Category: Local News

Barbara ‘Bob’ Allen tells us about the nexus of student journalism and local news

Barbara “Bob” Allen with Penn State student Sarah Grosch. Photo by Al Tompkins is used with permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Barbara “Bob” Allen, a Los Angeles-based journalist, trainer and consultant who founded CollegeJournalism.org in 2025. The site provides resources and news for journalism educators and student media advisers across the country.

Allen is also the editor of the Student Press Report, a brand-new national news desk covering the state of the college press. The debut piece — “Cash-starved and censored, America’s student press is in crisis” — lays out the financial and free-press challenges facing campus newsrooms. Allen also writes the weekly College Journalism Newsletter.

Allen brings decades of experience mentoring student journalists. She was the adviser to the student newspaper at Oklahoma State University and most recently served as director of college programming at the Poynter Institute in Florida. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Missouri, home to both a campus paper — The Maneater — and the Columbia Missourian, a lab newspaper covering the city of Columbia.

Allen has also led an ambitious project to map every college newspaper in the country, in collaboration with the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News. That effort found more than 1,100 college newspapers, with 766 located in or adjacent to counties with little or no local news access.

My Quick Take stays close to home. The Huntington News, Northeastern’s independent student newspaper, just celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Ellen’s Quick Take is about a three-bedroom, three-bath condo in Provincetown. The Local Journalism Project, a nonprofit that partners with  The Provincetown Independent, raised money from more than 100 donors to buy the condo to house reporters. Ed Miller, editor and co-founder of the Indie, told Mike Blinder of Editor & Publisher that housing was a major barrier to attracting staff to his well-regarded newspaper on the Outer Cape.

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

A summary of our conversation

We used Otter, an AI-powered tool, to produce a transcript of our conversation, then fed it into Claude and asked it to write a 1,200-word summary, which was then read by us for accuracy. The results are below. Do you find this useful? Please tell us what you think by using the Contact form linked from the top of our website.

Barbara “Bob” Allen, founder and director of CollegeJournalism.org, joined Dan Kennedy and Ellen Clegg on “What Works: The Future of Local News” to discuss the state of college journalism in the United States — its promise, its financial struggles, and its role in addressing the local news crisis.

Continue reading “Barbara ‘Bob’ Allen tells us about the nexus of student journalism and local news”

Local doesn’t scale: How community publishers can survive and thrive in the AI era

The New Haven Independent newsroom. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

Folks who work at finding solutions to the local news crisis are understandably frustrated at what a difficult, frustrating slog it can be. Earlier this week, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, the former executive director of the National Trust for Local News, gave Richard J. Tofel a preview of a report she’s written for Press Forward and said, “I think the challenges now are so systemic that the only way to do responsible, impactful funding going forward is to look at system solutions rather than newsroom-based ones.”

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I’m looking forward to reading Hansen Shapiro’s report. (She’s featured in our book, “What Works in Community News,” and has been on our podcast.) And yet there really is no substitute for solving this problem one community at a time. For all the talk you hear about scale, that’s really not the way to go unless you’re talking about obvious things like finding a common tech platform so that every local news publisher doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel — or, in this case, the content management system. In the early days of the hyperlocal news movement, a group of publishers got together and formed an organization called Authentically Local. Its spot-on message: “Local Doesn’t Scale.”

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Dale Anglin tells us how Press Forward is leveraging local news to build community

Dale Anglin at the recent Knight Media Forum in Miami.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Dale Anglin, the inaugural executive director of Press Forward, a philanthropic effort that is dedicated to funding local news initiatives nationwide.

Before she was named as the leader of Press Forward, Anglin served as a vice president for grantmaking at the Cleveland Foundation. She also led the foundation’s journalism strategy. Then and now, she focuses on local news and information as a way to restore a sense of community.

I’ve got a Quick Take on The Baltimore Banner, one of the most prominent nonprofit digital startups. It looks like readers of The Washington Post who live in the DC area may not be deprived of local news and sports after all despite the recent deep cuts ordered by its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. The Banner is expanding, and it’s part of executive editor Audrey Cooper’s mission to build civic engagement through community journalism.

Ellen’s Quick Take is on a bill in New York state that attempts to put some guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence in newsrooms. Among other things, it would require disclosures and mandate supervision and fact-checking by actual human editors. It received a hearty endorsement from journalism industry unions. But there’s a lot of catching up to do to rein in the robots.

