HARDWICK, Vt. — They did it on a lark. And they never regretted it.

Ross Connelly and his wife, Susan Jarzyna, had left Western Massachusetts for Cape Cod. Connelly was a newspaperman. Jarzyna was a graphic artist. They bought a house in Chatham and thought that was where they’d be for a long time until they saw a blind ad in the trade magazine, Editor & Publisher.

“Somebody was selling a weekly newspaper, and all it said was ‘Northern New England,’ “ Connelly recalled.

The man who owned the Hardwick Gazette said that of all the responses he got, Connelly and Jarzyna were the best-suited for taking on the grinding work of running a newspaper in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

“I just wrote a letter, explaining who we were,’’ Connelly said, sitting at the desk on the second floor of the Gazette building.

They moved here in July of 1986, 97 years after the Gazette started publishing, to a hardscrabble town that is a mix of townies and corporate dropouts, of farmers and artists, of old hippies and young Vermonters. A river runs through it.

“There’s a live and let live attitude here,’’ Connelly said. “People are genuine.’’

They quickly learned that running a 2,200-circulation newspaper in the Northeast Kingdom was no 9-to-5 operation. Jarzyna became adept at persuading local businesspeople to take out ads.

“Susan would spend the time, talking to retailers in Morrisville and St. Johnsbury,’’ Connelly said. “She handled all the book work, too, the tax stuff.’’

They had been at it for 15 years when Susan got sick. It was cancer. She had a mastectomy in 2001, and she beat the cancer back. She kept working. In 2009, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer.

She died in 2011, when the rains came. Five years ago, on Labor Day weekend, much of Vermont found itself under water. It was then that Susan died. Ross Connelly felt like he was drowning in a different kind of way. The grief he felt was overwhelming. So, too, was the work needed to put out a newspaper that was so much a product of Susan’s work.

He began retracing Susan’s footsteps, standing patiently in convenience stores, hoping to persuade the owner to take out an ad.

“After Susan died, it was twice as hard to run the place,’’ he said.

He began thinking about transition. Their son, Sawyer, had grown up in the newspaper, falling asleep under Susan’s desk to the musical, soothing clicks of computer keys. But Sawyer had other interests. He works in wildlife conservation in Montana.

“I’m 71,’’ Ross Connelly said. “I don’t have the energy to do this, the work required.’’

Then he had an idea. He had read about the owner of a bed and breakfast in Maine who relied on an essay contest to give away her business.

“A lot of businesses have done this, but not a newspaper,’’ said Connelly.

In June, Connelly began soliciting essays, asking people to explain, in 400 words or less, why they want to run a small newspaper in a small town in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

The entry fee is $175, which is essentially like buying a $175 lottery ticket. The plan was to have a minimum of 700 entries, which would be judged by a panel that includes journalism professors and local residents.

The original deadline was Aug. 11, but Connelly extended it to Sept. 20 because the contest hadn’t attracted the 700-entry minimum.

Still, Connelly’s encouraged by the response so far.

“I’ve read every essay,’’ he said. “There are young people out there crazy enough to get into this business. They have the passion, they write very well. It’s a real cross-section, people who are already in journalism and may be facing a pink slip but still have that drive, who have 10 or 20 years ahead of them. There are some people with no journalism experience. They’re from all over the country, and a few other countries.

“One of the most gratifying things for me is there is a cross-section of people in the town who think this is a good idea. They want the Gazette to continue.’’

In an age of 24-hour news that isn’t new, the Gazette remains decidedly old-school. Its pages are chock-full of stories about obscure government agencies and kids doing well at school and sports. The police report is a must-read. Most of the arrests involve motor vehicles being driven badly.

Over the 30 years Connelly has edited the paper, it’s had its share of big stories. There was a lady in the local municipal light department who got sticky fingers and embezzled $1.5 million.

She did time in Minnesota with Whitey Bulger’s girlfriend.

There was the bank president who got seven years in prison for giving himself a million-dollar line of credit and flipped dairy farms.

There was the transgender cop who got pushed out.

Sawyer Connelly had a classmate at his high school who came out as transgender. It was no big deal to Sawyer because he had followed the cop’s case so closely in the Gazette, which editorially stood up for the officer.

But the bulk of the Gazette’s articles are small stories for a small town.

“That’s one of the things I like about community journalism,’’ Ross Connelly said. “We cover important things in small towns that won’t make the mainstream. The broader community might not care about the new restaurant that’s opening across the street, but we do.’’

While the Gazette essay contest has a website, the Gazette itself does not. Connelly doesn’t believe in giving his product away for free. People here spread the broadsheet over a table at Connie’s Kitchen on South Main Street and read the paper.

In the Gazette building, just up the street from Connie’s, Sandy Atkins, the production manager, and Dawn Gustafson, the typesetter, worked on getting the latest edition out.

“We’re hopeful,’’ Gustafson said. “This is a beautiful place to live. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a good community.’’

Upstairs, Ross Connelly sat at a worn wooden desk. Bode, a Siberian Husky named for the skier Bode Miller, snoozed at his feet.

“I’ve got a paper to put out,’’ Connelly said, almost to himself.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com