By Dan Kennedy • Tracking the future of local news and other passions since 2005
The Register Citizen of Torrington, Connecticut, is moving from daily to weekly print publication starting March 12. The paper is part of the Hearst CT chain, which has gone all-in on digital — so I wouldn’t criticize this move unless it results in less coverage.
Dean Pagani broke the news Wednesday at The Laurel. Hearst published an announcement today.
One of the more arcane aspects of writing a book is that you go through repeated rounds of editing, and each time you finish, you can let everyone know and take another bow, ha ha. Anyway, Ellen Clegg and I turned in the manuscript to our book about local news at the end of August, and then submitted our response to the first round of edits at the end of December.
Just now we submitted our response to what they call a “line edit” — a lighter edit aimed at clarifying what had been murky on previous rounds. So, yay us! After that comes the copy-edit and then the page proofs.
The book will be called “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” It is scheduled to be published by Beacon Press in early 2024. You can find out more information — and our podcast! — at our website, What Works.
Ed Kubosiak Jr. has been terminated from his position as the editor of MassLive following an investigation into a domestic violence claim, according to Don Seiffert of the Boston Business Journal. Kubosiak had been suspended several weeks earlier.
MassLive is the website of The Republican newspaper in Springfield. The properties are owned by Advance, a privately held media company that has pursued some interesting strategies in trying to figure out a viable business model for local news. The Massachusetts approach has been to position MassLive as an entity that’s separate from the newspaper, pushing into the Worcester area and even into Greater Boston. The idea of a free, good-quality alternative to The Boston Globe is an interesting one; several years ago, though, MassLive began charging for some of its journalism, which would seem to defeat the purpose.
In New Jersey, Advance has built a digital hub of more than 100 journalists to feed its print newspapers. In Alabama, though, they’re getting out of the print business altogether. (I wrote about those developments back in November.) And in the Cleveland area, Advance has engaged in union-busting. So it’s a mixed bag.
In any event, Kubosiak’s role at MassLive was crucial — he was the vice president of content, essentially serving as the top editor. It will be interesting to see what if any changes Advance makes in its approach now that the company has to hire a replacement.
The “What Works” podcast is back! Ellen Clegg and I took some time off to finish our book, which now has a name — “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” Barring any unexpected roadblocks, it will be published by Beacon Press in early 2024.
Our latest podcast features Mike Blinder, the publisher of Editor & Publisher, the once and future bible of the news publishing industry. Mike also hosts E&P’s weekly vodcast/podcast series, “E&P Reports” which has established itself as a must-listen for anyone interested in the state of the news business. Blinder has interviewed everyone from Richard Tofel, founding GM of ProPublica, to Jennifer Kho, the new executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, to professor and media critic Jeff Jarvis. Blinder probes important issues like government support for community journalism, the role of social-media platforms and the impact of chain consolidation.
I’ve got a Quick Take on the failure of two bills in Congress that would have provided some government support to newspaper companies. It’s fair to say that the federal government is not going to be riding to the rescue of local news, and that communities had better get about the business of providing coverage on their own.
Ellen reports on the City Paper in Pittsburgh, an alternative weekly, which has just been acquired by a subsidiary of Block Communications. The Block family has achieved some notoriety for its mismanagement of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Media observer Margaret Sullivan called the Post-Gazette a tragic mess under the Blocks.
You can listen to our latest podcast here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
Gannett continues to walk away from its weekly newspapers. Writing in Axios Columbus, Tyler Buchanan reports that the country’s largest newspaper chain is closing ThisWeek Community News, a group of weeklies that covers about 16 communities in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. The company said it will concentrate instead on its daily in that region, The Columbus Dispatch, adding:
The decision is part of a broader digital transformation that will allow the company to harness its resources and focus more on its cutting-edge digital news and information efforts and exemplary enterprise reporting on Columbus and Franklin County, including the communities served by ThisWeek.
Gannett owns about 200 daily papers across the country, the largest of which is USA Today. The money-losing chain has been slashing all of its properties, including its dailies, by imposing layoffs, furloughs, retirement freezes and other measures. But it also appears to be getting out of the weekly business altogether.
Gannett has closed a number of weeklies in Eastern Massachusetts over the past several years, and in 2022 took two giant steps toward oblivion by replacing local coverage with regional stories at nearly all of its weeklies and then by closing 19 weeklies and merging another nine into four.
The chain’s decimation of community journalism in Massachusetts has sparked the rise of independent start-ups, and I hope the same happens in the Columbus suburbs.
