Category: Local News

Mark Histed of the Democracy Policy Network talks about local news vouchers

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News9 Comments
Mark Histed

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Mark Histed, a researcher at the Democracy Policy Network. DPN is a network of policy organizers who have a simple mission: sustaining democracy. That work takes place largely at the local level. Mark and others at DPN do research and provide deep-dive policy kits that help local citizens and legislators champion big ideas.

Mark leads the Local News Dollars effort and recently wrote a report on how states can establish a system where residents are issued vouchers they can use to subscribe or donate to the local journalism outlet of their choice.

In our Quick Takes, I discuss Ralph Nader — remember him? The consumer advocate-turned-presidential political spoiler got a lot of favorable attention late last month when it was learned that he would help launch a nonprofit newspaper in his hometown of Winsted, Connecticut. The paper, the Winsted Citizen, was the town’s first in a couple of years, although the daily Republican-American covers the area, too. But now people are wondering what exactly is going on — and if Nader is really going to come through with enough money for the Citizen to achieve liftoff.

Ellen tunes in to the new “Boston Strangler” movie on Hulu. In the movie, Keira Knightley portrays the late, great Loretta McLaughlin, who paired up with reporter Jean Cole at the Boston Record American to write a series of stories about the murders of women in Boston in the 1960s. Loretta moved on to The Boston Globe, where she did groundbreaking work on the AIDS crisis and became editorial page editor. She was a mentor to many, and an especially fierce advocate for the advancement of women in journalism.

You can listen to our latest podcast here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

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Talking local news with Gerard Cunningham of ‘Freelance Forum’

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News3 Comments

Great talking with Gerard Cunningham on his podcast, “Freelance Forum,” about the future of local journalism and my book-in-progress with Ellen Clegg, “What Works in Community News.” Please give it a listen.

GBH News covers the revival of community journalism

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News2 Comments

Nice doubleheader on the revival of local news in Greater Boston from my friends at GBH News. Jeremy Siegel reports on three startups in the suburbs — the Burlington Buzz, the Framingham Source and the Marblehead Beacon — as well as Boston Black News, a radio outlet. (Jeremy interviewed me as well.)

Tori Bedford has a piece on the ownership transition at The Bay State Banner, which has been covering the Black community since 1965 and whose new executives have some ambitious expansion plans.

Ralph Nader helped launch a newspaper. Now he’s accused of failing to pay for it.

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News3 Comments
Ralph Nader. Photo (cc) 2007 by Ragesoss.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader was hailed as a hero in late February when it was reported that he would launch a nonprofit newspaper in Winsted, Connecticut, where he was born. The new paper, the Winsted Citizen, hired veteran journalist Andy Thibault as its publisher and editor, and it looked like nothing but bright skies on the horizon. The paper is the town’s first since the Winsted Journal shut down in 2017, although the community is covered by the daily Republican-American of nearby Waterbury.

But the Citizen stumbled right of the gate — and the reason is that Nader apparently didn’t come through with the money he had promised. According to Bob Sillick of the trade publication Editor & Publisher and Daniel Figueroa IV of Hearst CT, Nader failed to provide the $22,500 that Thibault said he had pledged to fund the Citizen’s second edition, instead offering an $8,000 loan. That offer was turned down. The Citizen is having trouble meeting payroll, and it sounds like the future of the Citizen is in doubt, although Thibault says he and his staff are pushing ahead.

If there’s another side to the story, we’re not hearing it from Nader. Both Sillick and Figueroa say that Nader has not responded to their attempts to obtain comment. Meanwhile, the print-centric newspaper, which costs about $30,000 per issue to produce, is going to pivot to digital-first, although print will continue to be offered. The website will be paywalled. Thibault has posted the statement he gave to Hearst on the Citizen’s blog, and I reproduce it here in full:

It is true that we put out the second edition without promised funding and that we owe many contributors pay for services rendered. With ongoing support from subscribers, advertisers and donors, we absolutely will honor all our obligations.