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

How The Baltimore Banner’s embrace of DC sports fits with its editor’s civic-minded mission

The Washington Nationals will soon be covered by The Baltimore Banner. Photo (cc) 2022 by All-Pro Reels / Joe Glorioso.

The gutting of The Washington Post may prove to be an opportunity for The Baltimore Banner. According to an announcement, the Banner, a digital nonprofit startup, will cover Washington teams, including beat coverage of the Nationals baseball team and the Commanders football team. The Banner’s editor-in-chief, Audrey Cooper, is quoted as saying:

This decision is part of our unwavering commitment to serve Maryland with honest, independent journalism. It builds on last week’s announcement that we are expanding our news coverage into Prince George’s County and represents another step in strengthening our statewide reach.

At a time when so much pulls communities apart, sports bring us together. The Washington Post’s decision to eliminate its sports section creates an opportunity for us to serve more Marylanders with The Banner’s distinctive mix of fearless accountability reporting, engaging storytelling and sharp analysis.

I found Cooper’s comments about sports bringing people together to be especially interesting because they parallel something she told Mike Blinder recently on the Editor & Publisher vodcast:

America is having a hard time having civil, civic conversations right now and I think the reason behind that is because of the shrinking local news ecosystem. If we spent more time worrying about whether our kids are being educated, whether our roads are paved, whether our water is safe to drink, and less time about these national culture fights that, to be honest, don’t affect our day-to-day lives, I think there’s a chance that local news has to re-teach Americans how to have civic conversations.

To me, saving the great American experiment means saving local news. And I think it’s difficult to find a place in America right now where that’s not, where Baltimore is like second to none. I mean, I think what’s happening here and what the Banner is doing is the most interesting experiment in local news, and I wanted to be a part of it.

This echoes a theme that Ellen Clegg and I explore in our book, “What Works in Community News,” and on our podcast. The nationalization of everything has a lot to do with why we are so polarized. We live in communities, in neighborhoods, but the phony controversies that are ginned up in the national media — especially on Fox News — gain more resonance than they should when we lack reliable sources of local news to inform us about what really matters.

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The Jeff Bezos-owned Post’s decision to eliminate its sports staff and cut back on metro coverage was mind-boggling. As Poynter media columnist Tom Jones observed (second item), the Post’s sports section was “legendary,” and it “was once known for having some of the best sportswriters in the business with the likes of Shirley Povich, Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Sally Jenkins and Thomas Boswell, just to name a few. And the sports department of today — well, of last week — also had a deep talent pool with brilliant journalists including Chuck Culpepper, Dave Sheinin and columnists Candace Buckner and Barry Svrluga.”

The Banner’s move follows a bid by Washington City Paper to purchase the Post’s sports and metro sections. Tina Nguyen reported in The Verge that though soon-to-depart publisher Will Lewis was receptive, the talks went nowhere, and the paper went ahead with massive cuts — initially reported as 300 of the paper’s 800 journalists, but which is now being revealed as even worse than that. (Former Post reporter Paul Farhi, writing for Washingtonian, places the number at 350 to 375 positions eliminated out of a total headcount of 790.)

If the Banner’s embrace of Washington sports and coverage of Prince George’s County is successful (previously the Banner started covering another Washington suburb in Maryland, Montgomery County), I hope it might lead to more — maybe even a Washington Banner. The Post is supposedly going to continue covering national politics. But when Bezos bought the paper in 2013 from the legendary Graham family, the Post was primarily a regional paper that had more in common with The Boston Globe or The Philadelphia Inquirer than it did with The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps the Banner, City Paper, Washingtonian and others can make up for that local news gap. It would also be nice if one or more of them amped up their book coverage, as the Post’s standalone book section was a casualty of the bloodletting. (And the entire photo staff. Good Lord.)

The Banner is quite a story. Earlier this week I wrote an article for The Conversation about five large regional newspapers that have achieved sustainability of a sort. Four of them are either owned by billionaires or owe their current success to billionaires. I could have mentioned the Banner as well. Hotel magnate Stewart Bainum founded and endowed the Banner after he was spurned in his bid to purchase The Baltimore Sun and then all of Tribune Publishing from the hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

The Banner launched in 2022 and, according to Cooper in her interview with Blinder, has 75,000 paid subscribers. As of last September, the newsroom staff comprised nearly 100 people. It’s won a Pulitzer Prize, and — Boston trivia alert — Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory serves on its board of directors.

 

As Jeff Bezos dismantles The Washington Post, five regional papers chart a course for survival

Portrait of Jeff Bezos (cc) 2017 by thierry ehrmann.

