HARDWICK, Vt. — Like most people who work for small newspapers, Vanessa Fournier wears many hats.

A photographer, she shoots pictures for The Hardwick Gazette, the weekly broadsheet that has been documenting life here in Vermont’s hardscrabble Northeast Kingdom since 1889. On Wednesdays, she is the paper’s local distributor. With bundles of the freshly printed Gazette tucked into the trunk of her Honda Civic, Ms. Fournier, 61, makes her way through town, plunking down papers on countertops, slipping them into wire racks and keeping up a cheerful patter with shopkeepers.

Now, she worries that both jobs could end.

The Gazette’s editor and publisher, Ross Connelly, announced in June that he was holding an essay contest to find a successor to take over the paper. He said that he still had the passion for newspapering, but that at 71, he lacked the energy.

Unfortunately for him, the contest has not generated the interest that he had hoped would make his plan financially viable. So he has extended the deadline to Sept. 20 from Aug. 11.

When asked if he had a Plan C if he had still not received enough entries in a month, he offered a blunt analogy: He could extend the deadline again, he said, but that would be “like pounding your thumb with a hammer — it’s not going to stop hurting.”