I am so proud to work with all our staff individually and collectively. These are real people running on broken glass through the desert sand to get the job done. They are young and old, some approaching the end or their careers and some just starting It is my duty as editor and publisher to serve our readers and staff. As long as I breathe, I will, without fear or favor.

Our leadership team and staff continue to work eight days a week. On Monday we will conduct a thorough review of all financial data. Story conferences have cranked up already for the April edition. Deadlines [have been set].

Initially, Ralph told me he only wanted to do a pilot edition, then sit back for six or eight weeks to get feedback. I told him that would not work, we need a Second Act and funding for six months at double the rate for the first edition. Managing Editor Melanie Ollett and Advertising / Circulation Director presented detailed budgets by request and they were ignored.

These are indisputable facts and I would submit to a state police certified polygraph exam.

During a conversation with Ralph and his legal counsel I agreed to produce 25% of the revenue needed for the second edition and was promised funding on that basis.

This has not happened. Instead Ralph switched gears and, through his counsel offered a loan of $8,000 that has not shown up … We are deeply grateful for the support of the community.

Andy Thibault

Are you a news publisher? A budding enterpreneur? Please come to Medford.

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News7 Comments

Are you an independent newspaper publisher? A budding entrepreneur? I’d like to point you to a great opportunity. Medford, a city of about 62,000 just a few miles north of Boston, has been without any reliable news coverage since March 2022, when the giant chain newspaper owner Gannett merged the Medford Transcript and the Somerville Journal. The new paper, the Transcript & Journal, is devoted almost entirely to regional news, with little in the way of what’s taking place in local government, public safety, schools or youth sports.

Medford is a relatively affluent community. We’re not as well off as Marblehead, Concord, Lexington, Newton or Brookline, where nonprofit startups have been launched or are in the process of being launched in response to Gannett’s cuts. But we have a lot going for us. Medford’s median household income of nearly $108,000 is higher than the state’s ($89,000). We have five business districts with restaurants and retail establishments. We are also at least somewhat diverse — although nearly 71% of Medford residents are white, there also are Black (8.4%), Asian (10.6%) and Hispanic/Latino (8.4%) residents as well. (Income and demographic data come from the U.S. Census Bureau.)

In 2020 I wrote about some ideas for how to bring reliable news to Medford — anything from a for-profit newspaper to a nonprofit website. There are conversations taking place about attempting to start a nonprofit, but I can’t help but think that Medford would be a great place for a for-profit venture.

One for-profit model I especially like is a free weekly print newspaper, distributed at high-traffic locations throughout the city, with a free website. Anne Eisenmenger has had great success with that model with four papers in Southeastern Massachusetts.

Another model is a subscription-based venture combining online and print. There are a number of examples, but one particularly vibrant outlet is The Provincetown Independent, begun several years ago by the husband-and-wife team of Ed Miller and Teresa Parker. The Independent also has a nonprofit arm that funds certain types of public interest journalism.

If you have any interest in setting up shop in Medford, I would be happy to connect you with people in the city and with people like Anne, Ed and Teresa. Feel free share this widely. Medford is a wonderful community with a lot of news, most of which isn’t being covered. And it’s got the economic base needed to build a news business. Please come to Medford.

Melvin Miller sells The Bay State Banner to a Black-owned independent group

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News4 Comments

Today brings some incredibly good news for independent community journalism in the Boston area. Melvin Miller, the legendary founder, publisher and editor of The Bay State Banner, has decided to sell the paper. Miller, 88, has been a stalwart in covering the Black community since he launched the paper 57 years ago. But as he says, he’s not getting any younger — and not only is the Banner remaining independent and Black-owned, but there are plans to expand as well.

