Colorado Sun – Media Nation

More fallout from the LA Times; plus, the Sun shines in Colorado, and news deserts spread

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong. Photo (cc) 2014 by NHS Confederation.

News that the Los Angeles Times would not endorse a candidate for president has quickly ballooned into yet another crisis for Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s feckless and irresponsible owner.

Mariel Garza, the Times’ editorials editor, quit on Wednesday, reports Sewell Chan in the Columbia Journalism Review. “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza told Chan. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

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Chan, by the way, is a former editorial-page editor at the Times. He was recently named editor of the CJR after previously working as editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune.

Soon-Shiong, a billionaire surgeon, responded to the criticism with a post on Twitter suggesting that he wanted to publish a side-by-side analysis of Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s strengths and weaknesses, but that the editorial board refused to comply:

In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years. Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision. Please #vote.

Needless to say, the purpose of a newspaper’s opinion pages is to express opinions, not to offer “non-partisan information.”

Now, let’s back up a bit and look at the role of owners at large metropolitan newspapers like the LA Times. Ethically, owners should stay clear of news coverage, but Soon-Shiong reportedly violated that edict by interfering with a story about a friend whose dog had bitten someone, of all things. Natalie Korach reported in The Wrap earlier this year that the incident played a role (along with deep cuts in the newsroom) in executive editor Kevin Merida’s decision to quit in January of this year.

On the other hand, owners are free to exert their influence on the editorial pages. Indeed, at one time the lure of exercising political influence was one of the main reasons that rich people bought newspapers. So Soon-Shiong did not act unethically in killing an editorial endorsing Harris for president. Even so, his actions were high-handed and disrespectful, and by acting as he did at the last minute — instead of, say, announcing a no-endorsement policy earlier this year — he precipitated a crisis. In fact, as Max Tani noted in Semafor on Tuesday, the Times had endorsed in state and local races just last week.

Another consideration is the effect that endorsements actually have on political campaigns. A good rule of thumb is that the smaller and more obscure the race, the more that a newspaper’s opinion might actually influence the outcome. A presidential endorsement is the opposite of that, which Garza acknowledged in her resignation letter:

I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.

But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.

Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state — and one of the largest in the nation still — declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it.

Garza gets at something that is at least as important as influencing voters. An endorsement is how a news organization expresses its values. And what Soon-Shiong has expressed is that his newspaper is going to remain neutral at a time when a fascist (according to two generals who served under Trump, John Kelly and Mark Milley, language that Harris herself has now adopted) is seeking to return to office.

Newspapers like The New York Times and The Boston Globe have endorsed Harris. Yet, in a potentially ominous sign, The Washington Post so far has not.

Unlike the public manner in which the LA Times’ non-endorsement has played out, there’s no indication of what’s going on at the Post. Independent media reporter Oliver Darcy writes that the Post’s silence is starting to raise eyebrows, as well as new questions about its ethically challenged publisher, Will Lewis. Darcy writes that the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, “has repeatedly been targeted by Donald Trump over the years” and “is not alone amongst the rich and powerful who may prefer to stay as far away from politics as possible this election cycle.”

Let’s hope the Post is heard from soon.

The Sun is shining

A little over a year ago, The Colorado Sun announced it was switching from a hybrid for-profit/nonprofit ownership model to nonprofit governance. At the time, co-founder and editor Larry Ryckman (now the publisher) said that whatever misgivings he might have about the nonprofit model, it gave the Sun an easier story to tell to prospective funders.

“Whether I agree with it or not, whether I even like it or not, the reality is that many individuals, many institutions and philanthropic groups, have concluded that journalism should be nonprofit,” Ryckman told me in an interview for Nieman Lab. “I have my own thoughts on that, but that is reality.”

Well, now the switch has paid off. Ryckman announced earlier this week:

The Colorado Sun has been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the American Journalism Project. AJP is a national nonprofit whose purpose is to boost nonprofit journalism around the country, and it has thus far committed $62.7 million to 49 news organizations across 35 states.

