Category: Local News

‘Do you know who I am?’ The Washington Post on the turmoil at Houston Landing

It’s still not clear why the editor of the nonprofit Houston Landing and its top investigative reporter were fired this past week. But Will Sommer of The Washington Post (free link) has quite an anecdote about CEO Peter Bhatia’s reaction when he was challenged about his decision to start attending news meetings, which would violate the traditional wall between editorial and business operations: “Do you know who I am? Seriously, do you know who I am? I’ve been a journalist for 50 years, I have 10 Pulitzer Prizes, I’ve been editor of a half a dozen newspapers.”

Sommer and Sophie Culpepper, in her earlier (and more thorough) Nieman Lab report, write that Bhatia’s main complaint about editor Mizanur Rahman was his belief that he didn’t take advantage of digital tools as much as he should have. Reporter Alex Stuckey may have been collateral damage, fired pre-emptively because of her outspokenness and her loyalty to Rahman.

None of it makes any sense because the Landing, by all accounts, is off to a good start, publishing excellent journalism and in decent shape financially thanks to lavish philanthropic support.

One quibble about Sommer’s story. He writes:

The sudden turmoil at Houston Landing — a seven-month-old news site backed with a hefty $20 million in foundation funding — is raising questions about whether the scores of nonprofit outlets attempting to save journalism in communities across the country will end up mired in the same woes as their languishing corporate rivals, from muddled transitions to digital formats to executive decisions that often come without a clear rationale.

I don’t understand that framing. What’s unfolding at Houston Landing is a reflection of the human condition and how that plays out at organizations. There are good leaders and bad, inspired and mediocre, mensches and jerks. Do recent drastic cuts at The Washington Post, for instance, “raise questions” about what happens to a great newspaper when its billionaire owner starts to lose interest?

There is nothing about the current mess at Houston Landing that says anything about nonprofit news. It’s just one of those things, and it’s ugly.

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How Norma Rodriguez-Reyes became one of New Haven’s leading media executives

Norma Rodriguez-Reyes. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, the president of  La Voz Hispana de Connecticut. La Voz started circulating in New Haven in 1993, but fell on hard times. Norma helped take charge of the paper in 1998 when it verged on bankruptcy. Under her direction, the for-profit newspaper has grown into the state’s most-read free Spanish-language weekly. It reaches more than 125,000 Spanish speakers across Connecticut.

Norma is among the entrepreneurs highlighted in our new book, “What Works in Community News.” In addition to her work at La Voz, Norma is the board chair of the Online Journalism Project, the nonprofit umbrella that includes the New Haven Independent, the Valley Independent Sentinel, and WNHH community radio. The New Haven Indy and the radio station both work out of La Voz’s offices in downtown New Haven.

I’ll be in New Haven next Tuesday, Jan. 16 (details here), to talk about our book in a conversation with Paul Bass, the founder of the New Haven Indy and now the executive director of the Online Journalism Project. Paul is also in charge of yet another nonprofit media project, the Independent Review Crew, which produces arts and culture reviews in cities across the country, including Boston. He talked about the project on our podcast last September.

Ellen has a Quick Take on a surprising development in local news on Martha’s Vineyard. The ownership of the weekly Martha’s Vineyard Times has changed hands. Longtime publishers and owners Peter and Barbara Oberfest sold the Island news organization to Steve Bernier, a West Tisbury resident and longtime owner of Cronig’s Market.  And the acting publisher is Charles Sennott, a highly decorated journalist and founder and editor of The GroundTruth Project. He also helped launch Report for America.

I discuss a hard situation at Eugene Weekly, an alternative weekly in Oregon that’s been around for four decades. EW has shut down and laid off its 10-person staff after learning that the paper was the victim of embezzlement. Although the folks at EW are optimistic that a fundraising campaign will get them back on their feet, the closure has had a devastating effect on Eugene’s local news scene.

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

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The Star Tribune, now under new leadership, will bolster its coverage of Minnesota

Photo (cc) 2018 by Ken Lund

Amid the evisceration of large regional newspapers at the hands of corporate and hedge-fund owners stand a few notable exceptions. The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and several others are among the major metros with committed local ownership that have managed to survive and even thrive. So, too, with the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, which under billionaire owner Glen Taylor has undergone a renaissance, transforming itself into a profitable business and a Pulitzer factory.

Now the Strib is growing. As Ellen Clegg writes at What Works, new CEO and publisher Steve Grove is expanding the paper’s reach into the more rural parts of the state, where the lack of reliable news and information is especially acute. Ellen writes:

The expansion plans are nothing if not ambitious. The newsroom has posted jobs for reporters in north central and southwest Minnesota and is expanding existing teams in communities outside the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Back in the downtown Minneapolis office, the Strib is launching a “Today Desk” to track breaking news online and beefing up that reporting team. Grove is also in the market for a greater Minnesota columnist to roam the state’s rural communities and report on trends — the kind of coverage that has been harder for small nonprofit media startups to sustain.

