Shocking news from Iowa, more sobering numbers from the Times, and a map that favors Harris

The map if the Times’ poll is right*

A huge and encouraging outlier for Kamala Harris on Saturday night. Some more sobering numbers today.

First, the encouraging news. As you may already know, the new Iowa Poll from Ann Selzer, which gets high marks from FiveThirtyEight, shows Harris with a three-point lead over Donald Trump. It’s hard to know what to make of this. But Iowa has gone deep red in recent elections, and virtually every other survey has put Trump well in the lead — including earlier samples taken by the same poll.

The margin, 47% for Harris and 44% for Trump, is being driven by voters over 65, especially women, who say they are supporting Harris by 63% to 28%. But Harris also has a slight edge among older men, 47% to 45%.

What does this mean? I’m not a polling expert. I can tell you that the latest Emerson Poll, which also gets very high marks, continues to show Trump with a nine-point lead in Iowa. On the other hand, a new Miami University poll shows Trump with just a three-point lead in deep-red Ohio, and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown with a two-point lead over his Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno. I should add that FiveThirtyEight does not rate this poll.

If the Iowa and Ohio results are picking up something real, then Harris may be headed not just for a victory, but for one larger than anyone expects. My own totally unscientific, vibe-based sense of the race is that there are three possible outcomes: (1) a narrow Trump win; (2) a narrow Harris win; (3) a surprisingly substantial Harris win. I’m going for somewhere between (2) and (3). Needless to say, Harris will win the popular vote with ease.

Finally, The New York Times this morning came out with its last poll before Election Day, and it is simultaneously worrying for Harris yet showing some unexpected opportunities. The Times-Siena poll sits atop the FiveThirtyEight rankings, so we can’t ignore it — although, as Josh Marshall has observed, it also relies on a different understanding of the electorate from what most other pollsters are using, and that understanding may be right or wrong.

*Based on the barest of margins in the Times poll (something you really can’t do given that all these numbers are well within the margin of error), Harris would lose the Blue Wall state of Michigan and win Pennsylvania. Wisconsin seems a little safer. But she also has small leads in North Carolina and Georgia.

One other possible good sign for Harris: the Times-Siena poll goes all the way back to Oct. 24 (through Nov. 2), and Harris seems to have built momentum in recent days. In any case, I played around with the map, above, and awarded Harris every state in which the Times poll has her ahead, even by less than 1% (again: don’t try this at home) It shows Harris with 293 electoral votes, 21 more than the 270 needed. I also flipped Pennsylvania to Trump, and Harris would still win, with 274 electoral votes.

Corrections: My map is an accurate reflection of the Times-Siena poll, but an earlier version of this post said that Harris was ahead in Arizona. She’s not. I’ve also corrected the number of Electoral College votes needed to win.

With Election Day upon us, some new numbers suggest that Harris has a slight advantage

Cherry-picking the data while trying to maintain my sanity: With Election Day looming, I want to share four sets of numbers suggesting that Kamala Harris really will dispatch the Orange Menace once and for all.

First, The Economist’s election model, which has showed Donald Trump with slight edge in recent days, has flipped again, giving Harris a 52% chance of winning and Trump 48%.

The model is similar to what FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver do: it’s based on some high-level math that takes into account polls, poll quality and other measures and then runs multiple computerized simulations. You may recall that similar models gave Hillary Clinton a 70% to 95% chance of winning in 2016, so obviously this needs to be taken with several truckloads of salt. Still, it’s better to be at 52% than 48%.

Second, the latest Marist Poll, which FiveThirtyEight judges to be of high quality, gives Harris a lead of between 2% and 3% in the all-important Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Again, that’s not much, and it’s well within the margin of error. But it’s better to be ahead than behind.

Third, The Washington Post’s polling average —that is, an actual average of polls rather than a FiveThirtyEight-style simulation — also has Harris slightly ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan (by 2%) and in Pennsylvania (by less than 1%). The Post’s averages have consistently tilted more toward Harris than The New York Times’, but there’s no reason to think that the Times is doing a better job with these than the Post.

