Category: Local News

The Cambridge Chronicle lives. But the city still needs a lot more coverage.

News coverage in Cambridge — or the lack thereof — got a lot of attention recently when Joshua Benton wrote in Nieman Lab about the departure of Amy Saltzman as editor of the Cambridge Chronicle-Tab.

What drew national notice was Benton’s warning that maybe Saltzman wouldn’t be replaced and that Gannett would allow it to sink into the ranks of ghost newspapers. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, although Gannett has gone on a spree of shutting down print editions recently. Saltzman’s successor, Will Dowd, introduced himself this week. But Benton’s larger point still holds. Cambridge, a well-educated, affluent city of about 118,000, is covered by just one full-time paid journalist.

Saltzman edited the Chronicle for nine years, which is about 150 years in Corporate Chain Journalism Time. In her farewell column, she writes that she had more resources at her disposal back when she started — in addition to herself, there were one and a half reporting positions, an editorial assistant, a freelance budget, several photographers and an office in nearby Somerville. Four years later, she found herself alone. Yet she adds:

So as I leave my post, I have one plea: Support local journalism. Subscribe to the Chronicle. The paper’s survival as the oldest continuously run weekly newspaper in the country continues to be against all odds and should be lauded.

Well, now. Should Cantabrigians support the Chronicle? My answer would be yes if they’re getting value from it. But I don’t think anyone should feel obliged to support a paper that’s been hollowed out by Gannett and its predecessor company, GateHouse Media, especially when it could almost certainly be run profitably with a bigger staff and a more imaginative approach to the business of journalism. At this point, the closest thing the city has to a news source of record is the Cambridge Day, a mostly volunteer project. It would be nice to see some resources put into the Day, or perhaps into a nonprofit start-up.

Then again, news coverage in Cambridge has always been a puzzle. According to legend, at one time it was the largest city in the country without a daily newspaper, a fact that was usually attributed to its proximity to Boston. Yet neither the Globe nor the Herald ever gave more than cursory coverage to Cambridge. The alt-weeklies — The Boston Phoenix and The Real Paper — actually devoted quite a few resources to Cambridge coverage since that’s where a lot of their readers lived. I remember covering a few Cambridge political stories myself. But those papers are all gone.

When I was a senior in college, a friend of mine who lived in Cambridge and I made serious plans to launch a weekly after we graduated that would compete with the Chronicle, then owned by the Dole family. As we immersed ourselves in the details, though, we discovered that the Chronicle was actually selling its ads at prices well below those listed on its rate card. Realizing we’d be undercut, we got about the business of finding jobs, and that was that.

Later on, Russel Pergament launched the Cambridge Tab, a free paper that was part of a chain of Tab papers in the western suburbs. Pergament sold out to Community Newspaper Co. in 1996, when it was owned by Fidelity Capital. The Chronicle and the Tab were eventually merged.

Which brings us back to the present. Saltzman enjoyed a solid reputation, and I know that Dowd was respected for his work at Gannett’s North Shore papers. But one person can’t cover a city of nearly 120,000 people. It’s long past time for someone to step in and provide Cambridge with the news and information it needs.

Please become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month!

The Salt Lake Tribune, now a nonprofit, reports that it’s healthy and growing

Salt Lake City. Photo (cc) 2011 by Jazz Spain.

You sometimes hear that nonprofit status is not a solution to the local news crisis. After all, just because a media outlet is a nonprofit doesn’t mean it’s exempt from having to bring in revenue and balance its books.

True. But nonprofit ownership also means local ownership invested in the community. Which is why the latest news from The Salt Lake Tribune, the largest daily paper in Utah, is so heartening.

According to a recent update from Lauren Gustus, the executive editor, the Tribune is growing. The newsroom, she writes, is 23% larger than it was a year ago, with the paper adding a three-member Innovation Lab reporting team and beefing up its reporting, digital and editing operations. After cutting back to just one print edition each week, it’s adding a second. The Tribune is also taking care of its employees, she says, providing much-needed equipment to its photographers as well as a 401(k) match and parental leave.

“We celebrate 150 years this year and we are healthy,” she writes. “We are sustainable in 2021, and we have no plans to return to a previously precarious position.”