The grant will be spread over three years, and the funds will be used to strengthen the long-term sustainability and future expansion of The Sun. This will include growing our fund development efforts and bolstering our business operations to allow us to deepen our impact in Colorado, while laying the foundation for the next era of high-quality, nonprofit journalism in our state — ensuring that Coloradans have the news they deserve for generations to come.

Before becoming a nonprofit, the Sun was a public benefit corporation, a for-profit that operates under certain restrictions and requirements. It also had a relationship with a nonprofit organization, which allowed donors to support the Sun’s journalism with tax-deductible contributions.

The Sun, by the way, is one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I feature in our book, “What Works in Community News.” Ryckman has been a guest on our podcast as well.

The crisis continues

The Colorado Sun’s good news notwithstanding, the local news crisis continues unabated and may be getting worse. That was the message at a webinar Wednesday to mark the release of the third annual State of Local News report from the Medill School at Northwestern University.

“The crisis in local news is snowballing,” said Tim Franklin, the John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill. Franklin said that more than 3,000 newspapers have closed since 2005, about a third of the total, with a concomitant decline in newspaper jobs, which he called “a staggering loss.”

Zach Metzger, who runs the project now that founder Penelope Abernathy has retired, added: “News deserts are continuing to expand.”

I plan to look more closely at the data and write a follow-up at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, Sophie Culpepper of Nieman Lab has a thorough overview of the new report.

Poynter pushes back against gloom and doom; plus, transitions in Colorado and Maine

The Poynter Institute has published an in-depth report on the state of journalism that’s aimed at injecting some optimism into what often seems like a dreary and depressing landscape. The report is called “OnPoynt,” and the introduction says in part:

[D]oom-and-gloom narratives that cherry pick stories of vulture capitalists, job loss statistics and print closures are incomplete or out of date, painting an inaccurate picture of a news and information ecosystem on life support.

OnPoynt aims to offer a forward-minded look at the state of journalism and the news industry that propels the story by considering trends related to creative product ideas, audience growth strategies and traction around revenue, artificial intelligence and innovation.

The entire report is worth reading, but I want to take note of two sections — one on trust, the other on local news.

The narrative that the public has lost trust in the news media overlooks the reality that people actually have a fair amount of faith in their local news outlets. For instance, a survey that Poynter conducted found that 83% of respondents believe that local news organizations “are at least somewhat important to the well-being of their local community,” and 71% say local journalists are reporting the news accurately. The numbers are only slightly lower for Republicans than they are for Democrats. The report continues:

Audiences will spend more time and money with sources of information that they “trust.” Civic participation will grow as trust in media grows. Accessible local news improves democratic participation.

This really goes to the heart of a central argument that Ellen Clegg and I explore in our book, “What Works in Community News.” National news organizations, especially the cable outlets, are contributing to polarization and to the decline of civic life. Rebuilding the local news infrastructure could help lower the temperature and help people on different sides of the political divide find common ground.

Fortunately, as Poynter says in its section on local news, there are viable alternatives to corporate-owned chain newspapers, which in too many cases are being hollowed out and leaving communities bereft. Poynter identifies local television news, public radio and the rise of philanthropy in supporting nonprofit community journalism as countervailing trends.

“The local news ecosystem is complex. The loss of traditional local news journalism jobs should not be minimized, but the battle cry of ‘saving local news’ is oversimplified,” the report says. “Hundreds of news or niche information sites have started in recent years. Many are independent, many represent new offerings from existing companies.”

Poynter’s survey also shows that people who are engaged in civic life are more likely to be local news consumers — a finding that goes back at least to Robert Putnam’s landmark 2000 book “Bowling Alone.”

There’s a lot of bad news out there, and it would be pollyannaish to pretend otherwise. But it’s crucial to look at success stories, figure out why they’re working and encourage people to emulate them in their own communities.

Transition at The Colorado Sun

The Colorado Sun, a digital startup that we profile in “What Works in Community News,” announced a major reorganization last week. Editor and co-founder Larry Ryckman will now be the publisher, with senior editor and fellow co-founder Dana Coffield moving up to the editor’s slot.