The Star Tribune is one of the projects that Ellen and I write about in our book “What Works in Community News,” which was published today by Beacon Press.

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Our book launches today, and if you can’t make it in person, you can watch online

A little over five years ago, at a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square, Ellen Clegg and I sketched out a rough outline for the book that would become “What Works in Community News.” Today is our book’s official publication date. We owe a debt of gratitude to a lot of people, including our publisher, Beacon Press; the news entrepreneurs and thought leaders who we interviewed for the book as well as for our podcast; and our families for putting up with us.

Our launch party is today at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith, and it looks like we’re going to have a full house. If you haven’t registered but would like to tune in, you can do so here. In addition, on Thursday, Jan. 11, from 7 to 8 p.m., I’ll be giving a presentation on our book via Zoom. It’s being sponsored by the Tewksbury Public Library, but I know a number of other libraries are taking part as well. You can register here. I’ll be solo; Ellen and I are pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy, handling some events together and some with one or the other.

We are really looking forward to tonight in Brookline, and I hope to see you on the other end of the screen this Thursday.

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How Alden and Gannett inadvertently provided a boost to startup local news projects

The Buell Public Media Center in Denver, home of The Colorado Sun. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

Is there a silver lining hiding somewhere inside the rise of newspaper ownership by private equity? Brant Houston says yes. In a recent essay for the Gateway Journalism Review, Houston argues that what he calls the “Alden effect” has provided a significant boost to startup news projects as communities fight back against the destruction of their legacy newspapers. Alden is a reference to Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that owns two newspaper chains, MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, which between them control about 100 papers. Houston writes:

Alden Global is a call to arms for the creation or expansion of alternative, and often nonprofit newsrooms. A call to arms that should have been sounded years ago.

Call it the Alden effect.

Alden’s brazen and brutal harvesting of a disrupted and distressed news industry has made clear the long death spiral of newspapers and legacy media. And it has made clear how a new business model for journalism (usually a nonprofit model or a public benefit corporation) is needed and how independent digital newsrooms need to form deeper alliances.

Houston is the Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois. He talked about his new book, “Changing Models for Journalism,” in an appearance last June on the “What Works” podcast. And a personal note: He was my first editor at The Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn, Massachusetts, way back in 1979.

In his Gateway article, Houston traces such Alden-driven moves as a closer relationship between two existing nonprofits, Voice of San Diego and inewsource, in response to Alden’s acquisition of The San Diego Union-Tribune; the merger of WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times following Alden’s takeover of the Chicago Tribune; the founding of The Colorado Sun by 10 Denver Post journalists who’d had enough of Alden’s cuts; and the wealthy hotel magnate Stewart Bainum’s decision to found a high-profile nonprofit, The Baltimore Banner, after he lost out to Alden in a bid to purchase Tribune Publishing, whose holdings include The Baltimore Sun.

Ellen Clegg and I encountered the Alden effect over and over in our reporting for our book, “What Works in Community News.” We might call it the “Alden and Gannett effect,” since we also examined communities whose newspapers had been shredded by Gannett, our largest newspaper chain with about 200 papers. In addition to Denver, the projects we write about that have their origins in cuts by Alden and Gannett include:

  • Memphis, Tennessee, where nonprofits such as MLK50 and the Daily Memphian are filling some of the gaps created by cuts at Gannett’s Commercial Appeal.
  • The Bedford Citizen, a small nonprofit in the Boston suburbs launched about a dozen years ago as Gannett’s predecessor company, GateHouse Media, hacked away at the local weekly and ultimately closed it.
  • Mendocino County, California, where two refugees from Alden papers started a digital site called The Mendocino Voice.
  • Santa Cruz, California, where two former employees of Alden’s Santa Cruz Sentinel founded a nonprofit called Santa Cruz Local and where a larger for-profit, Lookout Santa Cruz, is operating as well.

Starting a news project is grindingly hard work, and Ellen and I came away with enormous respect for the news entrepreneurs we interviewed. It would be easier if legacy newspapers had remained in the hands of local interests. But, as Houston argues, the rise of Alden, Gannett and other chain owners has provided a jolt to efforts aimed at reviving community-based journalism.

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Another fake murder is reported. This one was generated by AI.

Photo (cc) by Nick Youngson via The Blue Diamond Gallery

You wouldn’t think it could happen again — but it did. Mere weeks after a small community news site in New York State reported a murder without bothering to do the due diligence that would have revealed the incident never took place, the same thing has happened in New Jersey. The difference is the role played by artificial intelligence.

At the Mid Hudson News in Newburgh, New York, the fake news was published as a result of human error. Its story was then picked up by the aggregation site NewsBreak, which added a commentary generated by AI lamenting the rise of social media as a factor in such (non-existent) violence.

