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Bill Marx tells us how he’s working to keep local arts journalism and book reviews alive

Bill Marx at the Climate Crisis Cabaret, reading the Ted Hughes poem “How Water Began to Play.” The artwork is by Phyllis Ewen.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I are back from summer break and talk with Bill Marx, the editor-in-chief and founder of the The Arts Fuse. For four decades, he has written about arts and culture for print, broadcast and online outlets, most notably at The Boston Phoenix. He has regularly reviewed theater for public radio station WBUR and The Boston Globe. He is a co-founder of Viva la Book Review, a new organization that aims to foster thoughtful, well-crafted book criticism in community news media across the country.

Bill also created and edited WBUR Online Arts, a cultural webzine that in 2004 won an Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism. Until recently, he taught a class on writing arts criticism at Boston University.

I’ve got a Quick Take about the funding crisis in public media and how that relates to the need to fund reliable sources of local news and information. It’s not just a matter of your local public television and radio station needing more support from its audience than ever before. It’s also a matter of the limits of philanthropy. Can we find the money to support hyperlocal nonprofits too? I wrote more about this dilemma recently for CommonWealth Beacon.

Ellen dives into a recent update from Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab on The Republican in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the MassLive website, which has become a web traffic powerhouse as it expands. A previous podcast discussion we had with MassLive’s president, Joshua Macht, and editor Ronnie Ramos can be found here.

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

The nonprofit Cambridge Day names a veteran journalist as its new editor

The nonprofit Cambridge Day is beefing up, hiring veteran journalist Michael Fitzgerald as its editor. Founding editor Marc Levy will remain on board as well.

For many years the Day operated as pretty much a one-person shop, but now it’s got a board of directors and regular contributors. It also offers a weekly print edition and offers some coverage of Somerville as well as Cambridge.

This is yet another example of a community stepping up to fill the gap left by the newspaper chain Gannett’s abandonment of its weekly newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts. Gannett shut down the venerable Cambridge Chronicle in 2022, ending its print edition and replacing local news on its Wicked Local website with irrelevant filler from around the region.

The full announcement of Fitzgerald’s hiring follows.

Continue reading “The nonprofit Cambridge Day names a veteran journalist as its new editor”

Mapping LGBTQ media; plus, news behind bars, going mobile and some well-deserved recognition

*Click on image for the interactive version of the map.*

A new grant-supported project tracks LGBTQ media projects across the country.

According to News Is Out, the LGBTQ+ Media Mapping Project “offers the first in-depth look at the scope, impact and urgent needs of local LGBTQ+ media across the United States. The report shows how these vital outlets, from one-person operations to established multimedia platforms, face shrinking advertising revenue, little foundation support and growing external threats, even as their audiences surge.”

The project was created in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, the Local Media Foundation, News Is Out and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Continue reading “Mapping LGBTQ media; plus, news behind bars, going mobile and some well-deserved recognition”

A third news project is set to launch in Marblehead as the nonprofit Current trims its sails

*Marblehead Light from Fort Sewell. Photo (cc) 2009 by mygiraffe.*

The town of Marblehead, an affluent community of about 20,000 residents on Boston’s North Shore, is proving to be a hotbed for hyperlocal journalism.

Just a few years ago, its only newspaper was the Gannett-owned Marblehead Reporter. Then, after the chain dumped virtually all of its weeklies’ local coverage in favor of regional content, three different independent news projects moved in to fill the void. One eventually ceased operations, leaving the town with two. Soon, though, the count will return to three.

What’s fueling the latest startup is the departure last month of Will Dowd from the Marblehead Current. Dowd, the community editor as well as a co-founder, had been with the Current from its launch in 2022. But the Current, a nonprofit print weekly with a robust website, is dealing with some financial challenges, which led to the elimination of Dowd’s full-time job.