The Banner will be acquired by a group headed by Ron Mitchell, an editor and video journalist at WBZ-TV, and Andre Stark, a filmmaker whose credits include GBH-TV and its national programs “Frontline” and “Nova.” Yawu Miller, Mel Miller’s nephew, will stay on as senior editor, and Ken Cooper, who recently retired from a top position at GBH News, will serve as an editorial consultant overseeing the addition of three regional editions north of Massachusetts, in Connecticut and in Rhode Island. Colin Redd, who’s worked as business development manager at Blavity, a website popular with younger African Americans, will oversee a digital expansion.

Mel Miller was quoted as saying:

I’ve been looking for some time for someone to step up and take over the job. I think the Banner is needed more than ever. Both Ron and Andre are from old Roxbury families with deep ties to the community. They know the people, know the streets, know the issues we face. I have every confidence they will carry on the great work we’ve done for close to 60 years.

The Bay State Banner is a Boston institution. Miller has been performing a great service to the community since 1965 — and he’s performing another one now by leaving it in what sounds like very good hands.

How public radio can help solve the local news crisis: A response to Thomas Patterson

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News1 Comment
1946 photo by the Department of the Interior

Could public radio help solve the local news crisis? Perhaps. But first we have to determine what we mean by local news, and whether the folks who bring you national programs such as “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition” are suited to that mission.

In late January, Thomas Patterson, the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at the Harvard Kennedy School, published a “discussion paper” exploring that very question. The purpose of discussion papers, according to the introduction, is “to elicit feedback and to encourage debate.” Consider this my small contribution. (Patterson, I should disclose, was acting director of Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center during my 2016 fellowship there and provided me with valuable advice for my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls.”)

At the outset, Patterson writes that he seeks to answer two questions:

  1. “Do local public radio stations have the capacity to provide reasonably comprehensive news coverage of the communities they serve? Do they have the news staff needed to meet that requirement? And if not, what level of investment could put them in that position?
  2. “Do local public radio stations have the capacity to reach enough members of their local community to make a substantial contribution to its information needs? And if not, what would be needed to substantially expand their audience reach?”

The answers to those questions come from 215 public radio stations that answered an online survey — a response rate of 89%. A majority of executives at the stations themselves saw their operations as a leading — or even the leading — source of news in their communities.

Read the rest at What Works.

The Boston Globe leads in pocketing money from Facebook’s news project

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News

A new study by the Tow Center at the Columbia School of Journalism has found that The Boston Globe was the top recipient of Facebook’s miserly efforts to help fund local journalism.

The study found that the Meta Journalism Project, announced in 2018 and now winding down, provided 564 news organizations with $29.4 million spread across 17 programs. Nearly half of them got the minimum of $5,000. The Globe, though, did considerably better, receiving three grants totaling $390,000, of which $240,000 was for assistance with building and retaining digital subscriptions.

No. 2 on the list is Long Island’s Newsday ($375,000) and No. 3 is The Seattle Times ($355,000). Coming in at No. 4 is a real head-scratcher — the Chicago Tribune, under the chaotic ownership of Tribune Publishing for many years and, since 2021, the notorious hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Rounding out the top five is the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

The Globe, Newsday, the Times and the Star Tribune are all independently owned — although Newsday has received some unwelcome attention recently for being asleep at the switch while George Santos was lying his way into Congress last fall.

Veteran editor Greg Moore on local news, diversity and life after Alden Global Capital

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News
Greg Moore. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

On the new “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Greg Moore, former managing editor at The Boston Globe and longtime editor of The Denver Post. During his 14 years at the Post, the paper won four consecutive Pulitzer Prizes. He’s led coverage of major stories, including the Aurora movie theater shooting in Colorado and the case of Charles Stuart in Boston. Greg is now editor-in-chief of The Expert Press, which helps connect specialists with media. He’s still in Denver.

