Category: Local News

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

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.

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

Businessman who shut down his N.H. newspaper last summer is indicted on federal fraud charges

Claremont, N.H., in 1877. Illustration via Snapshots of The Past.

Last July, I noted that the Eagle Times in Claremont, New Hampshire, had shut down. I also observed that Todd Bookman of New Hampshire Public Radio had produced an unusually harsh story on the former owner, venture capitalist Jay Lucas, which suggested there might be more to the story.

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Indeed there was, and thanks to Media Nation reader Christian Avard for tipping me off. Last month Lucas was indicted on federal fraud charges. Arielle Mitropoulos reports at WMUR.com:

New York investigators have accused Jay Lucas, 71, of Newport, of scamming investors out of $50 million by lying to them and saying that their money would be invested in health and wellness companies when it was actually being used to cover personal expenses, promote unrelated ventures and make Ponzi-like payments to other investors.

A Republican politico who ran for governor in 1998, Lucas purchased the Eagle Times in 2022. As Damien Fisher writes for inDepthNH, Lucas said he would “would focus on positive, uplifting stories.” Fisher adds:

Lucas didn’t mention that he bought the paper with other people’s money, as alleged. Instead, he presented it as part of his Sunshine Initiative, a vaguely defined venture to revitalize the local area through happiness.

Lucas allegedly took millions from people to be invested in startup health and wellness companies. But the investment money he took instead went to pay alimony, rent, fund his purchase of the Eagle Times, and hire political consultants.

This is a pretty wild story; unfortunately, it’s also left a community without local journalism. Jonathan Phelps reports in the New Hampshire Union Leader that The Granite Eagle a digital publication that Lucas helped found, continues to publish without his involvement, but it appears to be an aggregation site that pulls together mostly statewide stories. In an editor’s note published Dec. 22, Granite Eagle editor-in-chief Chris Thompson wrote that Lucas had not been involved “for some time,” adding: “We are excited about the future of the publication and remain committed to providing our readers with quality local journalism. We thank our dedicated readership for their continued support.”

As I noted earlier this year, the Eagle, later the Eagle Times, had been a star-crossed publication for many years. It was purchased in 1946 by John McLane Clark, a former editorial writer for The Washington Post who’d lost out in a bid to buy the Union and the Leader in Manchester; instead, those papers fell into the hands of the notorious right-wing hate-monger and pedophile William Loeb.

Clark died in 1950, drowning while canoeing in Sugar River, according to Steve Taylor of The Valley News in nearby Lebanon, New Hampshire. The Eagle Times closed in 2009, but was revived at some point by an out-of-state chain.

As Bookman wrote for NHPR last summer:

In the wake of the collapse, staff have claimed that Lucas repeatedly failed to pay overdue bills, and on occasion requested workers hold off on cashing their paychecks due to a lack of funding…. [T]he local boy who had made good, and decided to invest in his hometown, appeared to have harmed the very community he was aiming to help.

If the federal charges against Lucas are to be believed, now we know the rest of the story.

Reminder

As I wrote last week, I’m repositioning Media Nation away from national commentary (I’ll weigh in when I just can’t resist) and making more use of Bluesky for shorter items and to call your attention to journalism you should be aware of. You can follow my Bluesky feed on the Media Nation website (scroll down the right-hand rail) or directly on Bluesky by clicking here.

Voices on the ground: Local news outlets report on cheers, jeers for the U.S. raid on Venezuela

Protesters in Raleigh, N.C. Photo (cc) 2026 by Laura Leslie / NC Newsline

All news is local. Following the deadly U.S. raid to pluck President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, out of Venezuela, local news organizations reported on the reaction in their communities. This morning I’m taking a look at how three of the outlets that Ellen Clegg and I profile in our book, “What Works in Community News,” are handling the news.

“‘A Huge Step Towards Change, Hopefully A Positive One,’” by Tom Breen, the New Haven Independent.

Jose Lara, a Venezuelan expat living in West Haven, Connecticut, told Breen he was hopeful that Maduro’s arrest would lead to better days for his home country. “I’m feeling excited,” Lara said at a gathering outside New Haven City Hall. Breen writes:

Like Lara, many who showed up on Saturday night were optimistic that this time is different.

“Excitement, first and foremost,” Laura Almeyda said when asked how she is feeling today. Also, “confusion. Uncertainty. But hope. We’re faithful and joyful. This is a huge step towards change, hopefully a positive one.”

Breen observes, though, that others, such as U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., are warning that Trump’s action was “a fundamental violation of the Constitution” that could lead to “endless conflict.” And he links to another indy digital outlet in Connecticut, CT News Junkie, where Karla Ciaglo reports on the (mostly) negative reaction from Democratic officials and left-leaning activist groups.

