Ross Douthat has a long, mildly worded anti-tech rant in today’s New York Times that I enjoyed, even if I didn’t take it too seriously. A lot of it read like Douthat’s Greatest Hits, hastily written and not especially well thought-through.
But I do want to offer a brief comment on this, plucked from his long list of ways in which the real is better than the virtual: “Online sources of local news are generally lousy compared with the vanished ecosystem of print newspapers.”
Like I said, the whole thing read like he wasn’t putting a lot of thought into it. But we all know that the digital local news outlets that have sprouted in recent years are often better and more comprehensive than the chain-owned ghost newspapers they replaced.
Many of them are nonprofit. Some also have print editions; most don’t. But the idea that a community news website is “lousy” compared to a corporate print product filled with so-called news from anywhere except the community it purports to cover is laughable.
If Douthat would like to go back, say, two or three generations, to a time when many communities had locally owned newspapers with full-time staff members and their own printing press, well, yes. But like I said, he’s produced a once-over-lightly for a day when few people will be spending much time with the Sunday paper.
Sewell Chan, right, with USA Today’s Susan Page at an event at the LBJ Library in 2024. LBJ Library photo by Laura Skelding.
I hope we learn more soon about why Columbia Journalism Review executive editor Sewell Chan was abruptly fired on Friday. In the immediate aftermath, he has been portrayed as the boss from hell, while Chan himself has claimed he was the victim of a toxic workplace culture.
I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about either Chan or Columbia Journalism School dean Jelani Cobb, who fired him. Like Chan, Cobb is a high-quality, serious journalism leader, and social-media posts suggesting that Chan was done in by the mishegas into which Columbia has descended can’t be right. But what was it?
I’m sharing this New York Times story because it does a good job of laying out what we know, which isn’t much.
Earlier this week, Chan wrote what struck me as an exceptionally fine analysis of what went wrong at Houston Landing, which announced on Tuesday that it was ceasing operations. Chan also sent a friendly email to my What Works collaborator Ellen Clegg and me after Ellen wrote a story about Sonal Shah’s announcement that she would leave as CEO of The Texas Tribune at the end of the year. (Chan is a former editor of the Tribune.)
There was no indication in Chan’s email that there was anything amiss at the CJR. And now this.
David Brooks. 2022 LBJ Library photo by Jay Godwin.
Today is going to be a big grading day. But before I get started, I want to share with you a remarkable column by David Brooks of The New York Times (gift link) as well as a couple of eye-opening statements from the political right.
Moderate in his politics, deeply conservative by nature, Brooks is a longstanding anti-Trumper, but he leans toward the rhetorical rather than advocating any sort of specific action beyond voting. Now, though, he’s calling for a “comprehensive national civic uprising,” and closes by alluding to Karl Marx: “We have nothing to lose but our chains.” He writes:
It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.
Peoples throughout history have done exactly this when confronted by an authoritarian assault.
Earlier this week, another prominent anti-Trump conservative, Bill Kristol, posted a photo on Bluesky of ICE thugs detaining Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk and wrote: “Where does the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement go to get its apology?”
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the last remaining moderate Republicans on Capitol Hill, spoke frankly about the fear that she and other members of her party feel about what might happen to them if they speak out against Trump. Just to say that out loud is an important step, although of course it needs to be followed by action. At a public forum she said:
We are all afraid. It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.
I don’t want to get carried away. Over the past decade, there has been no group less influential and consequential than the tiny band of Never Trump Republicans and conservatives. But we may be starting to see the stirrings of — well, of something.
On our new “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with John Mooney, the founder and executive director of NJ Spotlight News, a digital nonprofit that’s part of NJ PBS, the state’s public broadcasting network. Mooney, who covered education for The Star-Ledger in Newark, took a buyout in 2008, put together a business plan, and launched NJ Spotlight in 2010 under the auspices of the nonprofit Community Foundation of New Jersey.