As one of the most senior Black journalists in the country, Greg has been at the forefront of advocating for more diversity in the media and for a new path forward for local and regional news. In fact, Greg resigned his position at The Denver Post in 2016 after he decided he couldn’t tolerate any more cuts to his newsroom at the hands of the Post’s hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital. As he put it in an essay for the Pulitzer Prize board, of which he is the former chair:

Local journalism is where accountability journalism matters most. It is focused on how dollars are spent and how priorities are set on the local level. It is often that base level reporting that becomes the seed corn for bigger national stories with datelines from the heartland and the tiniest suburbs.

In the Quick Takes portion of the podcast, I’ve got some bad news: people don’t like us. There’s been yet another survey showing that public trust in the news media is at an all-time low. But there are some problems with the survey, as there usually are — and those problems underline why the trust issue isn’t quite the steaming pile of toxic waste that it might seem, especially for local news.

Ellen has some good news for folks in Akron, Ohio. A local news startup called the Akron Signal has launched with a $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation.

You can listen to our latest podcast here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Slashing and burning local news outlets proves profitable for Gannett

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News2 Comments
Photo (cc) 2008 by Patrickneil

Back before GateHouse Media morphed into Gannett in 2019 and assumed its corporate identity, I believed the company was in it for the long haul. Don’t get me wrong — GateHouse was always obsessed with cost-cutting and was a fairly awful steward of the papers it acquired. But its executives seemed to have convinced themselves that ugly was the only way to win, and that winning meant surviving.

No longer. I couldn’t possibly tell you what Gannett is up to anymore other than squeezing its properties for every last drop of revenue. On Thursday, the company released its latest financial results. They were terrible for journalists and the communities they serve. For investors, though, they were pretty good.

Don Seiffert reports in the Boston Business Journal that Gannett slashed the number of journalists at its 200 or so newspapers (including the flagship USA Today) by 20% over the past year — no surprise to those of us who were following those cuts throughout the year. Seiffert paged through the annual report and found that Gannett employed 3,900 journalists at the end of 2022 (3,300 in the U.S. and 600 at a U.K.-based subsidiary), down from 4,846 a year earlier. At the same time, though, the company had achieved profitability, which sent the stock price soaring by 22%

Incredibly, some of those investors think Gannett has been too slow to cut. For instance, Seiffert said on Mastodon that, during Thursday’s earnings call, Leon Cooperman, CEO of the hedge fund Omega Advisors, which is among Gannett’s larger investors, told Gannett chair Michael Reed, the $7.7 million man: “I think it’s fair to say you couldn’t understand the impact of Covid and the recession on the company. Having said that, I think it’s a fair criticism to say we have been too slow in reducing costs.” As Seiffert noted: “This, despite the company reducing total headcount by more than half since 2019.”

So what’s ahead? You will not be surprised to learn that CFO Doug Horne told investors that Gannett’s going big-time into artificial intelligence to perform some of the work that used to be done by journalists. Just feed the audio from the planning board meeting into ChatGPT and see what happens, I suppose.

Over at Poynter Online, Angela Fu reports that Reed is wicked psyched about 2023, writing:

Reed said the company is entering 2023 with “a lot of optimism.” Inflation seems to have peaked, he said, and newsprint and distribution costs have largely stabilized. In response to a shareholder question about a possible recession, Reed said the company had not seen anything in the first quarter to indicate the country was moving in that direction.

Unless it proves otherwise, though, Gannett should be regarded as nothing but a financial play at this point. The best thing it could do is offload its community papers to local owners who actually care about journalism, as it has done with a few weeklies Central Massachusetts as well as the Inquirer and Mirror of Nantucket, which I wrote about recently in an op-ed piece for The Boston Globe. Gannett has sold some of its papers nationally as well.

In many other cases, vibrant startups from The Provincetown Independent to several projects in the Boston suburbs are competing with vestigial Gannett papers, but more are needed. As Steven Waldman, president of the Rebuild Local News Coalition, has proposed, we need tax incentives aimed at persuading Gannett and other chains to get out of town — and to give committed local ownership a chance to revive grassroots news coverage.