People are starting to notice the local news renaissance in Eastern Massachusetts that’s been inspired by the Gannett newspaper chain’s never-ending cuts.
Dana Gerber reported in The Boston Globe on Tuesday about “The Great Marblehead Newspaper War,” where three independent start-ups have been launched in response to Gannett’s evisceration of the Marblehead Reporter last year. These days Marblehead is served by a for-profit digital project, the Marblehead Beacon; a well-funded digital and print nonprofit, the Marblehead Current; and the Marblehead Weekly News, a for-profit print newspaper started by The Daily Item of Lynn, which is itself independently owned.
Just a few days ago, Mariya Manzhos reported for Poynter Online about The Concord Bridge, another well-funded nonprofit start-up. And there are a number of others, including The Bedford Citizen, which at this point has to be considered venerable: the nonprofit digital site was started a decade ago by three volunteers in response to cuts by Gannett’s predecessor company, GateHouse Media, at the weekly Bedford Minuteman. Now the Citizen has a small paid staff and is the only news source in town, the Minuteman having been shut down last year. (The Citizen is one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I are profiling in our book-in-progress, “What Works in Community News,” to be published in early 2024 by Beacon Press.)
But there is an ongoing problem, and it’s one I spoke with Gerber about when she interviewed me: these startups are highly concentrated in affluent, mostly white suburbs like, well, Marblehead, Concord and Bedford. Yes, there is The New Bedford Light, an extraordinarily well-funded nonprofit that’s gotten national attention, but that’s the exception. Most local outlets that serve more diverse communities, such as The Bay State Banner and the Dorchester Reporter, tend to be for-profit publications that have been around for a while; we’re seeing little in the way of new ventures to cover such places. And many have little or nothing. Cambridge Day does a good job, but it’s essentially a one-person shop. Why is Marblehead, with a population of under 20,000, getting more comprehensive coverage than a city of 117,000 people? (I should note that the Cambridge Chronicle is one of just three Gannett weeklies in Eastern Massachusetts that purportedly still covers some local news, although you wouldn’t know it from its website.)
As Manzhos notes, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism has provided some assistance to local news outlets. What we need, though, are news outlets that provide ongoing accountability journalism in each of the state’s 351 communities — city council, select board, school committee, police, development and the like. I hope that will happen.
We’re also closer than you might think. If you haven’t seen it before, here is a spreadsheet I maintain of every independent local news outlet in the state. Obviously some are better than others, but some of these are excellent.
There’s been a sad development in the case of a New Hampshire newspaper publisher who was criminally charged with running political ads that did not include the required disclosure. Debra Paul announced last Friday that she and her husband, Chris Paul, are closing two of their three weekly newspapers, the Nutfield News and the Tri-Town Times. They will continue to publish the Londonderry Times. She wrote:
It’s been a good 18+ years, all things considered. Chris and I didn’t make millions, but we never expected to. I’ve never felt such delight as when people would come up and thank us, saying it seemed like “their” newspaper. Over the years we have come to know so many amazing people, some we call friends and hope to continue to keep even though we are not printing the paper.
The story of Paul’s arrest was reported last August by the investigative news organization InDepthNH. Paul published ads for political candidates that, in several instances, failed to include the words “Political Advertisement,” a violation of state law. No sentient being could possibly have thought the offending materials were anything other than political ads, but that didn’t stop the state attorney general’s office. At least in theory, Paul could be hit with a $2,000 fine or at least a year in prison.
It sounds like an outrageous breach of First Amendment protections, but the law isn’t necessarily unconstitutional because paid advertising does not enjoy the same protections as other forms of speech. In an odd twist, Debra Paul is also an elected member of Londonderry’s town council — an obvious conflict of interest for a newspaper, although that’s entirely unrelated to her arrest.
I could not find a follow-up, so I don’t know if this ridiculous case against Paul has been disposed of. But I’m going to try to find out.
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There was news in Mark Shanahan’s Boston Globe story on the decline of the once-great Providence Journal under Gannett ownership: the Globe is opening a New Hampshire bureau sometime in 2023, a move similar to what it’s done in Rhode Island.
At one time the Globe took New England coverage seriously, even publishing a Sunday section called New Hampshire Weekly. On a recent episode of our podcast about local news, “What Works,” Nancy West, executive director of the investigative news organization InDepthNH, said she would welcome a Globe comeback in the Granite State.
“I loved it when the Globe came up and was doing important reporting,” she said, citing in particular the paper’s coverage of a cardiac surgeon at Catholic Medical Center in Manchester whose horrendous malpractice record was obscured by his status as an operating-room star. “Was I a little jealous? My first instinct is jealousy, of course,” West told us. “But then I’m just really pleased that the word is getting out.” She added: “I would love to have the Globe come back. I would love to see it because we just need talented reporters on the street. And I think competition is healthy.”
