Local News – Media Nation

Ron Mitchell tells us how The Bay State Banner is serving Greater Boston’s communities of color

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Ron Mitchell, publisher and editor of The Bay State Banner. In 2023, Mitchell and André Stark, both seasoned television news journalists, purchased the Banner, a newspaper covering the Black and brown communities in Boston and beyond.

The Banner was started in 1965 by Melvin Miller. The print weekly is legendary for covering stories that were ignored by other publications, such as stories about the Black and Latino communities in the Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan. Mitchell and Stark are expanding its digital footprint.

During his 27 years at WBZ-TV (Channel 4), Mitchell created news coverage focused on racism in elementary school textbooks in 2014 and a series chronicling an 11-year lawsuit that culminated in an $11 million award to a Black firefighter in Brookline.

Ellen and I also talk with Sanjana Mishra, who just received her bachelor’s degree from Northeastern in journalism and criminal justice. She’s worked in local news, communications and social media. In one of my classes last semester, she wrote a final paper on the role of private equity and corporate-chain ownership in creating and exacerbating the local-news crisis. Her paper, which we’ve published at What Works, focuses on Alden Global Capital and USA Today Co., known as Gannett until recently.

Ellen has a Quick Take on “North Star Stories,” a daily radio broadcast on local news carried by AMPERS, a network of 17 community FM stations across Minnesota. It’s by community, for community, and it’s funded partly by donors and partly by the state.

I’ve got a Quick Take about the latest on The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which announced earlier this year that it was shutting down in the face of mounting losses. What’s happened since is mostly good — but it comes with a sour aftertaste.

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 600-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.

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Did you miss our What Works webinar on ‘Audience, AI and Events’? Here are the videos.

Thursday’s webinar on “Audience, AI and Events” was a rousing success. We want to thank all of our presenters as well as the local-news publishers, journalists and volunteers who gave up part of their day — and, in a few cases, their entire day — to pick up ideas and learn new skills.

We recorded all of our sessions, and you’ll find them below. For our three workshops, led by Emily Turner, Dr. John Wihbey and Iris Adler, we used breakout rooms so that participants could work on projects assigned by the facilitators. Those have been edited out of the videos.

We kicked off the webinar with a welcome from What Works’ co-leaders, Professor Dan Kennedy of Northeastern’s School of Journalism and Ellen Clegg, a retired top editor at The Boston Globe and a co-founder of Brookline.News, a digital nonprofit. We provided a brief update on the nine major local- and regional-news projects that we profiled in our 2024 book, “What Works in Community News.” Spoiler alert: They’re all alive and well, though some have changed in significant ways.

Our first workshop, on “Audience Development and Engagement,” was led by Emily Turner, deputy editor of community at Boston.com. Emily was a student of Dan’s back in the day.

Our second workshop, on “AI Skills for Local News Organizations,” was led by Dr. John Wihbey, a professor of media and technology at Northeastern and the author, most recently, of “Governing Babel: The Debate over Social Media Platforms and Free Speech — and What Comes Next.”

Our keynote address featured Dan Lothian, editor-in-chief and general manager of local news at Boston’s public media organization GBH and professor of the practice in Northeastern’s School of Journalism, and Lee Hill, executive editor of GBH News. They were introduced by Professor Jonathan Kaufman, director of Northeastern’s School of Journalism.

Our third and final workshop, on “Event Planning for Building Community,” was led by award-winning veteran broadcaster Iris Adler. She is also a board member at Brookline.News, and just a week earlier she organized a successful storytelling event to benefit the news outlet at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

The Lexington Observer’s unusual revenue stream: acting as a conduit for other news outlets

*The Adams Building, in Lexington Center, is named for Alan Adams, who published the Lexington Minuteman on its premises. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.*

The Boston Globe has just published a fascinating story (sub. req.) about The Lexington Observer, a hyperlocal digital nonprofit through which flows a surprising amount of money. Media reporter Aidan Ryan writes that the Observer isn’t just covering its affluent community of 34,000. It also serves as a conduit for other news operations across the country.

As Ryan puts it: “The news organization has handled millions of dollars in donations in recent years, something many small nonprofit newsrooms could only fantasize about. Only a small share of the Observer’s operational revenue comes from local donors and ads. The outlet instead survives largely on fees it collects by helping other news organizations across the country raise money.”

Between 2023 and 2024, the Observer reported in tax filings that its expenses rose from $640,000 to nearly $5 million — most of which ended up in the hands of other local news outlets.

