Mike Shapiro, a pioneer in hyperlocal for-profit news, unveils a new model

Mike Shapiro launched his first publication in New Providence, N.J., which is now the headquarters for TAPinto and the Hyperlocal News Network. 2012 public domain photo by Tomwsulcer.

If local news is going to thrive, we need a variety of business models, especially on the for-profit side. Yet, at least among news start-ups with robust reporting capacity, nonprofits are becoming more and more dominant. Indeed, three of the for-profits that Ellen Clegg and I write about in our book, “What Works in Community News,” The Colorado Sun, The Mendocino Voice and Santa Clara Local, have converted to nonprofit status in the past year.

One unique exception is TAPinto, a New Jersey-based company with about 100 franchises. The way it works is that local entrepreneurs start a TAPinto in their community and are able to — well, tap into the mothership’s tech, advertising and training resources. It’s not bad for an out-of-the-box solution, but there are limitations.

Recently, though, TAPinto chief executive Mike Shapiro launched a related business called the Hyperlocal News Network. It’s similar to TAPinto except that publishers have more flexibility to establish their own identity. Sophie Culpepper writes about Shapiro’s new venture for Nieman Lab, reporting that Shapiro told her by email:

There are … hundreds, if not thousands, of existing publishers who are really struggling with their digital presence and would benefit from our technology and back office services, yet want to keep their own branding. Our license model enables them to do just that.

Shapiro spoke with Ellen and me on our “What Works” podcast in April 2022. You can listen to it and read an AI-generated transcript by clicking here. We also wrote about TAPinto in our book, and I’m providing an excerpt below.

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TAPinto is a network of nearly a hundred hyperlocal websites, most of them in New Jersey, that employs an innovative franchise model. The network was begun in 2009 by Michael Shapiro, who back then was a New York lawyer looking to spend more time with his young son after he underwent open-heart surgery (he made a full recovery). Shapiro started a website that he called The Alternative Press in New Providence, where he lived, because he was dissatisfied by the lack of coverage in the local newspaper. As Shapiro tells it, he soon heard from residents of other communities asking him to expand, and a network was born. (The “TAP” in TAPinto stands for “The Alternative Press.”)

Although Shapiro is not a journalist, he said in an interview and on the “What Works” podcast that he takes journalistic objectivity seriously and requires his franchisees to adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. The way it works is this. For a fee of $5,000, a franchisee can set up shop with what is essentially a turnkey operation: a website based on a ready-made template with backend and technical support, training, and everything else they might need to begin covering local news and selling advertising. Publishers keep 80 percent of whatever ad revenues they’re able to earn, with 20 percent going to TAPinto. Advertising can also be shared across sites, and some editorial content is shared as well. Publishers are required to produce at least one original piece of journalism each day; stories typically cover such topics as neighborhood development issues, feel-good features, and public-safety news. A common arrangement, Shapiro said, is for a businessperson to become a franchisee and employ a journalist either full- or part-time.

Access to TAPinto sites is free, and Shapiro said the $5,000 franchise fee is far lower than what it would cost for a local media entrepreneur to get started on their own. “I think we’ve been able to demonstrate that you can have profitable local news sites that are 100 percent advertising-based, and that, to me, is really important,” he said. “People who are economically distressed shouldn’t have to choose between putting food on the table or buying medicine and finding out what’s going on in their town. So that’s very fundamental to us. And it’s also fundamental on the ownership side. In a lot of these situations, you have to be wealthy to start an online local news site if you want to have the technology and the functionality and stuff we offer.”

Observers we spoke with gave Shapiro generally high marks but said the sites tend to be of uneven quality, which is not surprising given the inexperience of many of the franchisees. Nevertheless, TAPinto represents a genuinely new way of providing local news and bears watching — particularly if Shapiro is able to build out his network nationally or inspires imitators.

Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans are reportedly on their way home

There’s some very good news out of Russia this morning, as three U.S. citizens who have been wrongly imprisoned by Vladimir Putin’s government —Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva — are reportedly on the verge of being released.

Oddly, the Journal, which has been fierce in keeping the spotlight on Gershkovich, does not yet have the report. But according to BBC News, the three are part of a larger swap involving “at least 24 prisoners,” including eight Russians who will be returned to Moscow.

Update: Here is the Journal’s coverage.