Unlike Rhode Island, New Hampshire’s two major daily newspapers, the New Hampshire Union Leader and the Concord Monitor, are independently owned. Both, however, have endured significant cuts to their reporting capacity in recent years. As West says, another news organization focused on the state would be welcome.
As with Rhode Island, New Hampshire is an opportunity for the Globe to sell more digital subscriptions without the hassle of bygone days, when it was necessary to truck papers across New England.
So where might the Globe go next? Vermont strikes me as a stretch. Connecticut? Probably not. Much of the state roots for the Yankees, and Hearst CT has a growing digital operation. Maine? Possibly, although the Globe has collaborated on some stories with the Portland Press Herald. I’m not sure they’d want to compete. If they do, David Dahl, a former top editor at the Globe who’s now editor of the nonprofit Maine Monitor, told us on “What Works” that he’d love to work with his old paper. “We’re open to any partnership discussions that we would have,” he said, “and if they want to affiliate with us, they’re more than more than welcome.”
The most logical move for the Globe after New Hampshire would be an expanded presence in Central Massachusetts — ironic given that Globe owner John Henry acquired the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester when he bought the Globe in 2013 only to sell it to out-of-state interests. The T&G eventually landed in the hands of GateHouse Media, which merged with Gannett; like most of Gannett’s properties, the T&G has been gutted.
At a time when the decline of advertising and fears of recession are leading to cuts even at once high-flying newspapers like The Washington Post, it’s heartening to see that the Globe continues to focus on expansion.
The $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that’s making its way through Congress reportedly contains nothing to ease the local news crisis. An emailed news bulletin from the trade publication Editor & Publisher, citing unnamed sources, reported this morning that both the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) and the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA) have been excluded from the bill.
For those of you who don’t follow these issues obsessively, let me unpack this a bit.
The JCPA would allow an antitrust exemption for news organizations so that they could bargain collectively with Google and Facebook for a share of their advertising revenues. You often hear news executives complain that the giant platforms are republishing their content without paying for it. That is a serious distortion. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that Google and Facebook, which control about half the digital advertising market, benefit significantly from linking to and sharing news.
The LJSA would create three tax credits that would benefit local news organizations. The first would allow consumers to write off the cost of subscriptions. The second would provide a tax benefit to businesses for buying ads. The third would grant tax write-offs to publishers for hiring and retaining journalists. That last provision was included in President Biden’s Bill Back Better bill, which Senate Republicans, joined by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, killed last year.
The demise of the JCPA is not entirely bad news. I thought it might be worth giving it a try to see what the two sides might come up with. Still, there was a lot of merit to the argument made by critics like Chris Krewson, executive director of LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers, that most of the revenues would be diverted to large legacy newspaper publishers — including those owned by corporate chain owners and hedge funds — rather than to community-based start-ups.
The LJSA, on the other hand, was more intriguing, even though it would also benefit legacy newspapers. For one thing, the tax credits could provide a real lifeline to small local news projects. For another, the third provision, for publishers, would reward the large chain owners only for good behavior — Gannett and Alden Global Capital could not tap into that credit if they keep laying off journalists.
I’m guessing that this is the end of the road for both proposals given that the Republicans will take over the House in the next few weeks. That’s not entirely a bad thing. As Ellen Clegg and I have found in our research at “What Works,” local news organizations across the country, from for-profit legacy newspapers to nonprofit digital start-ups, are finding innovative ways to continue serving their communities.
The economic challenges facing news organizations is real, but in many cases they can be managed with innovative thinking and committed local ownership.
Finally, here are a couple of “What Works” podcasts that will bring you up to speed.
Well, that didn’t take long. Cristiano Lima of The Washington Post reports that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) has been dropped from the defense-spending bill. I pointed out on Tuesday that there were some real shortcomings to the proposal but thought that, on balance, it was worth giving a try. Since the JCPA got new life earlier this week, though, it’s been subject to a withering attack by everyone from the ACLU a group of United Church of Christ ministers.
I’m going to guess that that’s the last we’re going to hear about the JCPA because House Republicans oppose it, and time is running out for the Democratic majority to push it through. Maybe this will carve out space for a better bill, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which would bolster local news by creating temporary tax credits for subscribers, advertisers and publishers. I’m dubious, though, that House Republicans are going to be willing to do anything for the next two years except investigate Hunter Biden and cower before Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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