October 2025 – Page 3

Recognition for ‘What Works in Community News’ from the Mass Book Awards

*In the Great Hall at the Massachusetts Statehouse for the Mass Book Awards.*

I was thrilled to attend the Mass Book Awards ceremony at the Statehouse earlier today, when “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,” which Ellen Clegg and I wrote about possible ways out of the local journalism crisis, was recognized as one of the top dozen nonfiction books in Massachusetts.

Our book was one of nine that were longlisted. In addition, the top nonfiction award went to “We Refuse: A History of Black Resistance,” by Kellie Carter Jackson, with honors going to “Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit,” by Robin Bernstein, and “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border,” by Ieva Jusionyte. The awards are sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Unfortunately, Ellen wasn’t able to make it, but I was honored to attend and be recognized along with the other winners.

It was also great to reconnect with Gayatri Patnaik, the director of Beacon Press, who embraced our vision and helped bring it to fruition. Our immediate editor, Catherine Tung, has since moved on to a senior editing position at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, but she provided crucial support when we lost a year during COVID. She also gave us good advice that we tried to follow in our reporting — to assess how well the local news projects we were writing about were covering arts and culture, a crucial part of civic life. That said, most of them weren’t, with the New Haven Independent and its affiliated low-power radio station, WNHH, standing as notable exceptions.

I’m also proud of the professional partnership Ellen and I have developed as we’ve built out the book into a wider project, What Works: The Future of Local News, based at Northeastern University in the School of Journalism and affiliated with the Center for Transformative Media. What Works comprises a frequently updated website on developments in local news; an every-other-week podcast featuring news entrepreneurs and thought leaders; conferences and webinars; and a database of independent local news organizations in Massachusetts.

The Colorado Sun embraces a democratic nonprofit model that looks a lot like a co-op

*Larry Ryckman, co-founder and publisher of The Colorado Sun. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.*

For at least 15 years, local-news visionaries have been thinking about ways to build a media organization owned and governed by its staff and members of the community. The idea is to create a news cooperative — that is, a co-op, similar to a food co-op or a credit union. Members might contribute money or labor, and in return they’d have a say in hiring and coverage.

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I followed efforts to build such a co-op in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where longtime journalist Tom Stites wanted to test out a concept he called the Banyan Project with a site called Haverhill Matters. Unfortunately, years of anemic fundraising went nowhere, and in January 2020, the local organizers shut it down.

Continue reading “The Colorado Sun embraces a democratic nonprofit model that looks a lot like a co-op”

Ellen Clegg digs into a claim of censorship at the Daily Memphian — and finds a more complex story

*President Trump signs order to send National Guard troops to Memphis. Photo via the White House.*

On Friday, Memphis journalist Dan Conaway took to Facebook and leveled a sensational charge on his public feed: that the Daily Memphian, a high-profile nonprofit startup, had censored a column he’d written about Donald Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to the city.

“I have left the Daily Memphian,” Conaway posted on his public feed. “They refused to run my column this week. Too critical of Trump, they said. Trump is not local, they said. This week, of all weeks, Trump is not local? Enough, I said.”

My What Works colleague, Ellen Clegg, took a deep dive into what had happened — and discovered that the Memphian had actually edited out a racist trope that Conaway inserted into the original version of his column.

Ellen has all the details at What Works.

Trump may have worked himself into a lather over Portland by watching 5-year-old footage on Fox News

Did Donald Trump get excited about sending troops into Portland, Oregon, because he was watching 5-year-old footage on Fox News depicting violence in the streets? It would appear that the answer is yes.

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Independent journalist Philip Bump, part of the Washington Post diaspora, reported that Fox ran B-roll from Portland during segments with Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sept. 27 showing a violent protest in Portland that included fires, what appears to be tear gas, and demonstrators squaring off with law enforcement. But the footage is dated June 2020. Who knows if Trump was paying attention?

Bump offers this as well:

In an interview with NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor, he described a conversation he’d had with Oregon’s governor.

“I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different,’” Trump said of the conversation. “They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place … it looks like terrible.”

Well, yes, Man Who Has Access to the Breadth of Federal Intelligence Gathering. What you saw on TV was in fact not what was happening at the moment in Portland.