In an announcement, the Sun said the shuffle was motivated in part by the Sun’s transition from a for-profit public benefit company to a nonprofit organization, which has created “new responsibilities for its senior leadership.”

The Sun was founded six years ago by 10 journalists at The Denver Post who quit out of frustration over repeated cuts by the paper’s hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital. Today the Sun employs two dozen staff members.

Ryckman was a guest on our “What Works” podcast in July. Coffield, who came from a background of small newspapers in the rural parts of Colorado, told us for our book that she was proud of the Sun’s role in reporting stories from across the state that can be republished for free in smaller newspapers.

“We’ve been able to provide quality journalism to some of the smallest outlets in the state,” she said. “I like being able to contribute to a healthy ecosystem for smaller newspapers, since I came from that heritage.”

A new editor in Maine

The Maine Trust for Local News, a nonprofit organization that publishes the for-profit Portland Press Herald and about a dozen other daily and weekly newspapers, has named an executive editor to oversee the trust’s holdings.

Carolyn Fox, currently managing editor of the Tampa Bay Times, will start her new position on Oct. 7. Her appointment was announced by Lisa DeSisto, the trust’s publisher and CEO.

Like the Maine papers, the Tampa Bay Times is a for-profit paper owned by a nonprofit — the Poynter Institute.

“The nonprofit model is so exciting in part because you can make that pitch to people that the journalism matters — what we do matters — and then sell that,” Fox told Eric Russell of the Press Herald. (I’m quoted as well.)

Fox will succeed Steve Greenlee, who’s moved on to a faculty position at Boston University. The organizational structure will be different in that Greenlee was the editor of just the Press Herald, whereas Fox will oversee all of the trust’s holdings.

Newsletters move to the fore as tech platforms spurn community journalism

If we’ve learned anything about news publishing in recent years, it’s that the giant tech platforms are not our friends. Google is embracing artificial intelligence, which means that searching for something will soon provide you with robot-generated answers (right or wrong!), thus reducing the need to click through. Facebook is moving away from news. Twitter/X has deteriorated badly under the chaotic leadership of Elon Musk, although it still has enough clout that President Biden used it to announce he was ending his re-election campaign.

So what should publishers do instead? It’s no secret — they’re already doing it. They are using email newsletters to drive their audience to their journalism. A recent post by Andrew Rockway and Dylan Sanchez for LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers reports that 95% of member publishers are offering newsletters, up from 81% in 2022. “The decline in referral traffic,” they write, “will likely lead to more direct engagement by publishers with their audiences.”

Some observers worry about newsletter overload as our inboxes fill up with email we may never get around to reading. That’s potentially a problem, but I think it’s a more serious problem for larger outlets, many of which send out multiple newsletters throughout the day and risk reaching a point of diminishing returns. By contrast, users will value one daily newsletter from their hyperlocal news project with links to the latest stories.

Newsletters are crucial to the success that Ellen Clegg and I have seen both in the projects we write about in our book, “What Works in Community News,” and on our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News.” Essentially, we’ve seen three newsletter strategies.

By far the most common approach publishers use is to offer a free newsletter aimed at driving users to their website, which may be free or subscription-based. The Massachusetts-based Bedford Citizen, for instance, sends out a daily newsletter generated by its RSS feed and a weekly human-curated newsletter. The Citizen is a free nonprofit, but once they’ve enticed you with their top-of-the-funnel newsletter, they hope they can lure you into becoming a paying member. Ellen and I interviewed executive director Teri Morrow and editor Wayne Braverman on our podcast last February.
The Colorado Sun, a statewide nonprofit, offers a series of free and paid newsletters, while the website itself is free. The paid newsletters represent an unusual twist: Some of them feature deeper reporting than you can get from the website on topics such as politics, climate change and outdoor recreation. At $22 a month for a premium membership, users pay no more than they would for a digital subscription to a daily newspaper. Editor Larry Ryckman talked about that in our most recent podcast.
In some places, the newsletter is the publication. An example of that is Burlington Buzz, a daily newsletter that covers Burlington, Massachusetts. Founder, publisher and editor Nicci Kadilak recently switched her newsletter platform from Substack to Indiegraf, and her homepage looks a lot like a standard community website — which shows that it’s a mistake to get too caught up on categories when newsletters have websites and websites have newsletters. Ellen and I talked with Nicci last year.

