including the Flynn, uses some form of online ticketing platform. In exchange for the convenience of being able to buy tickets on a digital device, you pay service charges that can get pretty exorbitant.

Events that aren't big enough for Ticketmaster often wind up on self-serve national ticketing sites such as San Francisco-based Eventbrite.

In 2016, we saw an opportunity to offer a local version that would keep more of this money in Vermont. We partnered with a national ticketing vendor and customized our own service: Seven Days Tickets. Its fees are less than Eventbrite's, and tireless ticketing manager Katie Olson provides customer service for event organizers and ticket buyers, often in person. Advertising support in the paper and on the website sweetens the deal.

The pandemic accelerated the trend toward online ticketing, and Seven Days Tickets has taken off. Over the past two years, Katie has brought countless event organizers back into the local fold: the Vermont Brewers Festival, Isham Family Farm, National Life Group, Hotel Vermont, Montpelier Alive. Last month, the Essex Experience began moving its ticketing business from a faceless digital platform to this newspaper, a virtual clearinghouse of local culture.

Compiling our extensive calendar of events is a full-time job, done every week by the meticulous Emily Hamilton, and the revenue we get from brokering ticket sales helps offset the cost of that public service.

It's just another way we finance this scrappy, ambitious, free local newspaper that keeps you connected to your community. Keep that in mind when you hit the checkout screen to buy tickets for a Green Mountain Book Festival workshop or the Vermont Steampunk Expo.