Finally, the Gallup Poll shows a 10-point enthusiasm gap favoring Harris, with 77% of Democrats and voters who lean Democrat saying they are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting and 67% of Republicans and Republican leaners saying the same. As with all these numbers, it’s impossible to say exactly how that’s going to play out, but it’s better to be at the higher rather than the lower number.

Taking advantage of Jeff Bezos’ folly, publications tout Harris endorsements to sign up new readers

What is proving to be a debacle for The Washington Post is simultaneously turning into a boon for other news outlets. A week after Post owner Jeff Bezos killed an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris, a number of other publications that endorsed Harris say that subscriptions are on the rise.

The Post lost 250,000 of its 2.5 million digital and print subscribers after the paper announced that it would no longer endorse candidates for political office. Bezos compounded his problems with an op-ed in which he defended the decision and whined about how hard it is to be a billionaire newspaper owner.

Become a supporter of Media Nation for just $5 a month. You’ll receive a weekly newsletter with exclusive content.

Among the publications taking advantage was The Philadelphia Inquirer, which fortuitously published its endorsement of Harris last Friday, the same day that word of the Post’s non-endorsement was getting around. The Inquirer’s endorsement quickly made the rounds on social media — and, according to Sara Guaglione of Digiday, the paper immediately experienced a bump. She wrote:

After publishing its endorsement of Harris on Oct. 25, The Philadelphia Inquirer gained over 4,200 new digital subscribers, “about three times a typical week for us and our biggest week of new starts ever,” Inquirer publisher and CEO Lisa Hughes said in an emailed statement. The Inquirer also saw “a bump” in individual donations to its journalism fund with The Lenfest Institute, she added. Donations to The Inquirer’s High-Impact Journalism Fund are up about 15% since the endorsement, according to a company spokesperson, without providing exact figures.

The Seattle Times published its endorsement of Harris this past Tuesday, a day when it could take full advantage of the outrage that had broken out over Bezos’ action and by a similar action at the Los Angeles Times ordered by billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong. Under the headline “Hell, yes! The Seattle Times edit board endorses Kamala Harris for president,” the paper’s publisher, Frank Blethen, and Kate Riley, the editorial-page editor, devote nearly as much space to disparaging the Post and the LA Times as they do to touting Harris’ credentials. (The Blethen family owns the Seattle Times.) Blethen writes:

We take our journalism and community service very seriously. We have been preparing our fifth generation for Times leadership when I step down at the end of 2025. And members of the sixth interned in our newsroom this summer.

So it is with consternation that I and editorial page editor Kate Riley learned that the publishers of two of America’s most venerable newspapers on both coasts decided not to weigh in at all, even though their editorial boards were preparing Harris endorsements.

In contrast to the Philadelphia and Seattle papers, The Boston Globe endorsed Harris back on Oct. 18, too early to take much advantage — but it’s trying nevertheless.

“Jim Dao, our editorial page editor, has been actively sharing our position on endorsements this week,” said Globe director of communications Carla Kath by email. “We are pleased with our growth in subscribers over the past few days with new subscribers indicating that they subscribed because we maintained our tradition of endorsements.” In a follow-up, though, she added, “We are not sharing numbers at this time.”

Digiday’s Guaglione reported that The Guardian has also benefited from the Post’s folly. The Guardian endorsed Harris on Oct. 23; after Bezos’ cancellation became public, Guardian US editor Betsy Reed sent an email to readers asking for donations. Guaglione wrote:

By Oct. 28, U.S. readers had pledged roughly $1.8 million to the Guardian, according to a company spokesperson. The Guardian brought in $485,000 in reader donations that Friday, a U.S. daily fundraising record. Saturday brought in even more — $619,000 in reader donations.

I’m among The Guardian’s new donors. I actually canceled the Post months ago after my employer, Northeastern University, began offering free digital subscriptions to faculty and students. Otherwise I would not have canceled the Post despite my anger at Bezos — but I did figure that the moment was right to show support for another news organization. (I was also a weekly media columnist for The Guardian from 2007 to ’11.)

During the 2016 presidential campaign and throughout the Trump presidency, news organizations benefited from an increase in subscriptions, donations and audience. Although a second Trump presidency would be far too high a price for our democracy to pay, we may be seeing the early stages of that happening once again if the worst comes to pass.