The Tribune was acquired from the hedge fund Alden Global Capital in 2016 by Paul Huntsman, part of a politically connected Utah family. As I wrote for GBH News in 2019, Huntsman, like many civic-minded publishers before him, discovered that owning a newspaper isn’t as easy as he might have imagined. He was forced to cut the staff in order to make ends meet before hitting on the idea of transforming the Tribune into the first large nonprofit newspaper in the country.

Nonprofit ownership makes it easier to raise tax-deductible grant money from foundations, and it transforms the subscription model into a membership model. Done right, the audience feels invested in the news organization in a way that it generally doesn’t with a for-profit newspaper.

One disadvantage is that nonprofit news organizations are constrained from some traditional newspaper functions, including having a robust editorial page that endorses political candidates. On the latest episode of our podcast, “What Works,” Storm Lake Times editor Art Cullen told Ellen Clegg and me that’s why he and his older brother, John, the publisher, have kept their paper for-profit.

What the Cullens have done instead is set up a nonprofit organization called the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation that can receive tax-deductible donations to support the Times and several other papers. It’s a model similar to that used by news outlets as large as The Philadelphia Inquirer and as small as The Colorado Sun and The Provincetown Independent.

The local news crisis will not be solved by a single model, and there’s plenty of room for nonprofits, for-profits and hybrids. What’s taking place in Salt Lake is important, and is sure to be watched by other news executives.

“The Tribune will welcome more journalists in 2022,” writes Gustus, “because you’ve told us many times over that this is what you want and because if we are not holding those in public office to account, there are few others who will.”

Please become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month!

In our new podcast, we interview Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake Times

Storm Lake Times editor Art Cullen, center, with his son Tom, a reporter for the Times, and his brother, John, the publisher.

We’ve got a great guest for the “What Works” podcast this week — Art Cullen, the editor of Iowa’s Storm Lake Times, who is at the center of the documentary “Storm Lake.” Please listen to the podcast, then watch the film, which will be shown on most PBS stations (including GBH-2) in Boston, tonight at 10. The documentary, which I previewed last week, tells the story of the Times’ fight for survival at a time when local papers across the country are cutting back and shutting down.

Later in the podcast, we hear from Northeastern University graduate student Zhaozhou Dai about what he and fellow grad student Maaisha Osman learned when they visited the New Haven Independent and its community radio station, WNHH-LP, on Election Night.

In Quick Takes, Ellen Clegg has some fun with a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit about local school boards — and reminds us of the importance of covering local politics. And I kick around the McClatchy newspaper chain, which recently ended its relationship with Report for America, apparently because RFA co-founder Steven Waldman hurt the feelings of its hedge fund owner.

More Gannett papers end print publication in favor of digital

As I noted earlier this week, Gannett is ending print publication of The Middleboro Gazette in favor of digital-only distribution. It turns out the Gazette is not alone. Here is a list (which may or may not be comprehensive) of other Gannett papers in Eastern Massachusetts that are also abandoning print.

Ironically, Ipswich does have a print newspaper — the nonprofit Ipswich Local News, co-founded by the late Bill Wasserman, who sold his Ipswich Chronicle in the 1980s to a chain that ultimately morphed into Gannett. Several other communities on this list have independent local papers as well.

As I wrote the other day, this isn’t necessarily the worst move Gannett could make as long as the company is serious about not cutting back on news coverage. Ending the cost of printing and distribution is smart as long as the money saved is invested in journalism. But Gannett executives are going to have to prove that they mean it.

Public access cable and local news: an alliance whose time may have come

Photo (cc) 2015 by Ed Yourdon

Could public access cable TV help solve the local news crisis? It’s a question that we put to Chris Lovett on this week’s “What Works” podcast. Lovett recently retired as the longtime anchor of Boston’s “Neighborhood Network News,” a first-rate daily newscast he produced along with journalism students from Boston University.

Lovett was skeptical. Funding for public access has been drying up in recent years as increasing numbers of viewers cut the cable cord and watch video exclusively on the internet. Donald Trump’s FCC took steps to reduce the amount of money public access received as well. And as Lovett observed, public access lacks the political support that it once had when, for example, the late Boston Mayor Tom Menino saw it as a way to reach his constituents. By contrast, incoming Mayor Michelle Wu is a master of social media, where she can control her own message.