“You see other nonprofit or local newsrooms do other weird things to make money. This just happens to be ours,” Co-founder and board chair Nicco Mele is quoted as saying. Mele is a former executive director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Also involved in the Observer’s fundraising effort, known as the Local News Hub, is Lauren Feeney, a journalist who is executive editor of both the Observer and the Hub, and Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, an Observer board member who’s the co-founder and former chief executive of the National Trust for Local News.

The Lexington Observer — like a number of startups in Greater Boston — was launched in 2021 in response to the Gannett chain’s hollowing out of the town’s longtime weekly newspaper. In this case it was the Lexington Minuteman, whose history I wrote about here.

The Trust is a nonprofit that owns and operates newspapers in Maine (including the Portland Press Herald), Colorado and Georgia. Ellen Clegg and I interviewed Hansen Shapiro for our book, “What Works in Community News,” and our podcast.

One week from today! Register now for our What Works webinar on ‘Audience, AI and Events’

We’re looking forward to seeing you at our all-day free What Works webinar next Thursday, May 21. If you’re a local news publisher, journalist or volunteer, our hands-on workshops will help you hone your skills. Just click here or on the image for more details and to register.

Joe Kriesberg and Laura Colarusso tell us about the present and future of CommonWealth Beacon

*Joe Kriesberg and Laura Colarusso of CommonWealth Beacon.*

On the latest “What Works” podcast, I talk with Joe Kriesberg, the publisher of CommonWealth Beacon, and Laura Colarusso, the editor. Ellen Clegg is off the air this week but edited this episode behind the scenes.

CommonWealth Beacon is a digital nonprofit that’s part of the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, better known as MassINC, and Joe is the CEO. CommonWealth Beacon covers politics and public policy at the state level and has increasingly been branching out into local coverage as well. And it happens to be celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

Joe has been with MassINC since 2023 and has overseen the expansion of CommonWealth Beacon’s staff and mission. Before that, he was president and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, where he was a leading advocate for affordable housing. He brings decades of nonprofit management experience and an extensive background of working with news organizations. He has raised millions of dollars for mission-driven organizations.

Laura is an award-winning editor and reporter who combines digital media expertise with a commitment to old-school reporting. Before coming to CommonWealth Beacon, she was the editor of Nieman Reports, a magazine and website published by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation that covers issues related to journalism. She has also worked as the digital managing editor at GBH News and the digital opinion editor at The Boston Globe, and is a frequent contributor to the Washington Monthly.

Some disclosures: I’m a member of CommonWealth Beacon’s editorial advisory board and write occasional opinion pieces for the publication. I also worked with Laura at both GBH News and Nieman Reports.

I’ve got a Quick Take on the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, published recently by the international organization Reporters Without Borders. It shows that the United States has fallen to 64th, coming in just behind Botswana and just ahead of Panama.

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

Also, an important announcement: Our annual What Works webinar will take place on Thursday, May 21. It’s a free, all-day event aimed at enhancing skills in audience development, ethical and effective uses for AI, and how to plan a successful event. You can register here.

A summary of our conversation

Continue reading “Joe Kriesberg and Laura Colarusso tell us about the present and future of CommonWealth Beacon”

Facebook may be fading, but it’s still the leading platform for older audiences and local news

Julia Angwin argues in The New York Times today that Facebook is dying. The first thought that comes to mind is “good riddance.” But even though the number of Facebook users is declining, I question her premise — though she concedes that the platform will be with us for many years to come, even as it fades into irrelevance.

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Angwin compares Facebook to AOL and Yahoo, two other services that persist essentially as zombie platforms. But AOL had no real uses after broadband internet came along, and Yahoo was eclipsed by Google, whose search engine was far superior. For that matter, Facebook displaced MySpace, a similar service that wasn’t nearly as good.

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It’s not just nostalgia: How print enhances advertising and visibility for local-news projects

Last Thursday I had an opportunity to take part in a panel on the state of community journalism. I was struck by the nostalgia for print expressed by two editors who are many decades younger than I am, which is why I’m revisiting this still-relevant issue.

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The event, titled “Peril and Promise,” was a fundraiser for The Local News, a print-and-digital nonprofit founded a decade ago in Ipswich, Massachusetts. (Its print edition, as you can see, has a slightly different name: the Ipswich Local News.) The panel comprised Local News editor Trevor Meek; Taylor Ann Bradford, the editor of the H-W News, a fairly new nonprofit covering Hamilton and Wenham that offers print with a minimal digital presence (here is its Instagram page); Joel Barrett, news editor of The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, a chain-owned daily; and me. Moderating was retired editor Richard Lodge.