What’s crucial is that news publishers have direct control of the tools that they use to connect with their audience. Gone are the days when we could rely on Facebook and Twitter to reliably deliver readers to us. We have to go find them — and give them a reason to keep coming back.

Correction: Burlington Buzz has moved to Indiegraf, not Ghost.

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Larry Ryckman on how The Colorado Sun is working to serve a large and diverse state

Larry Ryckman. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk to Larry Ryckman, editor and co-founder of The Colorado Sun, the subject of a chapter that I wrote for our book, “What Works in Community News.” The Sun was launched by journalists who worked at The Denver Post, which had been cut and cut and cut under the ownership of Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that the Post staff called “vulture capitalists.”

The Sun was founded as a for-profit public benefit corporation. A PBC is a legal designation covering for-profit organizations that serve society in some way. Among other things, a PBC is under no fiduciary obligation to enrich its owners and may instead plow revenues back into the enterprise. And we’ve found that for-profit models are rare in the world of news startups. But that changed last year, when the Sun joined its nonprofit peers. Ryckman explains.

In our Quick Takes, I give a listen to a New York Times podcast with Robert Putnam, the Harvard University political scientist who wrote “Bowling Alone” some years back. In a fascinating 40 minutes, Putnam talks about his work in trying to build social capital. He never once mentions local news, but there are important intersections between his ideas and what our podcast and book are focused on.

Ellen reports on an important transition at Sahan Journal in Minnesota, one of the projects we wrote about in our book. The founding CEO and publisher, Mukhtar Ibrahim, is moving on and a successor has been named. Starting in September, Vanan Murugesan will be leading Sahan. He has experience in the nonprofit sector and also has experience in public media.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

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In Colorado, an intriguing experiment — and a disturbing anti-press move by the GOP

The Colorado Statehouse in Denver. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

Two stories about journalism from Colorado this morning, one intriguing, one disturbing. The state’s media ecosystem is one of the subjects of our book, “What Works in Community News.”

• Intriguing. Colorado media-watcher Corey Hutchins reports: “More than two dozen Colorado newsrooms have launched an unprecedented collaboration to better cover the 2024 elections.” These news outlets, led by the Colorado News Collaborative, have embraced what New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen calls the Citizen’s Agenda, whereby journalists will report on the issues that the public is most concerned about and gear their coverage around what they learn. It’s a more substantive approach than the horse-race model of political coverage, which focuses on polls and day-to-day sparring among the candidates.

Unprecedented? Not really. The Citizen’s Agenda is a revival of the public journalism movement of the 1990s, and Rosen was at the center of that, too. It faded away back then, although it never disappeared entirely. See, for instance, my account of this 2013 event on education reform sponsored by the New Haven Independent. The Colorado experiment, though, represents what could be the most fully realized example of public journalism in many years.

• Disturbing. Colorado Sun political reporter Sandra Fish was removed from a meeting of the state Republican Party “after being told that party Chairman Dave Williams found her ‘current reporting to be very unfair,'” according to Sun reporter Jennifer Brown. Although Fish had received a text from a party official telling her not to come, she showed up anyway and was able to obtain a press credential — only to be identified an hour later and escorted from the scene by a sheriff’s deputy.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Sun editor Larry Ryckman wrote in an email to subscribers. “The Founding Fathers understood that a free press is a pillar of a healthy democracy – and not just when reporters write stories politicians might like. That’s why they enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution. The public has a right to know. Public officials should be accountable and willing to have their words and actions scrutinized in the light of day.”

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Startup news leaders tell journalism students how to get that first job

Maya McFadden of the New Haven Independent interviews Victor Joshua, founder of the youth basketball program Respect Hoops. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

I’ll be part of a panel tomorrow discussing job opportunities for new and recent journalism graduates. My role will be to talk about opportunities at the rising generation of local and regional news startups. I am not quite sure what to tell them, but more than anything I want them to know that they need to be resourceful.