While Spotlight was making a mark journalistically, it wasn’t breaking even, and its sponsor, the Community Foundation of New Jersey, was getting impatient. After extensive talks, Mooney affiliated with NJ PBS. The name changed to NJ Spotlight News, and the merger means true collaboration between the newsrooms. Both the broadcast and digital sides take part in news meetings, and there are considerable synergies between the website and the daily half-hour newscast. (In a previous podcast, Northeastern University professor and TV journalist Mike Beaudet discussed his initiative aimed at reinventing TV news for a vertical video age.)
As we wrote in “What Works in Community News,” the story of NJ PBS and NJ Spotlight News suggests that public broadcasting can play a role in bolstering coverage of regional and statewide news. It’s a question of bringing together two different newsroom cultures. There’s also a Yo-Yo Ma angle to our conversation, so you won’t want to miss that.
Ellen has a Quick Take about the death of John Thornton, a venture capitalist who helped launch The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit newsroom in Austin, in 2009. He also was a founder of the American Journalism Project, which supports local digital newsrooms around the country. Thornton, who had struggled with mental health issues, took his own life. He was 59.
I’ve got a Quick Take about our webinar on “The Ethics of Nonprofit News,” which was held the evening of April 3. Panelists gave great advice about what board members and donors need to know. You can watch the video and read a summary generated by Northeastern’s AI tool, Claude, on our website.
There was something about Houston Landing that never quite made sense.
It was a large digital startup in a city already served by the Houston Chronicle, whose corporate owner, Hearst, enjoys a reputation for strong journalism. It attracted a stunning amount of philanthropic funding — $20 million — before its launch two years ago, and somehow managed to burn through much of it. It was beset by tumult after its second CEO, veteran journalist Peter Bhatia, fired the Landing’s editor-in-chief, its top investigative reporter and, later, another top editor for reasons that have never been fully explained.
And on Tuesday, the Landing reached the end of the line, announcing that it would close because, despite “significant seed funding, it has been unable to build additional revenue streams to support ongoing operations.” The site will shut down in May, and 43 employees will lose their jobs.
Peter Bhatia
Bhatia agreed to come on our “What Works” podcast last June after he emailed me to complain about something I’d written. My co-host, Ellen Clegg, and I found him to be charming, as candid as he could be when talking about internal personnel matters, and dedicated to creating a first-rate news outlet.
When I asked him about competing with the Chronicle, he emphasized that he didn’t see that as the Landing’s mission.
“There is so much opportunity to do journalism here,” he said. “And the people who founded Houston Landing and who ultimately recruited me here wanted more journalism for this vast community. They wanted journalism that was hard-hitting and performed traditional watchdog and accountability roles, but also to create a new kind of journalism, if you will, that is accessible to traditionally undercovered communities, which make up such a huge percentage of the population here.”
As for the firings of editor-in-chief Mizanur Rahman, investigative reporter Alex Stuckey and editor John Tedesco, Bhatia said: “I came in here after things were established and in place, and I gave things a year to develop and go in the right direction. I have nothing but respect for the people that you mentioned. They are good human beings and fantastic journalists, but we were on a path that was not sustainable, and as the leader, I felt I had to make changes in order to get us in a position to be successful for the long term.”
In any case, the people Bhatia brought in, editor-in-chief Manny García and managing editor Angel Rodriguez, are well-regarded journalists. Unfortunately, they’re also now out of work.
Columbia Journalism Review editor Sewell Chan, who had an opportunity to watch Houston Landing up close during his own stint as editor of The Texas Tribune, has written a nuanced and perceptive take on what went wrong. “In hindsight, money was both a blessing and a curse for the Landing,” Chan writes, observing that the leadership team may have been tempted by that early bonanza to spend beyond its means.
“The Landing also suffered from a lack of focus,” Chan adds, explaining that it was never clear whether its mission was to cover the city or the broader region; whether it saw itself as a traditional news outlet holding the powerful to account or if, instead, it sought to empower the community by providing them with the tools to be their own storytellers, like Documenters or Outlier. Chan also delivers this verdict on Bhatia:
I’ve known Bhatia for close to thirty years. The son of an Indian father, he has been a pioneering Asian American newsroom leader and has the utmost integrity. However, Bhatia had not run a digital-only operation, hadn’t worked extensively in nonprofit fundraising, and didn’t know Houston well.
