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VT Scout — Local news & community.

Statewide local news desk for Vermont — Burlington, the Champlain Valley, the Northeast Kingdom, Central VT, and the South. Police dispatch feeds, road conditions, and community updates wired into a fast editorial surface with NewsArticle schema and per-region pages.

Year
2025
Engagement
Reference build — public newsroom surface
Platforms
Web · Editorial
Stack
Next.js · TypeScript · Schema.org
Problem

Vermont news, weather, and road conditions, updated daily

Vermont local news is fragmented across town-level Facebook groups, slow regional papers, and PDF dispatch blasts from state agencies. The signal-to-noise on what is happening in Burlington or the Northeast Kingdom on any given day is low.

Approach

A single editorial surface covering Vermont news, weather, and community updates with regional coverage across the state. Structured data wired through so Google News and Top Stories can attribute correctly.

  • VT Scout — Burlington regional category page
    Per-region pages let readers drop straight into Burlington, the Northeast Kingdom, or Central VT instead of a flat feed.
Architecture
  • Framework
    Next.js — confirmed via `next/image` markers and inlined above-the-fold styles in the served HTML.
  • Structured data
    NewsMediaOrganization + WebSite + CollectionPage + SearchAction JSON-LD all present in the served document.
  • Coverage model
    Statewide editorial with regional sections — Burlington, Champlain Valley, Northeast Kingdom, Central VT, Southern VT.
  • Identity
    Vermont-coded brand palette (cream + alpine green + maple red) carried through the served CSS.
Outcomes
  • NewsMediaOrg
    JSON-LD attributes the site to a recognized news org for Google surfaces.
  • SearchAction
    Structured search wired so Google can offer in-site search in the SERP.
  • Statewide
    Five regional surfaces under one masthead instead of a single feed.
What we'd build next
  • Article-level JSON-LD on individual story pages so per-article surfaces inherit the NewsOrg attribution.
  • Author and section indexes wired into the SearchAction so the in-SERP search can resolve to a byline or topic, not just a free-text query.
  • AMP-equivalent fast-paint mode for the dispatch feed since road-condition readers often arrive on cell connections.
Case study verified against code on 2026-05-20
Have something in mind?

Want one of these for your team?

Two engagements open for Q3 2026. Discovery starts at $24K.

VT Scout — Case study | 802.software | 802.software