About a dozen years ago, Thomas MacMillan told me how he got hired at the New Haven Independent, one of the original nonprofit digital-only local news sites. He was working at a non-journalism job and started doing some interning. He asked the editor, Paul Bass, how he could turn that into a staff job, and Bass’ unconventional answer was that MacMillan should write a grant to fund his position. MacMillan did it, got hired and, in my 2013 book, “The Wired City,” talked about the rewards.

“It’s really fun for me to feel like we’re on a rising star rather than a sinking ship,” MacMillan said. “There’s just something exciting about feeling like you’re working on the new paradigm, where you can experiment and try different things and people will occasionally take notice of what you’re doing.”

What I will tell students is that jobs at these startups are few and far between, but if you can land one, they come with great mentoring and, in some cases, surprisingly good pay. From my conversations with people, I’ve found that nonprofit boards and independent operators take their obligation to provide a living wage and benefits seriously. At the very least, journalists at these organizations are often making more than they would at a chain-owned newspaper.

Students can’t just expect jobs to open up, because that doesn’t happen all that often. Identify two, three or five that you’d like to work at. Get in touch and stay in touch. Cover some news for them — not for free, of course, but in most cases they’re not going to hire someone they don’t have a prior relationship with.

To prepare for the panel, I contacted an array of startup news folks to see what advice they would give to students. I present their lightly edited answers in full. Continue reading “Startup news leaders tell journalism students how to get that first job”

More news about our book

I want to let you know about a couple of media hits this weekend for “What Works in Community News.”

First, Billy Baker of The Boston Globe quotes my co-author, Ellen Clegg, and mentions our book in a feature on The Local News, which covers Ipswich and Rowley and is one of a number of nonprofit startups founded to fill the gap left behind when Gannett abandoned its weekly papers in Eastern Massachusetts. “This is what the founders envisioned, which is a lot of little newspapers in all the little towns in New England,” Ellen told Baker. As Baker notes, Ellen doesn’t just write about it — she also does it, as she’s also the co-founder and co-chair of another startup, Brookline.News.

Second, Colorado College journalism professor Corey Hutchins writes about our book in his well-read newsletter, “Inside the News in Colorado.” I visited Colorado in September 2021, mainly to report on upstart Colorado Sun but also to learn more about how the Sun fits into the state’s larger journalistic community One afternoon I drove from Denver to Colorado Springs in order to interview Hutchins. “I don’t know of any other state where there’s such a focus and attention from folks here who want to support a thriving local news ecosystem matched with attention from funders, smart media thinkers from around the country,” he told me.

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How Denver’s media are reporting a ruling to keep Trump off the Colorado ballot

Donald Trump at the Air Force Academy Commencement in Colorado Springs in 2019. Photo by Trump White House Archived.

Following the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Donald Trump has disqualified himself from appearing on the state’s Republican primary ballot, I thought I’d check in with the Denver media to see how they covered it. I started with The Colorado Sun, a digital startup that is one of the projects Ellen Clegg and I write about in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.”

The Sun has a lengthy account by its chief political reporter, Jesse Paul. His story plays it straight, although it’s informed by his deep knowledge of the players in Colorado. What stands out to me is that the court went to some lengths to determine that Trump did, in fact, try to foment an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Under the 14th Amendment, insurrectionists may not run for federal office, although that clause is the subject of many different interpretations. Paul quotes from the majority decision:

The record amply established that the events of Jan. 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.

The Colorado court’s decision will almost certainly be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. If it’s upheld, then Trump would be banned not just from the state’s primary ballot but also — should he be the Republican nominee — the general election ballot in November 2024. Other states are considering the same action.

In The Denver Post, the city’s legacy daily newspaper, reporter Nick Coltrain interviews University of Colorado law professor Doug Spencer, who says that the purpose of the Colorado lawsuit that resulted in Tuesday’s ruling is to ensure that Trump can’t be elected to a second term next fall. Spencer told Coltrain that the lawsuit “was never really about keeping Trump’s name off Colorado’s ballot, because he was never going to win our electoral votes. It was about using our state law to get a ruling like this — and maybe now other courts will look at this and maybe not be so skittish.”