We are immensely proud of the work we’ve done and the impact we’ve made. Houston Landing has shown what’s possible when a news team commits itself to truth and transparency. Our stories highlighted voices that too often go unheard, sparked conversations that matter and helped inspire positive change throughout the city we love.
It’s a shame. Houston may not have been a news desert before the Landing landed, but more coverage is always better, and the focus on underrepresented communities that Bhatia talked about with Ellen and me will not be easy to replace.
It’s important, too, to recognize that what happened at the Landing says little about the nonprofit news movement in general. Chan quotes Michael Ouimette, chief investment officer of the American Journalism Project (one of the Landing’s funders), as saying that the closing is “not part of a broader trend,” and that nonprofit local news outlets remain on a growth trajectory.
Indeed, many of the nonprofits that Ellen and I track have proved to be remarkably resilient, with a few about to embark on their third decade. Unfortunately, Houston Landing will not join that charmed circle, and will instead close just a little more than two years after it was launched amid a wave of optimism.
Texas Tribune CEO Sonal Shah at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin last September.
Instability in the top ranks of The Texas Tribune continues, as Sonal Shah has announced that she’ll step down as CEO of the nonprofit in December. My What Works partner Ellen Clegg, who profiled the Tribune in our book, “What Works in Community News,” has all the details, writing:
Her impending departure marks yet another jolting transition for a news outlet that launched in November 2009 with a sweeping ambition: to prop up democracy by transforming news coverage throughout the Lone Star State. But nonprofit news sites, which are usually supported by a mix of revenue streams, are not immune to challenging market forces and workplace issues like layoffs and union drives.
The Tribune is among the largest and most respected digital nonprofits to be founded in the second wave of such projects, following such pioneers as Voice of San Diego, MinnPost and the New Haven Independent several years earlier. The site was launched by venture capitalist John Thornton and veteran journalist Evan Smith, and it appeared to be a rock of stability in a rather tumultuous environment.
But Smith moved on from the CEO’s position, and now Shah, citing family reasons, has announced her departure after less than three years. (Shah was a guest on our podcast last November.) Editor-in-chief Sewell Chan cycled through before taking the top job at the Columbia Journalism Review; he was replaced by Matthew Watkins, who’s been at the Tribune in 2015.
Thornton himself had moved on to co-found the American Journalism Project, which seeks to fund local news organizations across the country; he died late last month.
The turmoil at the Tribune could just be one of those things. Here’s hoping that the project can settle down, fix its business challenges and continue providing the Lone Star State with top-notch journalism. Its work is vitally important.
Former NBC News journalist Chuck Todd may be moving into local news. In a recent interview with Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times (gift link), Todd said he was “eager to find a business solution to a problem that had vexed investors for decades: the collapse of local news.”
So what would that look like? Mullin continued:
Mr. Todd’s business plan calls for a constellation of local sites owned by their communities — like his beloved Green Bay Packers — and anchored by coverage of local youth sports. The growing popularity of athletics and their importance to families who view them as a gateway to college make them an ideal subject to build around. No matter your politics, Mr. Todd said, you care about local coverage of your child’s latest game.
So far, so good. But then Mullin writes that Todd is prepared to invest up to $2 billion, though he didn’t identify any backers or say what company they were looking to buy other than ruling out major newspaper groups.
I wish Mullin had pressed Todd on what he meant by “sites owned by their communities,” because a $2 billion investment sure doesn’t sound like local control. Meanwhile, at Semafor, Ben Smith offers a guess: Nextdoor, the network of local sites known, at best, for updates on missing cats and at worst for posts warning about suspicious-looking people in the neighborhood. (Our local Nextdoor happens to be the news source of record for helicopter sightings.)
Well, that sure doesn’t sound like local control, either, but I suppose it makes sense. Smith notes that Semafor media reporter Max Tani wrote nearly a year ago that Nextdoor co-founder CEO Nirav Tolia, was looking to reposition the site, with Tolia admitting it “hasn’t had a great product in the last couple of years.”