In New Jersey, a false report of a murder actually originated at NewsBreak, and it appears to have been wholly generated by AI. Eric Conklin of NJ.com reports:

Police in a New Jersey city are urging the public to ignore a story featured on a news website about a fatal shooting they say was written using artificial intelligence.

The story on Newsbreak.com [the link now goes to a 404] said a “local resident” was found dead in the 100 block of West Broad Street in Bridgeton on Christmas Day. It further dives into the gun debate in America as communities seek an end to violence….

Police on Wednesday said the story has been circulating on social media, emphasizing an italicized note at the bottom of the text that the piece “includes content assisted by AI tools”

“Nothing even similar to this story occurred on or around Christmas, or even in recent memory for the area they described,” Bridgeton police wrote on their official Facebook page.

Noor Al-Sibai has a good overview at Futurism and observes:

Ultimately, the slipperiness of this faux article’s sourcing speaks to the heart of AI-generated content. Instead of revolutionizing media — or anything else, for that matter — outlet owners who insist on using generative AI instead of human writers have done little more than sow discord in an institution that’s already infamously mistrusted by the public.

Indeed. It also shows that even as local journalists with ethical scruples struggle to be heard above the noise, operators like NewsBreak will continue to take advantage of the crisis in community journalism to crank out fake news for fun and profit. Keep in mind, too, that most of the AI-generated crap that appears on sites like NewsBreak does not rise to the level of a murder that never actually happened, which makes it all the more difficult to parse fiction from reality. Caveat emptor.

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An Oregon alt-weekly is fighting for survival after falling victim to alleged embezzlement

I had hoped there would be good news this morning about Eugene Weekly, a free alternative paper in Oregon that abruptly shut down last week and announced that a former employee had embezzled tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, we’re still waiting to see if EW, as it’s called, will be able to raise enough money from its readers to get back on its feet.

The story began to unfold when people encountered a poster inside the bright red boxes that normally hold copies of the paper. The message: “Where’s the Damn Paper? Eugene Weekly is fighting to come back after a massive financial blow.” According to a letter to readers posted online, EW said it had been victimized by someone inside the company. Some $70,000 in printing bills hadn’t been paid. Money that was supposed to have been transferred into employees’ retirement accounts wasn’t. And on and on. The paper stopped print production and laid off its entire 10-employee staff.

EW, founded in 1982, distributes about 30,000 free copies of the paper each week, and is a vital source of news and information. Like most alt-weeklies, it offers a mix of arts and culture, investigative reporting, and entertainment listings. The homepage currently highlights a story about the local performing arts center, which is leasing security scanners for $170,000 a year from a company that is under investigation for letting weapons slip by at schools. Now all of that is in danger. Here’s part of the letter to readers:

Shortly before Christmas, we discovered that EW had been the victim of embezzlement at the hands of someone we once trusted. We are still counting up the damage, but it’s thousands upon thousands. The theft of EW’s funds remained hidden for years and has left our finances in shambles. A team of private forensic accountants is analyzing our books and accounts. We’ve reported the thefts to the Eugene Police Department, which is conducting an investigation.

The Associated Press interviewed Brent Walth, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon, who said EW has had “an outsized impact in filling the widening gaps in news coverage.” Among other things, Walth said the paper runs obituaries of homeless people, a real service at a time when many papers have gotten rid of free obits and instead charge high fees to bereaved families. EW has also played an important role in launching the careers of young journalists, Walth said.

The paper is in the midst of a fundraising campaign, and, according to The New York Times, had received $42,000 in donations as of Monday. Camilla Mortensen, the editor, said the paper needs about $150,000, so it sounds like they’re on their way. If you’d like to help, just click here. My suggestion is that you give directly to the paper rather than to its affiliated nonprofit, which supports public interest reporting. EW itself is for-profit, so your donation will not be tax-deductible. But this is an emergency.

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Please join us Jan. 9 for the launch of ‘What Works in Community News’

I hope you’ll join Ellen Clegg and me for the launch of our book, “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” The event will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 9, at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith. It’s free, but Booksmith asks that you register in advance. Ellen and I visited nine parts of the country to report on independent local and regional news projects, most of them startups, most of them digital. We came away with profound respect for the news entrepreneurs we met and with optimism for what the future holds.

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The MV Times, one of the Vineyard’s two weekly papers, will remain independent

Edgartown Lighthouse on Martha’s Vineyard. Photo (cc) 2012 by David Berkowitz.

The MV Times, one of two weekly papers on Martha’s Vineyard, has been sold to a local businessman who will maintain it as an independent news outlet. Steve Bernier, a store owner, purchased the paper from Peter and Barbara Oberfest, who had been full-time owners for the past 20 years. Charles Sennott, a Vineyard resident who is the founder of the GroundTruth Project and co-founder of Report for America, will serve as acting publisher.

The other paper, the Vineyard Gazette, is also independent, and at one time was owned by the legendary New York Times journalist Jame Reston and his wife, Times journalist Sally Reston.

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