Former NBC News journalist Chuck Todd may be moving into local news. In a recent interview with Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times (gift link), Todd said he was “eager to find a business solution to a problem that had vexed investors for decades: the collapse of local news.”
So what would that look like? Mullin continued:
Mr. Todd’s business plan calls for a constellation of local sites owned by their communities — like his beloved Green Bay Packers — and anchored by coverage of local youth sports. The growing popularity of athletics and their importance to families who view them as a gateway to college make them an ideal subject to build around. No matter your politics, Mr. Todd said, you care about local coverage of your child’s latest game.
So far, so good. But then Mullin writes that Todd is prepared to invest up to $2 billion, though he didn’t identify any backers or say what company they were looking to buy other than ruling out major newspaper groups.
I wish Mullin had pressed Todd on what he meant by “sites owned by their communities,” because a $2 billion investment sure doesn’t sound like local control. Meanwhile, at Semafor, Ben Smith offers a guess: Nextdoor, the network of local sites known, at best, for updates on missing cats and at worst for posts warning about suspicious-looking people in the neighborhood. (Our local Nextdoor happens to be the news source of record for helicopter sightings.)
Well, that sure doesn’t sound like local control, either, but I suppose it makes sense. Smith notes that Semafor media reporter Max Tani wrote nearly a year ago that Nextdoor co-founder CEO Nirav Tolia, was looking to reposition the site, with Tolia admitting it “hasn’t had a great product in the last couple of years.”
Smith says that Todd wouldn’t comment on his guesswork. Of course, it would be much better if Todd and his investors were to help fund truly local news organizations. After all, $2 billion is four times the initial pot assembled by Press Forward, a philanthropic collaborative aimed at reviving community journalism.
On the other hand, we really do need some new ideas in for-profit local news. If Todd can contribute to that effort, it would be a real contribution. But if he’s thinking about reviving Nextdoor, or creating any sort of centralized “economies of scale” monstrosity, then he’s likely to learn what so many others have before him: Local doesn’t scale.
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We just moved from Mashpee to West Chester PA. In Mashpee, there’s a very informative FB group “The Mashpee Message” moderated by Elena Doyle which has very little trained journalism, but a high degree of civic participation. Yes there’s missing pet reports, but also police reports, road closure reports, reports from the Town Meeting moderator, reports on scams that are going around, etc. It’s a better source for local news than the weekly Mashpee Enterprise.
Here in PA, there is a moderated Nextdoor group. It doesn’t have the participation of the Mashpee group, especially by civic groups. West Chester is a much bigger place than Mashpee, and there’s a daily paper (The Daily Local) with a very good website ($5/wk subscription). The Nextdoor group had a wonderful little first-person account of the gunman on the roof incident yesterday, though.
I’d much rather see widespread support for The Daily Local than Nextdoor here.
Facebook can be a good platform for local news, but the perverse algorithms mean that you have to remember to check it. We have a few Facebook groups in Medford that really aren’t bad — not nearly as bad as what I’ve heard takes place in other communities. Trouble is, it’s all questions, no answers. We now have a fledgling news site, GottaKnowMedford, and we’re rooting for them.