A new look for Media Nation

After several weeks of thinking about it, I’ve switched to a new theme for Media Nation. (“Theme” is WordPress-speak for “design.”) I’m still on the lookout for something better, but for now I think this will be an improvement. Why did I do this?

• My previous theme, Lovecraft, struck me as a bit too artsy for what I was looking for. The new theme, Twenty Sixteen, is more straightforward and newsier.

• As one of WordPress’ official themes, Twenty Sixteen receives regular maintenance updates. Lovecraft hadn’t been updated since 2022.

• With Lovecraft, you couldn’t see a link for commenting unless you clicked through to the individual post. As a result, I had to add “Leave a comment | Read comments” by hand to each post. Twenty Sixteen not only handles that automatically, but it gives you a count of how many people have commented. That way, you’ll know whether it’s worth clicking or not.

• Change is good.

Let me know what you think. If you have any suggestions for a better theme, I’m all ears.

Will Lewis is back in the news. And once again, it’s for all the wrong reasons.

Washington Post publisher Will Lewis. 2019 public domain photo by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Few media executives have benefited from the political chaos of the past month more than Washington Post publisher Will Lewis.

Before the presidential debate of June 27, Lewis seemed to be hanging by a thread over revelations that he was involved in covering up the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids back in 2011. He’s also come under fire for approving payments to a source while he was working at another paper and, more recently, demanding that journalists — including Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who later left the paper — not report on his transgressions.

Since the debate, which led to weeks of frenzied coverage regarding President Biden’s age and fitness, his subsequent withdrawal from the race, and the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris (not to mention an assassination attempt against Donald Trump), Lewis’ fate had been forgotten.

Until now.

NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, who earlier revealed that Lewis promised him an exclusive interview if Folkenflik would give Lewis’ ethical problems a good leaving-alone, reported on Tuesday that new documents show Lewis has been accused of making up a story 13 years ago “to shield evidence from police of possible crimes at Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids.” The accusations were leveled as part of a lawsuit brought against Murdoch’s tabloids by Prince Harry and other prominent political figures in the U.K.

Folkenflik’s story is filled with names and details, but essentially Lewis is accused of faking a security threat “to justify the deletion of millions of emails dating from the start of 2008 through the end of 2010.” Here’s the heart of Folkenflik’s report:

In July 2011, when police first learned of the deleted emails, Lewis explained that Murdoch’s company was compelled to get rid of them because of a tip that he and a senior executive received nearly six months earlier: an “outside source” told them that former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was conspiring with a News UK employee and another person to steal the emails of the CEO. That unnamed person was said to be Tom Watson, then a leading member of parliament and critic of the Murdochs. The IT person was later alleged to have been a former News UK staffer.

Brown has denounced the claim as false and outrageous. He’s asked Scotland Yard for a criminal investigation of the episode involving Lewis. Watson, who is among scores of litigants suing News UK alleging illegal invasions of privacy, has denied it. In court, the lead trial attorney for Watson, Harry and the others called the story “a ruse.”

Writing in The Guardian, Caroline Davies goes into detail about minutes of a meeting between police officials and Lewis in July 2011. In the excerpt below, “Rebekah” is Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of Murdoch’s News International company, and “BCL” is the law firm that was representing Murdoch’s interests. Here’s what Lewis reportedly told detectives:

We got a warning from a source that a current member of staff had got access to Rebekah’s emails and had passed them to Tom Watson MP.

This came to Rebekah. I was asked to meet the source. I will consult with BCL as to whether I can tell you the identity of the source. The source repeated the threat. Then the source came back and said it was a former member of staff and the emails had definitely been passed and that it was controlled by Gordon Brown. This added to our anxieties. We took steps to try and be more specific around her emails.

Folkenflik and Davies report that Lewis is also accused of leaking an audio recording aimed at harming a critic of Murdoch’s proposed acquisition of the Sky broadcasting service. That acquisition was nixed after the phone-hacking schedule came to light.

Lewis has denied any wrongdoing, though he would not speak with Folkenflik.

The Post, along with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, is one of our three great daily newspapers. We all have an interest in its surviving and thriving after several years of losing circulation and money. It’s been clear for some time that Lewis lacks the ethical compass needed to lead the Post.

Owner Jeff Bezos might have hoped that Lewis had survived the worst of it. But as the most recent developments show, this saga is not done playing out. It’s hard to see how it will end well for Lewis.

Earlier coverage.