Now Antoine Haywood and Victor Pickard have weighed in with some ideas, published at Nieman Lab, built around the possibility of mobilizing the country’s 1,600 public access operations. They write:

Instead of letting PEG [public, educational and governmental] channels wither due to commercial market fluctuations, we should publicly fund and expand the precious communication infrastructure that access media offers. A national fund that distributes local journalism grants, based on demonstrated community need, could benefit public access media centers interested in building collaborative, solutions-oriented types of journalism programs. Modest grants in the range of $100,000 to $300,000 would enable small operations to hire editorial staff, train and compensate community reporters, and forge collaborative partnerships with other news organizations.

It’s an interesting idea. Traditionally, with a few notable exceptions like “NNN,” public access has seen its mission mainly as a platform for training members of the community, carrying such events as governmental meetings and school plays, and providing a forum for someone who might want to host their own talk show. What public access has not done is provide reported, vetted journalism.

But maybe that can change. With community newspapers under siege, public access might prove to be a worthwhile alternative.

Become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month.

Gannett closes Middleboro Gazette but vows a commitment to digital

Middleborough bank building, circa 1910

This one hurts. Gannett today announced that it is shutting down The Middleboro Gazette, and it did so with an insulting message that included every cliché you can imagine short of “in order to serve you better.” The company’s message suggests that it will not cut back on coverage, which will be available online at The Standard-Times website. I hope they’re right. We’ll see.

I grew up in Middleborough. (People spell it both ways, but “-borough” is correct, damn it.) I remember touring the weekly’s offices, which included its own hot-lead press, when I was in elementary school. Later, I wrote a column of high school news for the Gazette.

Here’s part of Gannett’s announcement:

This business decision reaffirms The Middleboro Gazette and Middleboro Gazette Extra’s commitment to the sustainable future of local news. The Middleboro Gazette, the Middleboro Gazette Extra and their parent company, Gannett, understand many readers value and depend upon the news and information they find weekly in their print products. The company’s focus on digital news presentation helps ensure continued delivery of valuable community journalism and effective platforms for advertisers.

Over the summer Gannett closed about a half-dozen weeklies in the Greater Boston area. I had hoped they were done. Not to repeat myself, but if the chain is truly committed to transitioning to digital while providing the same amount of local news coverage, then I think that’s fine. The company has done nothing to earn anyone’s trust, though. That will have to be earned.

Become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month!

‘Storm Lake’ from PBS tells the story of a rural newspaper fighting for its life

Dolores Cullen, photographer and feature writer, holds up a copy of The Storm Lake Times

Previously published at GBH News.

Dolores Cullen is scanning through photos she’d taken at a local elementary school where Abby Bean, the reigning Iowa Pork Producers Pork Queen, had enthused over the finer points of hog production. The kids were encouraged to oink. There was a piglet wearing a diaper. It was the sort of event that oozes cute.

But that’s not what was on Cullen’s mind. While driving through Albert City, she was hit with an odor so foul that she couldn’t stop talking about it. “It was so putrid I almost gagged, from hog confinement,” she says. When she commented on the smell during a visit to the post office to deliver newspapers, she was told it was from corn that had been put out to dry.

“No,” she says she responded. “This is not the smell of drying corn. This is hog shit.”

Welcome to The Storm Lake Times, a 21-year-old twice-weekly newspaper with a circulation of about 3,000 that covers Buena Vista County, Iowa. The paper is the subject of a documentary, “Storm Lake,” that will be broadcast on most PBS stations this coming Monday, Nov. 15, at 10 p.m., including GBH-2 in Boston.

The film, by Jerry Risius and Beth Levison, tells the story of a small rural newspaper’s fight for survival at a time when local papers across the country are cutting back and shutting down. At the center of that story are the Cullens, a remarkable family who persevere through calamities such as the rise of agribusiness, which wiped out much of the local advertising that had once sustained the paper; the spreading tentacles of the internet, which grabbed another big chunk; and, finally, the insidious invasion of COVID-19.