Clarification: The Seattle Times endorsed Harris on Sept. 1; that editorial is behind a paywall. The “Hell, yes!” endorsement is a follow-up, and is free.

The end of The Star-Ledger’s print edition marks the next step in Advance’s digital strategy

Downtown Newark. Photo (cc) 2016 by massmatt.

News that Advance Local is closing its print newspapers in New Jersey is sad on one level. On another level, though, it marks the continued evolution of the chain’s digital-first strategy, which I reported on in the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, “What Works in Community News.”

Ellen and I also talked about Advance’s digital focus on our podcast this past May with Joshua Macht and Ronnie Ramos, the top two executives at MassLive, the chain’s statewide online news organization in Massachusetts.

According to Lola Fadulu and Tracey Tully of The New York Times (gift link), Advance will end the print editions of three daily papers in New Jersey, The Star-Ledger of Newark, The Times of Trenton and the South Jersey Times. A weekly, the Hunterdon County Democrat, will also end its print run. Another daily, the Jersey Journal, which covers Jersey City, will shut down altogether. According to a statement from Advance:

“Today’s announcement represents the next step into the digital future of journalism in New Jersey,” said Steve Alessi, President of NJ Advance Media. “It’s important to emphasize that this is a forward-looking decision that allows us to invest more deeply than ever in our journalism and in serving our communities.”

Alessi said that that ceasing print publication will allow NJ Advance Media to reallocate resources to strengthen its core newsroom. He said that the newsroom has more reporters than it did a year ago and has plans to continue to grow in 2025 as the organization looks to bolster reporting in previously under-covered areas of the state.

That strategy reflects the direction that Advance was moving in back in March 2022, when I interviewed Chris Kelly, who at that time was the interim editor of NJ.com. Advance was already taking a one-newsroom approach, putting NJ.com first and then doling out stories to its print edition. It was a strategy that had allowed NJ.com to build up strong statewide and regional coverage, Kelly said, although he conceded that it meant hyperlocal coverage was lacking. Here’s an excerpt from our book:

***

In New Jersey, as elsewhere, the newspaper scene today is much diminished. The Star-Ledger remains the largest paper in the state, with a weekday print and digital circulation that averaged nearly 125,000 and a Sunday circulation of about 140,000. Next up is The Record, which covers northern New Jersey (35,000 on weekdays, 40,000 on Sundays) and the Asbury Park Press (27,000 on weekdays, 39,000 on Sundays), both of which are owned by Gannett. Observers we spoke with gave those papers reasonably high marks for the quality of their reporting, but the breadth of their coverage was regarded as lacking. The Star-Ledger, owned by Advance Publications, is worth a closer look. Advance is a privately held company based in New York and controlled by the Newhouse family. It is best known for its magazine division, Condé Nast, which publishes prestige titles such as The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. But the company operates a number of daily newspapers as well, including The Birmingham News of Alabama, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland and The Oregonian of Portland.

Advance runs its newspapers in regional groups, emphasizing paid digital subscriptions over print. In New Jersey, that means The Star-Ledger and two smaller dailies, The Times of Trenton and the South Jersey News, as well as a number of other Advance publications, are all part of NJ.com. A unified newsroom feeds stories to its digital hub and to its print newspapers. Some of those stories are specific to a particular region and might only run in one paper; others, more general in nature, might run statewide. All of them are posted at NJ.com, which, as of early 2022, was attracting about 1.5 million daily visits. What it means is that NJ.com is able to field the largest editorial staff in the state — about 115 journalists — as well as offer robust statehouse, investigative and data reporting. The advantage is that Advance is able to provide its audience with strong statewide and regional coverage. The disadvantage is a shortage of day-to-day accountability journalism at the community level.