Mike Masnick writes at TechDirt, “The President of the United States — who has access to better intelligence than anyone on Earth — is moving to deploy military forces against American citizens based on what he saw on TV and what his ‘people’ told him, without bothering to verify whether any of it was real.” Masnick adds:

So half of this story is that we have a mad king who will fall for anything he sees on Fox News without bothering to first find out whether it’s true or not.

That’s terrifying!

But the other part is that his “people” around him are clearly abusing the senile President to take advantage of the situation to play out their own violent fantasies.

Alicia Victoria Lozano of NBC News reports that Trump activated 200 National Guard troops on Friday in order to respond to the non-existent violence. City and state officials sued to stop the deployment, and a ruling is expected later today.

The Bay State Banner marks 60 years of serving the Black community in Greater Boston and beyond

Congratulations to The Bay State Banner, which is embarking on its 60th year of publication. The Banner, founded by Melvin Miller, covers the Black community in Greater Boston and beyond. It was acquired in 2023 by two Black journalists, Ron Mitchell and André Stark, and it continues to provide strong coverage through a weekly print edition and a robust website.

In an editorial marking the Banner’s milestone, Mitchell, now the publisher and editor, writes that Donald Trump represents a dangerous threat to Black and brown communities, observing that even Trump’s seemingly positive actions carry within them the whiff of segregation:

This Trump administration is the first one to have increased funding for historically Black universities and colleges. That is a good thing for HBCUs, which have historically been underfunded. But those increases, coupled with the attacks on DEI on historically white campuses and the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded ban on considering race in their admissions, contain dangerous echoes of the “separate but equal” doctrine that a prior Supreme Court unanimously ruled unconstitutional.

Mitchell also quotes W.E.B. Du Bois, who wrote, “There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.” And he pointedly signs the editorial with his full name, Ronald Du Bois Mitchell.

This week’s edition also contains a reprint of the commemorative section that the Banner put together in celebration of its 50th anniversary. You can access the print edition online, but I’m going to have to track down a copy.

The Banner is a great example of how an independent local media outlet can serve a community not just by covering it, but by giving it a voice.

Google appears to be throttling AI searches about Trump’s obviously addled mental state

Google appears to be throttling AI searches related to Donald Trump’s obviously addled mental state. Jay Peters reports (sub. req.) in The Verge:

There’s been a lot of coverage of the mental acuity of both President Trump and President Biden, who are the two oldest presidents ever, so it’s reasonable to expect that people might query Google about it. The company may be worried about accurately presenting information on a sensitive subject, as AI overviews remain susceptible to delivering incorrect information. But in this case, it may also be worried about the president’s response to such information. Google agreed this week to pay $24.5 million to settle a highly questionable lawsuit about Trump’s account being banned from YouTube.

I wanted to see if I could reproduce Peters’ results, and sure enough, Google is still giving Trump special treatment, even though Peters’ embarrassing story was published two days ago. I searched “is trump showing signs of dementia” in Google’s “All” tab, which these days will generally give you an AI-generated summary before getting to the links. Instead, you get nothing but links. The same thing happened when I switched to “AI Mode.”

Next I searched for “is biden showing signs of dementia” at the “All” tab. As with Trump, I got nothing but links — no AI summary at the top. But when I switched to “AI Mode,” I got a detailed AI summary that begins:

In response to concerns and observations about President Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities, a range of opinions and reports have emerged. It’s important to note that diagnosing dementia or cognitive decline requires a formal medical assessment by qualified professionals.

I have mixed feelings about AI searches, though, like many people, I make use of them — always checking the citations to make sure I’m getting accurate information. But as Peters observes, it looks like Google is flinching.

Tracy Baim tells us about the LGBTQ+ Mapping Project and her work with Press Forward Chicago

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Tracy Baim, a Chicago-based journalist who directed the recently published LGBTQ+ Media Mapping Project, which tracks LGBTQ news outlets across the country.

The LGBTQ+ Media Mapping Project was created in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, the Local Media Foundation, News Is Out and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. The project surfaced 107 LGBTQ media outlets in total, 80 of which responded to the survey.