Colorado Public Radio, which may be the state’s largest news organization, takes on an issue that is sure to be raised by Trump’s lawyers and supporters: How can a state court find that Trump engaged in an insurrection given that there has been no federal finding to that effect? After all, the Senate failed to convict Trump after the House impeached him on what was essentially an insurrection case; he has not yet gone to trial on insurrection-related criminal charges; and there has been no congressional resolution passed by both branches finding that he tried to overturn the election.

But Bente Berkeland’s story for Colorado Public Radio notes the majority decision finds that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not require any further legal proceedings in order for its provisions to take effect. She writes that the decision…

…also reaffirms that, under Colorado law, the court has jurisdiction to bar disqualified candidates from the Republican Party’s primary ballot. They also concluded that the judicial branch is empowered to apply the clause.

“Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach,” the ruling states. “Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.”

The city also has a second daily newspaper — The Denver Gazette, a digital-only outlet started several years ago by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz. The Gazette has a hard paywall, but I see that it leads today’s e-paper (there is no actual print edition) with a story on the court’s decision written by reporter Michael Karlik.

So now it’s on to the U.S. Supreme Court. Just as a layperson, it seems to me that the most significant issue before the Supremes is whether they can determine on their own authority that Trump engaged in an attempted insurrection or if instead they’re constrained by the lack of a congressional determination or a criminal conviction. We may assume that Trump begins with two aces in the hole: Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. Can he get to five?

Still, the Colorado decision was a landmark of sorts. As Paul wrote in the Sun: “The Colorado Supreme Court ruling marks the first time that the insurrection clause has been used to block a presidential candidate from appearing on the ballot.” That’s a dubious distinction in a long line of dubious distinctions for Trump, who, depending on how quickly the courts can move, might not only be disqualified from running but could also be sitting in a prison cell by Election Day.

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A new report finds that news deserts are spreading — but there are bright spots, too

The release of a new report by Penelope Muse Abernathy on the state of local news is always a big deal. For 15 years now, she’s been tracking the extent of the crisis, and has done more than anyone to popularize the phrase “news deserts,” which describes communities without a source of reliable news and information. This week Abernathy, now at Northwestern University’s Medill School, issued “The State of Local News 2023.” It’s a downbeat report, although there are a few bright spots. Here’s a key finding:

The data and insights collected and analyzed in this 2023 report on The State of Local News paint the picture of a country and society increasingly divided between the journalism-have’s — mostly residents in more affluent cities and suburban areas where alternative news sources are gaining traction — and the journalism have-not’s, those in economically struggling and traditionally underserved metro, suburban and rural communities. This partitioning of our citizenry poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement and the proliferation of misinformation and information online.

Before I continue, a disclosure: Abernathy, who’s been a guest on our “What Works” podcast about the future of local news, was kind enough to provide a pre-publication endorsement of the book that Ellen Clegg and I have written, “What Works in Community News,” which comes out in January.

Abernathy’s principal collaborator on the new report is Sarah Stonbely, director of Medill’s State of Local News Project, who I interviewed in 2022 when she was at the Center for Cooperative Media, part of Montclair State University in New Jersey.

If you’d like a good summary of Abernathy and Stonbely’s report, I recommend Sarah Fischer’s overview in Axios, which leads with the prediction that the U.S. will have lost one third of its newspapers by the end of 2024.

The cleavage between affluent urban and suburban areas and less affluent urban and rural areas is one of the major challenges Abernathy and Stonbely identify, and it’s definitely something that Ellen and I noticed in our reporting for “What Works in Community News.” I recall asking folks at the start-up Colorado Sun why they were trying to stretch their resources to cover stories across the state rather than focusing on Denver. The answer: the Denver metro area was already fairly well served despite massive cuts at The Denver Post, owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. By contrast, there was very little news coverage in the more rural parts of the state.