Now Dowd is starting The Marblehead Independent, built on the increasingly popular Ghost newsletter platform. He expects to debut later this month. Dowd told me by email that he decided to go solo rather than accept the Current’s offer to continue as a paid freelancer for much less money. “I don’t hold any animosity over it; the board had to do what it had to do,” he said.

The Current recently published an editorial thanking Dowd for his work but adding that its nonprofit status “does not relieve the Current of its obligation to balance its books.” An uncertain financial environment, the editorial said, led it to impose “drastic temporary measures, like 25% across-the-board pay cuts,” adding: “We, of course, will continue to work for brighter days, as we turn over every rock in search of funding.”

The town is also served by the Marblehead Weekly News, a for-profit print weekly mailed to every home in town and owned by The Daily Item of nearby Lynn. For a time, a for-profit digital project known as the Marblehead Beacon operated as well. The Beacon suspended publication in late 2023, although its website is still live.

At a time when many communities don’t have a single reliable local news source, Marblehead is served by a plethora of outlets, the Current’s challenges notwithstanding. The median household income in Marblehead is about $166,000, which is about 64% higher than the statewide median of $101,000.

But that only proves a point that my research partner Ellen Clegg and I often make. Affluent suburban communities are finding ways to overcome the local news crisis while rural areas and urban communities of color are often being left behind.

Meanwhile, I hope both the Current and the Independent — and, yes, the Weekly News, too — are able to survive and thrive.

How our What Works project tracks solutions to the local news crisis

*Photo by Peggy and Marco Lachmann-Anke via Pixabay*

Nearly four years ago, Ellen Clegg and I began tracking solutions to the local news crisis with our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News.” Our first guest was Lori Ehrlich, at that time a state representative who was working to launch a commission to study the state of community journalism in Massachusetts and make some recommendations.

The commission has twice failed to achieve liftoff, but Ellen and I have built a multidimensional project. We wrote a well-received book, “What Works in Community News,” which was published by Beacon Press in 2024. And we are involved in other ways as well.

Today the What Works project, which is part of Northeastern University’s School of Journalism and affiliated with the university’s Center for Transformative Media, comprises several different initiatives:

- Our website, where we post updates to the projects that we write about in our book, new episodes of our podcast, and news and commentary about other developments in local news.
- Our podcast, on which we interview enterpreneurs and thought leaders on an every-other-week basis. We’ll be back later this month with our 105th episode following a summer hiatus.
- Our Bluesky feed, where we link to coverage and smaller items that don’t quite meet the criteria for a full blog post. If you’re not interested in joining Bluesky, you’ll find our news feed embedded on the website. If you’re reading What Works on your laptop, just cast your eyes to the right.
- A database of independent local news organizations in Massachusetts. Although much of our work is national in scope, we also believe we can offer unique value to the grassroots journalism community right here at home. Look for links to “Mass. Indy News” in the upper right corner of this blog and at the What Works website. You can also bookmark it at tinyurl.com/mass-indy-news.
- Speaking appearances at which we talk about our book and evangelize about the future of local news. We also engage in ad hoc consulting with the leaders of news projects that are either startups or moving in new directions.
- Gatherings for local news leaders both in person and via webinar. We’re already planning our second in-person conference, which will be held next year on Friday, March 13.

Ellen and I are trying to build something of lasting value and to push back against the narrative that local news is dead. Through independent community control and innovative nonprofit and for-profit business models, we believe the local news crisis is being solved one community at a time.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will dump print despite lagging on its ambitious digital goal

For some years now, many newspaper analysts, including me, have predicted that most daily newspapers would eventually cut back to one weekend print edition and go all-digital the rest of the week. Print advertising still has some value, and steering all of it into a big Saturday/Sunday paper would seem to be a smart way of maximizing a shrinking revenue stream.

Yet I don’t think any paper has taken that step. Some have cut back to two or three days a week. But large papers whose executives are rethinking print have tended to go whole hog.