According to the accompanying report: “While they may have few similarities, there are several common denominators: Most are in need of additional resources to better cover their communities, and most are facing strong headwinds as advertising and sponsors reverse course, pulling back from diverse marketing efforts.”

*Baim interviewing Chicago Mayor Harold Washington in his City Hall office in 1987. Photo by William Burks / Windy City Times. Used with permission.*

Baim is also the executive director of Press Forward Chicago, the local arm of a national philanthropic effort to address the community news crisis.

I’ve got a Quick Take about the state of Kansas, where authorities have banned print newspapers in prisons, a ban that affects some 9,000 inmates in 20 correctional facilities. Weirdly enough, officials have not banned digital newspapers, although, as media commentator Bo Sacks observes, “Most Kansas inmates have limited or no meaningful internet access.”

Ellen’s Quick Take is on a column in The Minnesota Star Tribune written by Steve Grove, the CEO and publisher. He writes about the “stabilizing power of quality journalism” and announces a new team in the newsroom devoted to investigative reporting. But he also announces the outsourcing of the Strib’s print product, which means job losses.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

GBH announces $225 million fundraising initiative to offset government cuts

Today marks the end of government funding for public media, and Boston’s GBH is announcing a major fundraising initiative to fill the gap. Susan Goldberg, the operation’s president and CEO, says that GBH will attempt to raise $225 million over the next three years to “secure a sustainable future for the organization following the unprecedented loss of federal funding.”

The press release identifies television documentary programs and children’s shows that are produced in Boston but distributed nationally. There’s no mention of radio, including “The World,” a daily broadcast that covers international news, or GBH News, which provides local news, primarily on radio but also on digital platforms. No doubt we’ll learn more soon.

As you know, the Republican Congress earlier this year pulled back $1.1 billion in funding for public media over the next two years at Donald Trump’s insistence, even though that money had already been approved.

The full text of GBH’s press release follows, lightly edited for style.

On the Day Federal Funding Ends, GBH Launches a $225 Million Campaign to Invest in the Future of Public Media

BOSTON — Public media powerhouse GBH today announced the launch of its “Fund the Future” campaign, an ambitious three-year initiative to raise $225 million and secure a sustainable future for the organization following the unprecedented loss of federal funding. The campaign, launched on the same day that federal funding expires, aims to ensure the continuity of independent, fact-based journalism and trusted educational content in the Boston area and beyond.

“Congress told us to ‘go fund ourselves,’ and that’s exactly what we are going to do,” said Susan Goldberg, President and CEO of GBH. “This is a time when facts are being questioned and communities crave connection. GBH is doubling down on our values, focused on protecting independent journalism and making trusted, educational, and inspirational content accessible to everyone. We have a long history of innovation, and we’re relying on that muscle memory, and on the support and passion of our communities, to reimagine public media.”

GBH’s “Fund the Future” campaign focuses on three key pillars:

- - Defending independent, fact-based journalism by expanding GBH’s commitment to telling stories that matter across the state and across platforms and creating a unified documentary film unit to support “Frontline,” “Nova” and “American Experience,” all of which are produced by GBH.
  - Ensuring universal access to trusted programs and educational content, including the signature kids’ series GBH produces like “Arthur,” “Molly of Denali” and “Work It Out Wombats!” We will also deepen community impact and audience reach.
  - Transitioning to an innovative and sustainable business model through digital innovation, distribution and streaming opportunities to be here for audiences for decades to come.

The campaign kicks off with the provocative slogan “Congress told us to Go Fund Ourselves.” The campaign will also incorporate the concept of “Love it? Fund it,” appealing to supporters to invest in the media that makes a difference to them.

Now that Congress has defunded public media, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) will cease to exist. To mark this historic loss and show gratitude for CPB, GBH will pause programming for 10 seconds on Oct. 1 across broadcast and streaming channels. Audiences can experience these pauses on the radio at 11:59 a.m. on GBH 89.7; CRB Classical 99.5; CAI 90.1, 91.1, and 94.3; NEPM 88.5; and Classical NEPM; and on television at 7 p.m. on GBH 2, GBH 44, WORLD, and CREATE in the Boston area; and at 7:30 p.m. on NEPM TV.

Learn more about GBH’s “Fund the Future” campaign at gbh.org/FundTheFuture.