Continue reading “It’s not just nostalgia: How print enhances advertising and visibility for local-news projects”

Registration is now open for our free What Works webinar on ‘Audience, AI and Events’

We’re excited to announce an all-star lineup for our 2026 What Works webinar, “Audience, AI and Events,” aimed at practical skills for local news publishers. This free, all-day teleconference will be held on Thursday, May 21. You’ll be able to sign up for interactive workshops facilitated by leaders in their fields. Please register today!

What Works is part of Northeastern University’s School of Journalism and is affiliated with the Center for Transformative Media.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will go nonprofit after being acquired by The Baltimore Banner’s owner

*Pittsburgh. Photo (cc) 2017 by Patrick Kinney.*

When the owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced earlier this year that the paper would shut down in May, it was widely noted that such a move would leave Pittsburgh as the largest city in the country without a daily newspaper. That said, it seemed unlikely. The very fact that the Block family decided to keep operating the paper until May all but guaranteed that some new ownership possibilities would emerge.

And today, that’s exactly what happened. The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which owns the nonprofit Baltimore Banner, will buy the Post-Gazette and operate the paper as a nonprofit. If I’m not mistaken, that will make the Post-Gazette the second metro daily to go the nonprofit route, following The Salt Lake Tribune. A few other large regional dailies, most notably The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tampa Bay Times, are for-profits owned by nonprofits.

The Venetoulis Institute was established by Baltimore billionaire Stewart Bainum as his vehicle for launching The Baltimore Banner, a digital-only news organization that he started after he was spurned in his attempts to buy The Baltimore Sun. The Banner has grown into one of the most admired news outlets in the country, and it recently announced it would expand its coverage area and sports reporting in response to massive cuts at The Washington Post. Ted Venetoulis was a friend of Bainum’s and an advocate for local news in Baltimore.

The Post-Gazette has been riven in recent years by a long-running battle between management and the union as well as racial turmoil, so its acquisition by a public-minded institution like Venetoulis is good news indeed.

“Venetoulis is committed to solving a national problem, to providing high-quality local journalism where it’s most needed,” Venetoulis CEO Bob Cohn was quoted as telling the Banner. “That is our civic mission. And here is an opportunity to do that in a market where the 240-year-old incumbent is going out of business or could be sold.”

In an interview with The New York Times, Bainum said, “The Block family should be recognized for selling this at a huge discount for the price they could have received.”

The change will also lead to the return of former Post-Gazette executive editor David Shribman, whose previous stops include a Pulitzer Prize-winning stint as Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe. Shribman, who was the Post-Gazette’s top editor from 2003 to 2019, will served on the Venetoulis board.

Celebrate the first annual Local News Day by supporting journalism in your community

*Art Cullen in a scene from “Storm Lake.”*

Today is Local News Day — the first of what we can hope will become an annual reminder of the importance of community journalism. Organized by the nonprofit Montana Free Press, the event “is a national day of action connecting communities with trusted local news. Our mission is simple: reconnect people to trusted local outlets, empower newsrooms to grow, and spark a national movement that sustains local news for generations.”

We gave Local News Day a plug on the latest episode of “What Works,” our podcast about local news that I host with Ellen Clegg. The day is sponsored by a number of heavy hitters, including Press Forward, a major philanthropic effort that supports community journalism; and The New York Times; the American Journalism Project, another large philanthropy.

You may be seeing messages in your inbox and on social media asking you to support your local news organization. You should.

Poynter media columnist Tom Jones reports that MS NOW, newly freed from NBC, is investing in local news in a big way, lending support to investigative and local reporting by partnering with the Pulitzer Center, States Newsroom and The Marshall Project. “Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the announcement comes today, which is Local News Day,” Jones writes.

On Wednesday evening, I showed my students a documentary I never tire of watching — “Storm Lake,” about the Storm Lake Times’ struggle to stay afloat in rural Iowa despite the demise of local businesses at the hands of corporate agriculture. (The paper is now known as the Storm Lake Times-Pilot following a 2022 merger.) We follow Pulitzer Prize-winning publisher-editor Art Cullen and his family as they report on everything from the precarious corn crop to a member of the Latino community who’s competing in a Spanish-language talent competition on television; from the 2020 Iowa caucuses (do we know who won yet?) and into the early months of the COVID pandemic, which is where the film concludes.

Local news is the lifeblood of democracy. Not to sound defeatest, but there’s not much we can do about Donald Trump’s authoritarian regime, enabled by a supine Republican Congress, other than to vote. But we can work with our neighbors to support each other and solve problems in our own communities. We need reliable news in order for that to happen.