The Times was already among our better-known rural newspapers by virtue of a Pulitzer Prize that it won in 2017 for a series of editorials written by Art Cullen, the editor. As the Pulitzer judges put it, the paper “successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa.” Cullen’s editorials so enraged those interests that the Iowa Senate refused to approve a resolution of congratulations, a tidbit that did not make it into the film.

Cullen later wrote a book about his life as a small-town newspaperman, but his notoriety appears not to have been of much help to the Times’ bottom line. Indeed, “Storm Lake” is a story of struggle. At one point the publisher, Art’s older brother, John, explains how he spent months listening to readers in order to pare the television listings down from 80 channels to 31 without sparking too much outrage, thus saving about $10,000.

Art Cullen is the narrative center of the film. Rail thin, with a shock of unkempt white hair (less unkempt after he submitted to a haircut administered by Dolores, his wife), a bushy horseshoe mustache and wire-rimmed glasses, we see him interviewing a range of characters, from a farmer talking about how a surplus of rain has stunted the corn crop to then-presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on stage in front of hundreds during the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. We’re treated to several samples of his lyrical writing as well.

The caucuses provide a welcome break from the monotony of rural life. Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg drops by, and he’s not allowed to leave until he’s autographed an enormous “Storm Lake Times” sign that adorns the newsroom. Art takes part in an MSNBC panel moderated by Chuck Todd. Art and his son, Tom, report from the scene on caucus night, their disappointment palpable as it becomes clear that problems with the app used to tally the results mean that there would be no results for quite some. The Times’ headline: “Who Won the Caucuses? Not Iowa.”

Tom, Art and John Cullen

“Everybody thinks this is going to kill the Iowa caucuses,” Art says. “It shouldn’t, but it will.” A short time later he adds: “It’s not the process that broke down. It’s the app. It’s kind of too bad that we just can’t be more patient with democracy.”

The COVID-19 pandemic followed the caucuses by just a few weeks, and it nearly put the Times out of business. Advertising was down 50% in March 2020. Art and John muse about walking away rather than piling up more debt, or selling the Times’ building.

But they prevailed. We learn at the end that the paper held a successful GoFundMe campaign, signed up more than 100 new subscribers and unveiled a redesigned website that was attracting 1.2 million page views per month. The paper would survive.

Risius and Levison have provided a fascinating close-up look at the local news crisis, which has claimed some 2,100 U.S. newspapers over the past 15 years. At a moment when corporate chains control thousands of papers, squeezing out profits while cutting back on news coverage, the Cullens stand out as notable — and noble — exceptions.

“The pay is lousy and the hours are terrible,” says Art. “But you can change the world through journalism.”

In our latest podcast, Chris Lovett talks about his career as a hyperlocal TV journalist

Chris Lovett

In our latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I speak with Chris Lovett, the just-retired anchor of Boston’s Neighborhood Network News. Topics we discuss include highlights from Lovett’s long career and his views on whether local access cable could help solve the community journalism crisis.

A Dorchester native, he’s interviewed local activists, politicos (including Tom Menino when he was a district city councilor) and neighborhood stalwarts. Lovett had a front-row seat as the changing media landscape shaped Boston, and he connects the dots between Menino’s early days as a frequent broadcast guest and Michelle Wu’s strategic use of social media. He has also shared his expertise with any number of Boston University students. And he’s not done with journalism yet, so stay tuned.

We also kick around the latest on the Local Journalism Sustainability Act and the NewsMatch program, introduced by the Institute for Nonprofit News, which matches donations to nonprofit news organizations and has proved to be an important source of revenue.

Please give us a listen — and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever fine podcasts are found.

Hedge fund owner, its feelings apparently hurt, cuts ties with Report for America

Report for America photojournalist Olivia Sun on assignment with The Colorado Sun. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

In April 2020, I questioned whether Report for America should be placing journalists at newspapers owned by cost-cutting corporate chains.

RFA is a program that enables news organizations to hire young journalists for about two years at a fraction of the cost, with a grant from RFA and additional fundraising covering 75%. The dilemma is that though these news organizations clearly need help, and the communities they cover benefit from that help, there is at least a theoretical chance that their chain owners will take it as an incentive not to hire someone at full cost.