As was the case with many media outlets in the spring of 2022, the NJ.com newsroom was closed as a consequence of the COVID pandemic. We met Chris Kelly, NJ.com’s senior director of news, features, topics and innovation, who was serving as interim editor, at a restaurant near his home in Maplewood. [He is now managing producer of entertainment.] He spoke animatedly about Advance’s strategy for covering New Jersey. “My argument in the eight years that I’ve been here is that you’ve got to basically become a statewide news outlet and almost move from man-to-man coverage to zone coverage,” he said. “We just simply cannot sustain a reporter covering Maplewood, covering Millbrook. I’m not unaware that doesn’t come without the downside of, yeah, we cannot cover every council meeting, we are going to miss things. But that’s been the strategy that mostly seems to be working and has allowed us to kind of sustain at the level we’re sustaining.” He also lauded Advance’s commitment to enterprise journalism, telling us: “The one thing that I can say is, if we’ve got a story that we’ve got to get, we’re going to get it, and we’re going to keep doing it. That level of commitment, the financial support, the legal support has been unwavering since I’ve been there.”

‘What Works in Community News’ will soon be available in paperback

“What Works in Community News” will soon be available in paperback!  The nice UPS driver delivered some advance copies to Ellen and me on Wednesday. The list price is $19.95, which is $10 less than the hardcover edition, and, according to Bookshop.org, you can pre-order it now for shipping on Nov. 12. There’s an audio version, too, which is perfect for those long fall walks as you ponder how to launch an independent news project in your community.

What j-students think about newsroom diversity; plus, Bezos whines, and a new editor at the Monitor

Pioneering Black female news leaders, from left: Vanessa De Luca, editor-in-chief of The Root; Lindsay Peoples, editor-in-chief of The Cut; and Kiran Nazish, founding director of the Coalition for Women in Journalism. Photo (cc) 2022 by Collision Conf.

I asked my media ethics students today to think about diversity in newsrooms — what it is, why it matters and how news organizations can foster it at a time when there’s not a whole lot of hiring going on. I took notes, and I thought you’d be interested to see some of their ideas.

How would you define diversity in news?

  • Ensuring that members of marginalized communities are properly represented.
  • Encompassing a broad range of diversity — not just race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation but a diversity of opinion, age and life experience.
  • Aiming for diversity not just inside the newsroom but in the people we seek out for interviews.
  • Understand that though journalists are supposed to keep their political beliefs out of their coverage, a range of views matters because it informs the way we approach our work.

How can a news organization benefit from diversity?

  • Reporters can interact more effectively with organizations that represent different groups such as African Americans or the LGBTQ community.
  • A diverse newsroom can ease polarization by representing a wider range of voices, thus enhancing democracy.
  • A diverse newsroom will set a different tone than one that is predominantly white and male.
  • There is less chance of underrepresented groups being mischaracterized in stories.

How can newsrooms become more diverse in an era of financial constraints on hiring?

  • Thorough DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) training for the reporters who are on staff can be helpful even if the staff itself is not especially diverse.
  • News organizations should network extensively at organizations representing affinity groups such as Black journalists, LGBTQ journalists and the like so those contacts are already in place when hiring opportunities arise.
  • Think about diversity in recruiting not just for your own news organization’s internal benefit but to serve the community better.
  • Offer fellowships to young journalists of color to create a pipeline of people who could be hired when openings occur.

Pretty smart stuff, I’d say.

Bezos’ not-so-fine whine

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wrote a self-serving commentary in which he attempted to justify his last-minute cancellation of the paper’s Kamala Harris endorsement.

Among other things, he said that his decision, which he admitted was poorly timed, was aimed at helping to overcome distrust in the media, writing that endorsements help feed the perception of bias:

Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working….

We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.

Bezos’ take on media trust is facile and shallow. The top-line numbers tell us that public distrust of the media has been growing for a generation or two. In reality, though, that’s an artifact of media fragmentation. We all trust the media that we use; liberals and Democrats tend to trust mainstream sources like The New York Times, public radio and, until this past weekend, the Post. Today’s MAGA Republicans trust Fox News and Donald Trump himself. This analysis by the Pew Research Center is four years old, but you get the idea.

The steaming pile of trouble that Bezos just dumped on his paper is that the Post has morphed overnight from a news source trusted by its audience to one that is getting the side-eye from just about everyone.

David Folkenflik of NPR reported Monday that the Post had lost more than 200,000 of its 2.5 million digital and print subscribers in just 24 hours after the Harris endorsement was yanked. That’s on Bezos, and it’s certainly not a sign that his arrogant disrespect for the Post’s editorial board has done anything to engender trust. Quite the opposite.