“Venezuelans in Memphis feel euphoria now that ‘nightmare’ is over — but dreams for future uneasy” (reg. req.), by Jody Callahan, The Daily Memphian.

As with the New Haven Independent, The Daily Memphian — supplemented with coverage by The Associated Press — focuses on the Venezuelan diaspora community in Memphis, Tennessee. Here’s part of the Memphian story:

“We have been dreaming of these days for so long. We have been hopeful of a day when we see [these leaders] out of the country and really democracy back in our country,” said Daniel Bastardo Blanco, who works in communications in Memphis. “We remain incredibly hopeful that freedom is about to restart in our country.”

But Venezuelan natives living in Memphis also said that their euphoria was also mixed with fear for friends and relatives still living in the South American country, where some citizens were killed in the strikes, as well as tremendous uncertainty about what happens next.

“It was a little bit of a shock,” said Pedro Velasquez, whose family runs nonprofit medical clinics in both Memphis and Venezuela. “As I read about how it was executed, and that there weren’t as many civilian casualties, that it was more localized and over in 20-30 minutes, it sort of made me breathe a little easier.”

“Hundreds march through Minneapolis to protest U.S. attack on Venezuela” (reg. req.), by Kyeland Jackson, The Minnesota Star Tribune.

Jackson leads with Andrew Josefchak of the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition and a left-wing supporter of the Maduro government, who joined with more than 200 others to protest Trump’s action on Satuday. “The peace movement in this country, in Minneapolis at least, wasn’t going to let that [military action] go by without organizing an emergency demonstration against it to show that people in the U.S. don’t want this,” Josefchak was quoted as saying. “They don’t want war.”

The Strib also quotes Democratic opponents of Trump’s action like U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican supporters like U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer. And we hear from a Venezuelan expat who supports the raid despite concerns about her mother’s safety:

Soleil Ramirez watched footage of explosions across Caracas moments after the strike began, worrying for her mother, who lives near a military base.

Ramirez, chef and owner of the Crasqui restaurant in St. Paul, said her mother is fine — and the military operation was reason to celebrate.

“Let us celebrate this victory because we haven’t been celebrating anything in the last 26 years,” she said.

A note on the photo: NC Newsline, which covers North Carolina, is part of States Newsroom, a network of 50 nonprofit news outlets covering politics and public policy. Its journalism is available for republication under a Creative Commons license. Ellen and I recently hosted publisher and CEO Chris Fitzsimon on our “What Works” podcast.

Founding editor Marc Levy has left Cambridge Day, the news outlet he launched in 2009

Cambridge Day’s founding editor, Marc Levy, has left the newspaper. His departure was announced in an email to Day contributors from editor-in-chief Michael Fitzgerald that was forwarded to me by a trusted source and confirmed by Fitzgerald. He writes:

Some changes are easier to share than others. I’m sad to say Cambridge Day’s founder, Marc Levy, has resigned effective immediately. Since re-starting the publication in 2009, Marc’s passion for community journalism has been unparalleled. He has been tireless, creative, resourceful, and dedicated to telling the stories of Cambridge and Somerville.

I know many of you, perhaps all of you, began contributing to the publication because of your admiration and respect for him and the publication he worked so hard to build. We are all part of his legacy. There’s still a great deal to do to achieve his goal in a sustainable way and I hope you will continue to work with me to make it so.

Levy has been a vital force for local journalism in Cambridge for 16 years, reporting on the city as the Gannett-owned Cambridge Chronicle cut back on its coverage and, at some point during the past several years, shut down almost unnoticed. The Day has also served as an occasional outlet for our Northeastern journalism students.

But it was always a bare-bones operation. That began to change in late 2024, when the Day — nominally a for-profit — was acquired by a nonprofit organization called Cambridge News Inc. At the same time, according to the Day’s “About” page, the Cambridge Community Foundation set up a Local News Fund to provide some assistance to the paper.

The Day is a digital-and-print operation; Cambridge Day is the name of the website, while the print edition is known as The Week.

Fitzgerald, an experienced journalist whose most recent stop had been as editor-in-chief at Harvard Public Health, came on board as the Day’s top editor in September 2025, with Levy remaining on the masthead as well. Levy’s departure is not the only change that’s taken place. Recently Fitzgerald said the Day would cut back on governmental coverage in Somerville, explaining, “If we’re going to be Cambridge Day, we need to be doing a good job of covering as much of Cambridge as we can.”

Levy declined to comment when I contacted him Tuesday night. Fitzgerald told me by email: “I meant what I said in the note. I’m sad about his departure. He gave his all to keep journalism alive in Cambridge and Somerville, and we’re well-positioned to build on that foundation.”