At the time, RFA co-founder Steven Waldman defended those placements, saying in part that “half of our placements are in nonprofit, and others are in locally owned commercial entities. But we do indeed have some placements in newspapers that are owned by chains. Our primary standard is: Will this help the community?” (His full answer, as well as comments from the other co-founder, Charles Sennott, are here.)

Now Report for America has encountered an unexpected hazard to doing business with chain owners. McClatchy, owned by Chatham Asset Management, a hedge fund, has decided not to apply for any RFA journalists next year. The apparent reason, according to Feven Merid at the Columbia Journalism Review: Waldman hurt their feelings in an op-ed piece he wrote for the Los Angeles Times earlier this year. Merid writes:

Sources tell CJR that McClatchy’s decision came in response to Waldman’s hedge-fund criticism. Kristin Roberts, McClatchy’s senior vice president of news, would not confirm the company’s plans, and did not respond to questions concerning the company’s reaction to Waldman’s hedge-fund critiques.

McClatchy owns several dozen papers in 14 states, including important outlets like the Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina. The chain staggered under piles of debt for many years before finally collapsing into bankruptcy a few years ago. Chatham bailed them out and has thus far proved to be a more benevolent owner than, say, Alden Global Capital, the most notorious of the hedge-fund owners. Indeed, Waldman’s op-ed specifically mentioned Alden.

But if Merid’s sources are correct, then it seems that Chatham executives have a bad case of rabbit ears.

Waldman’s op-ed, headlined “How to Stop Hedge Funds from Wrecking Local News,” calls on Washington to take steps that would encourage chain-owned newspapers to divest their holdings and make it easier for independent local owners to step up. He wrote:

It could offer incentives for owners to sell these papers to local interests by waiving capital gains taxes if the acquirer is a local nonprofit organization or public benefit corporation. It could give a time-limited payroll tax break to the acquiring organizations. Congress could also, through the Small Business Administration or Commerce Department, provide loan guarantees for low-interest financing for such transitions or special tax credits, similar to those available to businesses operating in enterprise zones.

Antitrust action to break up the chains could be in order as well, according to Waldman.

At the moment, 31 RFA journalists work at 21 McClatchy news outlets. The chain’s decision to spurn future RFA journalists won’t hurt the prospects of young reporters and photographers, since there will no doubt be plenty of other newsrooms that participate. But it will hurt the communities that those papers serve unless the chain suddenly decides to go on a hiring spree.

It’s an absurd situation, and I hope the folks at Chatham and McClatchy come to their senses.

Become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month!

Things are looking up at Gannett. But will that translate into more journalism?

USA Today is Gannett’s flagship. But what about the weeklies? Photo (cc) 2008 by Mossmen.

Things are looking up a bit at Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, which controls the vast majority of weekly and daily newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts and environs.

Rick Edmonds of Poynter reports that digital subscriptions are up and debt is down, and that the company’s bottom line will be bolstered if the Local Journalism Sustainability Act becomes law. Frankly, I’d rather see the act written in such a way that it benefits only independent local owners. But in many communities, the Gannett paper is the only choice, so if it helps them do a better job then that’s not entirely a bad thing.

It’s difficult to know exactly what is going on in Massachusetts, where Gannett closed about a half-dozen papers during the summer. Joshua Benton recently observed in Nieman Lab that the Gannett-owned Cambridge Chronicle had lost its only full-time journalist. But I hear that she will be replaced soon, indicating that the company has at least some level of commitment to one of its larger communities.

Likewise, in Medford we went a year and a half without a single full-time staffer at Gannett’s weekly Transcript — until about six months ago. Coverage has improved considerably since then. Of course, communities the size of Cambridge and Medford could benefit from more than just one reporter apiece. But at least fears that Gannett was going to run them as ghost newspapers have eased.

The big question: What does the future hold for Gannett’s weeklies, especially in smaller communities? “In recent months, the company has sold a number of weeklies and closed a few others,” Edmonds writes. “They no longer fit with Gannett’s strategic plans.” The company’s current strategy is to focus on its dailies, with USA Today as its flagship.

If Gannett’s numbers are improving, maybe the company will start putting more resources into its papers. My fear, though, is that it may have driven way so many readers with its parsimonious approach to journalism that it could prove impossible to bring them back.

Become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month!