A new editor at the Monitor

Whenever I want to read the news and not feel like my hair is on fire, I take a look at The Christian Science Monitor, a great news organization that inspires optimism and emphasizes solutions. It’s especially strong on international news, though it covers the U.S. as well.

Once a full-service newspaper, the Monitor has shrunk to a daily newsletter and a weekly newsmagazine aggregating some of the outlet’s best journalism. The Monitor is located down the street from us at Northeastern, and yes, I’m a paid subscriber.

The Monitor announced this week that a new editor will be taking over soon. Christa Case Bryant, a veteran Monitor journalist whose duties have included building up the digital side, running the Jerusalem bureau and covering Congress, will succeed Mark Sappenfield.

In 2009 I wrote a lengthy feature about the Monitor for CommonWealth Magazine (now CommonWealth Beacon) that gets into the paper’s history.

A consumer’s guide to the poorly understood tradition of newspaper endorsements

Photo (cc) 2007 by Daniel R. Blume

The newspaper world was rocked last week when two billionaire owners, Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times followed by Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post, killed endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris against the wishes of their editorial boards.

Harris supporters erupted in outrage, with many of them vowing to cancel their subscriptions and demanding to know how two wealthy men could be allowed to interfere with the sanctity of the editorial process. Aren’t media moguls supposed to be rarely seen and never heard?

Now, it’s true that Bezos’s and Soon-Shiong’s actions were outrageous, but that’s because of the high-handed, disrespectful manner in which they handled the endorsements. In fact, it is perfectly acceptable for newspaper owners to involve themselves in the editorial pages. The problem is that we journalists are not very good at explaining the ethics of our trade, and we too often act arrogantly toward the public we purportedly serve. As a result, endorsements are poorly understood.

Read the rest at CommonWealth Beacon.

The fallout from the Post’s gutless decision; plus, my 2018 book portrayed a very different Bezos

Former Washington Post (and Boston Globe) top editor Marty Baron, left, with his old Globe colleague Matt Carroll, now a journalism professor at Northeastern University. Photo (cc) 2024 by Dan Kennedy.

The fallout over Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to kill his paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris has been widespread and withering, according to Hadas Gold and Brian Stelter of CNN.

Internally, 15 Post opinion writers signed a piece calling the decision (gift link) a “terrible mistake.” (The tease says 16, so perhaps the number is still growing.) Ruth Marcus and Karen Tumulty have weighed in separately. Ann Telnaes has a gray-wash cartoon headlined, inevitably, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Editor-at-large Robert Kagan has resigned. The legendary Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein issued a statement called the decision not to endorse “surprising and disappointing.”

Become a supporter of Media Nation for just $5 a month. You’ll receive a weekly newsletter with exclusive content including a round-up of the week’s posts, photography and a song of the week.

Externally, Max Tani of Semafor reports that some 2,000 Post subscribers had canceled by Friday afternoon.

If Bezos is still capable of shame, then the most wounding reaction had to be that of his former executive editor, Marty Baron, who took to Twitter and posted:

This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. @realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.

Make no mistake: Bezos owns this decision. New York Times media reporters Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson write that the Post’s opinions editor, David Shipley, and even the ethically challenged publisher, Will Lewis, tried to talk him out of it, although they note that a Post spokeswoman disputed that and called it a “Washington Post decision.” Continue reading “The fallout from the Post’s gutless decision; plus, my 2018 book portrayed a very different Bezos”

Jeff Bezos, too, shows Trump ‘anticipatory obedience’; plus, death for sale, and Billy Penn at 10

Jeff Bezos. Photo (cc) 2019 by Daniel Oberhaus.

An increasing number of news organizations are becoming fearful in the face of a rising tide of fascism. The Washington Post today joined the Los Angeles Times in deciding not to endorse in the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. David Folkenflik of NPR reports:

The editorial page editor, David Shipley, told colleagues that the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, would publish a note to readers online early Friday afternoon.

Shipley told colleagues the editorial board was told yesterday by management that there would not be an endorsement. He added that he “owns” this decision. The reason he cited was to create “independent space” where the newspaper does not tell people for whom to vote.