If The Washington Post’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, ever decides he wants to take journalism seriously again, then he might take a look at a handful of large regional papers that have charted a route to sustainability against the strong headwinds that continue to buffet the news business.

Perhaps the most important difference between these papers and the Post — and the hundreds of other shrinking media outlets owned by corporate chains and hedge funds — is that they are rooted in the communities they cover. Whether owned by wealthy people or run by nonprofits, they place service to their city and region above extracting the last smidgen of revenue they can squeeze out.

Although I could add a few to this list, I am mentioning five large regional newspapers as examples of how it’s possible to succeed despite the long-term decline in the economics of journalism.

Read the rest at The Conversation.

Charles Sennott talks about his journey from global correspondent to local news entrepreneur

Charles Sennott interviews a Taliban leader while on assignment in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. Photo by Ben Brody. Used with permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Charles Sennott, a former foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe who left in 2008 to become a serial entrepreneur. He co-founded GlobalPost and The GroundTruth Project. GroundTruth, a nonprofit, was a partner to GBH News, PBS’s “Frontline,” public radio’s “The World,” and the “PBS NewsHour.” It focused on partnerships to amplify international and national news projects.

Now Charlie has turned his attention to local news. He teamed up with Steven Waldman to launch Report for America as an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Dan and Ellen talked with Waldman on an earlier podcast.

Sennott’s newest creation is GroundTruth Media Partners, LLC based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he leads a small staff and publishes and writes the GroundTruth newsletter on Substack. The nonprofit that was called The GroundTruth Project has recently rebranded to call itself Report Local, with Report for America and Report for the World as its flagship initiatives. Report Local and the University of Missouri School of Journalism did groundbreaking work on water issues in the Mississippi River Basin.

In a recent post on Substack, Sennott writes about this new branding. He also writes about why he officially stepped aside from the program but remains proud of the movement it has created.

As his own act of community service, Sennott is also serving as the publisher and editor of the Martha’s Vineyard Times. He and his wife, Julie, who has an extended family on the Island, now live there year-round.

We’re also joined by Alexis Algazy, a Northeastern journalism and political science student who has written a compelling story about why politicians need to engage in storytelling on social media.  

I’ve got a Quick Take about public support for local news. Politico recently published an in-depth story on what’s gone wrong with a program in California that was supposed to provide $250 million to help fund local news over a five-year period, with the money to come from the state and from Google. The deal seems to be coming apart. And yet there are reasons to be optimistic — as you will hear.

Ellen has a Quick Take on the role of video in recording the violent acts of ICE agents in Minneapolis and the protests all over the Twin Cities. Video by bystanders has played an important role in exposing what’s happening on the ground. But video and social media in general also pose a challenge for reporters covering the story for The Minnesota Star Tribune. Editor Kathleen Hennessey spoke about it in a brief interview with Semafor.

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

The Minnesota Star Tribune unveils a free live blog, gift links and family subscriptions

The Star Tribune’s headquarters. Photo (cc) 2019 by Tony Webster.

The Minnesota Star Tribune, which is already getting a lot of attention for its outstanding coverage of ICE’s violent and indiscriminate rampage through Minneapolis and St. Paul, has unveiled some ideas that ought to be considered by every large regional newspaper in the country.

Granted, newspapers owned by corporations and hedge funds aren’t likely to emulate these common-sense ideas, even though they might boost revenue in the long run. But there are still some independent dailies such as The Boston Globe and The Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as a few high-quality chains such as Hearst and Advance, that could learn from the Star Tribune.

The Strib is one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I highlight in our book, “What Works in Community News.” The changes were announced in a press release on Friday. They include:

► An end to the paywall for live blogs covering breaking news, which will ensure that “its public service journalism is accessible to all.” The Strib’s free live-blog coverage of the ICE occupation has been essential. Moreover, Minnesota residents whose first exposure to the paper’s journalism was through the live blog might be enticed into buying a subscription.

► Unlimited gift links so that subscribers can share articles with friends. The press release doesn’t specify whether those links will be shareable on social media as well, but that is the standard practice at most papers that offer gift links. This is another forward-looking move that will give non-readers a chance to sample the Strib’s coverage and decide whether they want to become paying customers. The Globe, to cite one contrary example, lets you email a gift link to friends, but it’s kludgy and it doesn’t work on social. The Strib’s approach sounds like it will be cleaner and more intuitive.

► A family-plan digital subscription with up to four unique log-ins, offered at a slightly higher price than an individual subscription. The New York Times does this, but I’m not aware of other papers that do it.