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Last year Advance Local shut its print papers in New Jersey, including The Star-Ledger of Newark, and steered subscribers toward its statewide digital news outlet, NJ.com. Now The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is taking the same step, even though Katie Robertson reports in The New York Times (gift link) that the AJC’s print edition is still profitable, and even though digital subscriptions have run well behind what management was hoping for.

The AJC, owned by Cox Enterprises, will shutter its print edition at the end of this year, although it will continue to offer an e-paper laid out like print as part of its digital offerings. Cox is in the midst of a $150 million effort to boost the AJC. Andrew Morse, the paper’s president and publisher, told Robertson: “The fact is, printing newspapers and putting them in trucks and driving them around and delivering them on people’s front stoops has not been the most effective way to distribute the news in a very long time.”

The fact-checker rates Morse’s statement as: true. The question, though, is what effect that’s going to have on the paper’s bottom line. Morse is hoping for 500,000 paid digital subscribers by the end of 2026, but the company told Robertson that it’s only reached 115,000 paid subscribers, of whom just 75,000 are digital-only.

“The AJC’s digital audience far surpasses that of print and has for some time,” writes AJC reporter J. Scott Trubey. “Ending print, however, will be the biggest change of Morse’s tenure and one that will likely be controversial, particularly among some of the AJC’s longest-tenured subscribers.”

The Bedford Citizen staffs up with a new managing editor and a community reporter

The Bedford Citizen, which may be the oldest nonprofit local-news startup in Massachusetts, is back on track after losing its top two newsroom employees earlier this year.

Bill Fonda is joining the Citizen as its new managing editor, replacing Wayne Braverman, who retired this past spring. Fonda, who worked nearly four years as editor of the award-winning Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in New Hampshire, is the citizen’s third managing editor; Braverman succeeded co-founder Julie McCay Turner in 2022.

Fonda’s hiring was announced Thursday in an email from Elizabeth Hacala, the Citizen’s board president and publisher.

The Citizen also recently hired a community reporter to replace the legendary Mike Rosenberg, who died while on the job last February. Rosenberg’s replacement, Piper Pavelich, had previously worked for The Lincoln County News, based in Newcastle, Maine.

The Citizen, which was founded in 2012, is among the projects that Ellen Clegg and I feature in our book, “What Works in Community News.” It began as an all-volunteer project and gradually added paid professional journalism, though it still has a significant volunteer component.

What follows is an article that will be published in the Citizen later today:

Bill Fonda is The Bedford Citizen’s New Managing Editor

Please join us in welcoming Bill Fonda as The Bedford Citizen’s Managing Editor.

Bill most recently spent nearly four years as the editor of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, a twice-weekly newspaper published by Newspapers of New England that covered 16 towns in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire.

During his time at the Ledger-Transcript, the paper won two first-place awards and one second-place award for General Excellence from the New Hampshire Press Association, was named a Distinguished Newspaper/Small Circulation Weekly by the New England Newspaper and Press Association and received second place in General Excellence for weeklies over 5,000 circulation from the New England Newspaper and Press Association.

Bill also spent 16 years with the former GateHouse Media (now part of Gannett) after beginning his career with Spotlight Newspapers outside of Albany in his native New York. Joining The Bedford Citizen is a return of sorts, as his time at GateHouse included serving as managing editor for newspapers in and around Concord, including Bedford.

It is that experience which makes him appreciative of what The Citizen has accomplished and continues to achieve.

“To see the work that has been done to build and rebuild local news coverage in Bedford is inspiring, and something I want to be a part of,” he said. “I hope that I’ll be able to help advance the good work that is already going on here.”

Boston’s top two public media leaders argue that building community is the way forward. They’re right.

At a moment when public broadcasters are staggering from the loss of $1.1 billion in federal funds over the next two years, Boston’s two leading public media executives say that rebuilding trust and community are the keys to survival.