As with the LA Times, there has been no change in ownership at the Post, and both papers routinely have endorsed Democratic candidates in the past. The Post’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, courageously stood up to Trump in the face of threats during Trump’s rise in 2015 and ’16 and throughout his presidency. But the Post has been adrift in recent years, and the Bezos of 2018 is clearly not the Bezos of 2024.

Become a supporter of Media Nation for just $5 a month. You’ll receive a weekly newsletter with exclusive content such as a round-up of the week’s posts, photography and a song of the week.

In CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter, Brian Stelter cites the historian Timothy Snyder’s warning about “anticipatory obedience,” quoting Snyder as writing that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” That appears to be what has happened with Bezos and LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong.

Now, it’s true that the very notion of newspaper endorsements may have had their day. Newspaper chains such as Alden Global Capital and Gannett have moved away from them. The New York Times, weirdly, has given up on state and local endorsements, where the editorial board’s views might be welcome, while continuing to endorse in national races. Nonprofit news outlets can’t endorse without losing their tax exemption.

But for the LA Times and the Post to take a pass on the presidential race this late in the campaign smacks of giving in to the punishment they might be subjected to if Trump returns to office. Anticipatory obedience, in other words. A thoughtful, considered explanation months ago as to why they were ending endorsements would be another matter, but this is anything but that.

Meanwhile, the Times Union of Albany, New York, part of the Hearst chain, endorsed Harris today, writing:

For all Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about the weaponization of government, it’s Mr. Trump who has threatened to fire thousands of diligent career civil servants, fill the federal workforce with his loyal minions, use the Justice Department to hound political adversaries, and sic the military on citizens who protest against him.

This is not the talk of a person fit to be president for all Americans. On the issues and on character, it’s Ms. Harris who can be entrusted with the power and responsibility of the presidency.

This has been a shameful week for the LA Times and The Washington Post, and now it’s been punctuated by a much smaller paper’s willingness to step into the breach.

Merchants of death

One of the worst consequences of the local news crisis has been the rise of the oxymoronic paid obituary. Sorry, but obits are news stories with journalistic standards. If someone is paying for it, then it’s not an obit, it’s an ad — a death notice, in other words.

Bill Mitchell has a stunning piece up at Poynter Online about the venerable Hartford Courant, now owned by the cost-slashing hedge fund Alden Global Capital. It seems that a respected former staff reporter named Tom Condon died recently — and the Courant, rather than producing its own obit, picked up the one published in CT Mirror, a nonprofit that makes its journalism available for a fee to other news outlets. What’s more, the Courant has now slipped that obit behind a paywall.

The Courant’s website also carried an obit written by the Condon family for Legacy.com, according to Mitchell, who writes:

Paid obits, often written by and paid for by family members, have been boosting the sagging revenues of newspapers for a couple of decades. (The Courant charges about $1,200 for an obit the length of the one submitted by the Condon family, with an extra charge for a photo.) In 2019, Axios reported that more than a million paid obits were producing $500 million annually for newspapers, a small but significant chunk of overall advertising and circulation revenues then totaling about $25 billion a year.

It’s outrageous, and it’s not because newspapers are profiting from death. Rather, charging for obits is fundamentally no different from charging for any other type of news, and it corrupts what is supposed to be a journalistic endeavor.

The Courant and Alden are hardly alone in this. But for the paper to rely on another news organization to cover the death of one of its own really drives home just how far we’ve traveled down a very bad road.

Lessons from Billy Penn

Ten years ago, the digital journalism pioneer Jim Brady launched Billy Penn, a mobile-first news outlet covering Philadelphia. A few months later, I was in Philly to interview Brady and Chris Krewson, Billy Penn’s first editor, for my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls.”

Billy Penn was eventually acquired by WHYY, Philly’s public radio station. Brady is now vice president of journalism for the Knight Foundation, and Krewson is executive editor of LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers.

Krewson has written an informative and entertaining piece for LION on “10 things I’ve learned about independent publishing since launching Billy Penn in 2014.” Probably the most important of those lessons is that it took longer for Brady and Krewson to make a go of it than they were able to give — the project finally broken even in 2021, but by then WHYY was in charge.

That remains a problem for today’s start-ups, Krewson writes, although he’s hopeful that new philanthropic efforts such as Press Forward will give them the runway they need to build toward sustainability.