Smith says that Todd wouldn’t comment on his guesswork. Of course, it would be much better if Todd and his investors were to help fund truly local news organizations. After all, $2 billion is four times the initial pot assembled by Press Forward, a philanthropic collaborative aimed at reviving community journalism.
On the other hand, we really do need some new ideas in for-profit local news. If Todd can contribute to that effort, it would be a real contribution. But if he’s thinking about reviving Nextdoor, or creating any sort of centralized “economies of scale” monstrosity, then he’s likely to learn what so many others have before him: Local doesn’t scale.
If you page through the Facebook feed of the Stoughton Media Access Corp., you’ll find the sort of fare that is typical of local access — a guide to Boston’s best museums, the town election, Town-Wide Cleanup Day and the like.
What you won’t find is any sign of a lawsuit the access group has filed against the town and three of its officials charging them with civil-rights violations and defamation, among other things. You can read all the gory details at Universal Hub, where Adam Gaffin has a thorough report. Essentially, though, SMAC, as the access operation is known, is charging that the officials threatened the operation and demanded that it stop carrying any content in opposition to a proposal to build a new elementary school. Gaffin writes:
In its suit, filed in Boston federal court, the Stoughton Media Access Corp. charges the town manager and the two select-board members have tried to block the channel from televising meetings related to the school project, demanded it run only content that supports the proposal, yelled at volunteer camerapeople, tried to get authority over the hiring and firing of the non-profit’s board members and attempted to block its funding, which comes from fees paid by the two cable companies that serve the town.
The officials named in the suit are Town Manager Thomas Calter and Select Board members Joseph Mokrisky and Stephen Cavey.
In addition to the school controversy, the suit alleges that Mokrisky went ballistic over a video that failed to give him credit for the development of a new park. “The SMAC videographer denied Mokrisky’s accusation that the video was edited to be unfavorable to Mokrisky,” according to the suit. “The SMAC videographer was brought to tears as a result of Mokrisky’s verbal assault.”
Local access is a vital part of the news ecosystem in most communities, providing live feeds of public meetings as well as a platform for residents to produce their own programs. Stoughton does not have an independent news organization, although it is served by a Patch and by The Enterprise, a Gannett-owned daily in nearby Brockton. Neither outlet has reported on SMAC’s lawsuit.
I want to call your attention to an outstanding deep dive into the news ecosystem of Fall River, Massachusetts. It was written for my Ethics and Diversity in the News Media class by Alexa Coultoff, a Northeastern junior who’s majoring in journalism and criminal justice. We’ve published it today at What Works, our website about the future of local news.
Research shows that communities lacking reliable local news were more likely to vote for Donald Trump last fall — not because they’re uninformed, but because the sort of blue-collar cities and rural areas that swung toward Trump are also more likely to be without a strong local news source. It’s correlation, not causation. But as Alexa writes, a stronger local news presence could help overcome the polarization that afflicts Fall River and, for that matter, the entire country.
By ruling in favor of The Associated Press in its lawsuit to overturn a ban imposed by the Trump White House, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden applied the First Amendment in a straightforward, entirely predictable manner. The Trump administration may appeal, but it would be shocking and deeply disturbing if McFadden’s decision isn’t upheld.
First, McFadden ruled that though the White House can exercise broad discretion in terms of which news organizations are allowed access to the Oval Office, Mar-a-Lago and other venues, it must do so in a neutral manner. The White House, by explicitly stating that the AP was being banned for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its proper name rather than the “Gulf of America,” was engaging in unconstitutional “viewpoint discrimination,” McFadden wrote. He continued:
The analysis is straightforward. The AP made an editorial decision to continue using “Gulf of Mexico” in its Stylebook. The Government responded publicly with displeasure and explicitly announced it was curtailing the AP’s access to the Oval Office, press pool events, and East Room activities. If there is a benign explanation for the Government’s decision, it has not been presented here.
The judge also rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the AP was seeking special privileges. First Amendment precedent holds that a news organization has no right to demand, say, an interview with a public official, or to be called on at a news conference. The White House claimed that’s what the AP was seeking.