► A nonprofit fund that can accept tax-deductible donations to support the Star Tribune’s journalism. (The Local News Fund was started in 2024, but it was re-announced Friday.) Some might object to this; the Strib, like the Globe, is a for-profit owned by a billionaire. But those billionaires have invested a considerable amount of resources into their papers, which are marginally profitable at best. If you accept the proposition that even a billionaire owner shouldn’t be expected to run their paper at a loss, then this is a good way to support high-quality regional news coverage.

Even amid high-profile setbacks, public funding for local news is expanding at the state level

The Illinois State Capitol in Springfield. A new law in Illinois provides tax credits and other benefits to bolster local news. Photo (cc) 2023 by w_lemay.

The dawn of Donald Trump’s second term signaled a shift in efforts to bolster local news with government assistance.

For several years, Congress had considered measures to provide tax credits that would help news organizations and to force Google and Facebook to pay for the journalism they repurpose. Despite some bipartisan support, especially for tax credits, those measures fell short, with no prospect of success under Trump and his MAGA allies.

As a result, attention has turned from Washington to state-led initiatives, which have proven to be a mixed bag.

Read the rest at Poynter Online.

Social, vertical and engaging: Mike Beaudet and Lisa Thalhamer map the future of local TV news

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Mike Beaudet and Lisa Thalhamer. Mike is a colleague at Northeastern, where he is a journalism professor. He is also an investigative reporter at WCVB-TV, Boston’s ABC affiliate. He’s worked in local television news for more than 30 years. Before joining WCVB-TV he was an investigative reporter and anchor at WFXT-TV in Boston.

Beaudet, the head of Northeastern’s Reinventing Local TV News project, focuses on the future of local television news and finding new ways to grow the audience and engage younger viewers where they’re consuming content. Think social and vertical.

Lisa is a journalist and researcher. She’s currently editor-in-chief of The Scope, a hyperlocal publication based at Northeastern focused on issues of social justice, as well as an adjunct professor. Her research is geared toward improving the mental well-being of journalists, particularly those in local TV news, where she worked for more than 15 years as a producer.

Mike Beaudet and Lisa Thalhamer. Photo (cc) 2026 by Dan Kennedy.

While earning her master’s degree at Northeastern, Thalhamer was Reinvent’s Video Innovation Scholar, helping newsrooms evolve their video storytelling skills to fit the world of social media.

In keeping with the all-Northeastern theme of this podcast, we’re also joined by Greg Maynard, a student of mine last semester who has written a compelling story about what cord-cutting means for local cable access outlets. Greg is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Boston Policy Institute.

Ellen has a Quick Take on the end of an era in Minneapolis. In December, the daily newspaper, The Minnesota Star Tribune, stopped printing copies at its giant brick plant in downtown Minneapolis. The Strib is printing at a Gannett plant in Des Moines, Iowa. That means earlier deadlines and 125 jobs lost.

I’ve got a wild story for my Quick Take. Last summer there was some sad news coming out of Claremont, New Hampshire: the Eagle Times, a star-crossed paper that had had its ups and downs going back to the 1940s, was closing its doors after its wealthy owner, Jay Lucas, failed to meet payroll. At the time, New Hampshire Public Radio ran a story on the shutdown that was harsher than you would have expected. But it turns out that there was a reason.

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

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says it will close. Race and politics have been tearing it apart for years.

Outrage by the white leadership over Alexis Johnson’s tweet marked a key moment in the Post-Gazette’s downward trajectory. Credit: Simone Perez via thealexisjohnson.com.

Block Communications announced Wednesday that it will shut down the storied Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in May. Writing at Nieman Lab, Joshua Benton confirms what I told Charlie Wolfson of Pittsburgh’s Public Source — that an actual closure would make Pittsburgh the largest city in the U.S. without a daily newspaper.

Benton, though, expresses optimism that with the feuding Block family out of the way, the path is clearer for someone else to step in. One possibility he cites: the Lenfest Institute, a nonprofit foundation that already owns and operates the for-profit Philadelphia Inquirer on the other side of the state.

The Post-Gazette was once a great paper, winning its most recent Pultizer Prize in 2019 for its coverage of the mass shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue. That’s when the distinguished Boston Globe alumnus David Shribman was executive editor of the paper. After he retired, though, the paper increasingly went MAGA under one faction of the Block family.

I wrote about a particularly ugly incident in 2020 for GBH News. If you’d like to know some background about what went wrong at the Post-Gazette, here is my commentary.

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