“I think the best way to build trust is from the local community up,” said Susan Goldberg, president and chief executive of GBH, which operates television, radio, and digital platforms. She touted the radio station’s studio at the Boston Public Library as a way for people to come in “and watch us create the content in front of them,” saying: “I think it’s that kind of transparency that can help build back trust.”

Margaret Low, chief executive of WBUR Radio, agreed, observing that her station reaches beyond its airwaves and digital presence through events at its CitySpace venue and through such initiatives as the WBUR Festival.

“There’s something very powerful about bringing people together in a place to talk about some of the most pressing issues of the day,” she said. “And it’s different than the one-to-many that broadcasting is, or even a newsletter is. It’s actually people feeling like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, that they’re part of a community.”

Goldberg and Low spoke Wednesday at a webinar sponsored by the New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The theme of the evening was survival. Earlier this summer the Republican-controlled Congress, acting at the behest of President Trump, eliminated the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a semi-independent agency that provided funding for PBS, NPR and local public television and radio stations.

Read the rest at CommonWealth Beacon.

Why a philanthopic effort to bolster public broadcasting may harm local news outlets

Major philanthropies are stepping up to offset some of the cuts to public television and radio, Benjamin Mullin reports in The New York Times (gift link). But will it be enough? And what possible downstream effects might there be on local news organizations that also depend heavily on foundation money?

As we all know, the Republican Congress, acting at the behest of Donald Trump, eliminated funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting earlier this summer. The CPB, a semi-independent agency, had been set to spend $500 million over the next two years.

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PBS and NPR receive most of their funding from grants and donations by, well, viewers and listeners like you, but their member stations — especially in less affluent and rural areas — are more dependent on government funding. Both national networks have been cutting their budgets in an attempt to help their member stations survive.

According to Mullin, foundations such as Knight, MacArthur, Ford and others have come up with an emergency $26.5 million to keep those stations afloat with a goal of reaching $50 million this year. “We believe it’s crucial to have a concerted, coordinated effort to make sure that the stations that most critically need these funds right now have a pathway to get them,” Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, the president and chief executive of the Knight Foundation, was quoted as saying.

Continue reading “Why a philanthopic effort to bolster public broadcasting may harm local news outlets”

The Plymouth Independent is seeking a top editor as Mark Pothier says he’ll step aside

*The Mayflower II, docked in Plymouth Harbor. Photo (cc) 2025 by Dan Kennedy.*

Less than two years after its founding, the Plymouth Independent has established itself as one of the larger and more stable hyperlocal news startups in Massachusetts. Now it’s moving on to a new phase.

Founding executive editor and CEO Mark Pothier announced this morning that he’s stepping aside as soon as a successor is named. Pothier’s not going anywhere, explaining that he plans to stick around as a reporter, bringing the size of the news staff from three full-timers to four. A chief development officer will be hired as well, all the better to raise funds for an anonymous $1 million matching grant that will be used to start an endowment. Pothier writes:

My promise to the board was that I would build the site and organization over at least two years. My two-year anniversary is in September. There’s always more to do that we can’t get to. My email in-box seems to have a life of its own. This job has been all-consuming. I’m glad I signed up for it.

Plymouth is among the largest towns in the state, with a population of about 66,000. Nevertheless, a four-person staff is unusual these days, and it’s a lot for a digital-only nonprofit. The Independent’s staff is also unusually high-powered, as both Pothier and staff reporter Andrea Estes are Boston Globe veterans and the other staff reporter, Fred Thys, worked for prominent news outlets such as WBUR and VTDigger. Globe reporting legend Walter Robinson, a Plymouth resident, is among its board members.

The Independent’s aggressive reporting has also been the subject of two New England Muzzle Awards I’ve given out to town officials for stonewalling and threatening the news site.

The Independent’s search for an executive editor to replace Pothier is now under way. You can view the job listing here. As you’ll see, it’s a good-paying job with decent benefits. What follows is the full text of Pothier’s announcement.

Continue reading “The Plymouth Independent is seeking a top editor as Mark Pothier says he’ll step aside”