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The happy warrior

We watched Kamala Harris’ speech in Atlanta on YouTube, and it was extraordinary — her pitch-perfect message casting liberalism as patriotism, her taunting of Donald Trump, and the sheer joy she brought to the proceedings. I was impressed with her body language and comfort level as well. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this for a long time, and I just hope it can continue.

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Another day, another report documenting the Secret Service’s failures

The New York Times has been doing tremendous work on the failures of the Secret Service and local law enforcement that led to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13. The latest (free link) shows that officials had multiple warning signs that should have led them to shut down the rally before Trump ever took the stage. It was truly a failure of epic proportions.

Last week the Times published a visual investigation with similar conclusions: the shooter had been spotted and seemed suspicious enough to have attracted the notice of security officers. They lost track of him. And they allowed the rally to go ahead, leading to the death of a retired firefighter and serious injury to two other attendees.

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Please become a paid supporter of Media Nation. Here’s what you’ll get.

Boats along the Charles River in Waltham Center

The idea behind having a weekly newsletter for paid supporters is to offer something extra. Today, though, I thought I would unlock my most recent newsletter so that you can see what you’ll get if you join for $5 a month. Every Thursday I send out a collection of commentary, photography, a round-up of the week’s posts and a song. I hope you’ll consider joining. To become a paid supporter, just click here.

A Muzzle to Waltham’s local access outlet for trying to silence citizen journalists

Postcard c. 1930-1945

According to its “About” page, Waltham Community Access Corp., which operates two local access stations for the benefit of cable subscribers, “is funded by a percentage of the gross revenues from Comcast and RCN cable.” This is a typical arrangement, mandated by state law. And though WCAC describes itself as an “independent nonprofit corporation,” the revenues that access channels receive from cable providers are generally passed through to them by local government. What’s more, the cable providers themselves are licensed by each city and town.

In other words, local access outlets like WCAC may not be part of the government, but they certainly have a relationship with the government. Which is why the actions taken by WCAC last September, just before a city election, were especially pernicious. According to a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court by a citizen journalism group known as Channel 781 News, WCAC filed a complaint with YouTube claiming copyright infringement because Channel 781 had made use of clips of government meetings. Again, as is typical of local access operations, WCAC carries some municipal meetings in full and then posts them online. According to a press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the suit on Channel 781’s behalf, WCAC violated Channel 781’s rights under the “fair use” exception to copyright law:

The Waltham Community Access Corp.’s misrepresentation of copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) led YouTube to temporarily deactivate Channel 781, making its work disappear from the internet last September just five days before an important municipal election, the suit says. 

“WCAC knew it had no right to stop people from using video recordings of public meetings, but asked YouTube to shut us down anyway,” Channel 781 cofounder Josh Kastorf said. “Democracy relies on an informed public, and there must be consequences for anyone who abuses the DMCA to silence journalists and cut off people’s access to government.”

WCAC’s actions — which have earned it a New England Muzzle Award — resulted in the temporary shutdown of Channel 781, according to a story from last September in The Justice, the student newspaper at Brandeis University. At that time, Justice reporter Lea Zaharoni wrote that WCAC did not respond to a request for comment. But Zaharoni found that the president of WCAC’s board also served as a city official, and observed that Channel 781 had reported critically on yet another organization that particular official was involved with.

Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub, who has published a comprehensive account of the lawsuit, found a statement posted by WCAC executive director Maria Sheehan that has since been taken down:

Our station is a private nonprofit that does not receive taxpayer funding. Over recent years, photographs from our news department, and video from the MAC channel, have been reproduced without our permission. We know this is a reality of the world we live in, but we put copyright disclaimers on our media for a reason. Some have used our content to score political points under the veil of anonymity. Others have used it to encourage residents to hate. This practice can damage reputations and spread misinformation and we do not want to be a part of that. So as we head into a contentious election season, I’m asking the public to respect people who work hard to create our original content. In the interest of transparency, we will entertain requests to reuse our content for free, but misuse is wrong, and it is illegal. Moving forward, the Waltham Channel will take whatever legal steps necessary to protect our content.

According to the EFF, “WCAC sent three copyright infringement notices to YouTube referencing 15 specific Channel 781 videos, leading YouTube to deactivate the account and render all of its content inaccessible. YouTube didn’t restore access to the videos until two months later, after a lengthy intervention by EFF.”

In its lawsuit, the EFF asks that the court issue an order to prevent WCAC from targeting Channel 781. Damages and attorney’s fees are being sought as well.

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