As Abernathy and Stonbely put it: “The footprint for alternative local news outlets — approximately 550 digital-only sites, 720 ethnic media organizations and 215 public broadcasting stations — remains very small and centered around metro areas.” Indeed, this chart tells a rather harrowing tale. As you can see, people who live in news deserts are considerably less affluent and less educated than the national average.

The report also includes a section called “Bright Spots in the Local News Landscape.” Although the interactive map is a little hard to navigate, I can see that several projects that Ellen and I profile in “What Works in Community News” are included, such as NJ Spotlight News, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, The Texas Tribune, The Colorado Sun and the Daily Memphian.

The report also highlights The Boston Globe as one of its good-news stories, observing that, under the ownership of John and Linda Henry, the paper has thrived on the strength of its digital subscriptions. In a sidebar, Tom Brown, the Globe’s vice president of consumer analytics, tells Abernathy that digital growth continues, although at a slower rate than during the COVID pandemic. Retention is down slightly, too. “We are nonetheless still seeing overall strong retention,” Brown says, “and we are investing in several areas of the business with the goal of engaging subscribers more and, in particular, our new subscribers.”

Editor Nancy Barnes adds that though the Globe is ramping up its coverage of the Greater Boston area as well as in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, it can’t fill the gap created by the gutting and closure of local weekly papers at the hands of Gannett, the giant newspaper chain that until recently dominated coverage of the Boston suburbs and exurbs.

“Having returned to Boston after many years away, I have been stunned by the decimation of local newspapers across Massachusetts and New England,” Barnes says. “However, our coverage strategy is not tied to specific Gatehouse newspaper communities [a reference to Gannett’s predecessor company]. We cover greater Boston in depth, but we don’t have the bandwidth to be the local news source for everyone.”

This week’s Medill report is the first of a multi-part series. Future chapters will be released over the next few weeks and into January.

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The Colorado Sun donates its share of 24 suburban papers and urges they go nonprofit

One of the more innovative efforts at saving newspapers from chain ownership is winding down, although the papers themselves remain protected. The Colorado Sun announced Wednesday that it would transfer its ownership shares of Colorado Community Media (CCM), a chain of 24 weekly and monthly papers in the Denver suburbs, to the nonprofit National Trust for Local News, which led the effort to buy the papers two years ago. The Sun had been given a stake in CCM in return for helping to run the papers.

The reason given for pulling out was that the Sun is in the process of converting from a for-profit public benefit corporation to a nonprofit, which I wrote about recently for Nieman Lab. A story in the Sun that appeared Wednesday urged nonprofit status for CCM as well: “Just as we believe that nonprofit is the right fit for The Sun, we believe it’s a good fit for these weeklies, too. That will be a decision for the Trust and the board of directors of the Colorado News Conservancy, the parent company of CCM.” No money is changing hands. (The Conservancy is the entity established by the National Trust and the Sun to run the CCM papers).

Sun editor and co-founder Larry Ryckman said on X/Twitter: “We’ve been proud co-owners of Colorado Community Media for 2 years & wish it well in this new chapter. They’re doing great work & deserve your support.” Linda Shapley, publisher of CCM, was quoted in the Sun as saying: “I’m grateful for The Sun’s support at a time that was most critical for our future At Colorado Community Media, we’re excited to be part of the evolving Colorado news ecosystem, and we’re dedicated to serving our communities with timely, factual news and information.”

The Sun and CCM are the subject of a chapter in “What Works in Community News,” a book about the future of local journalism by Ellen Clegg and me that will be published in January. In September 2021 I spent nearly a week in Denver reporting on Colorado’s media ecosystem. Obviously that ecosystem is still in flux, but the period covered by our book ends in late 2022.

I believe what was taking place in Colorado back then is a story still worth telling: the founding of the Sun by 10 journalists who’d quit The Denver Post following deep cuts by its hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital; the Sun’s early hopes of raising money through blockchain technology; its unique governance structure; and its participation in the acquisition of CCM.

Ellen and I look at our book not as a standalone entity but, rather, as the hub of an ongoing story that also comprises updates to our website, a podcast (Shapley, National Trust executive director Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, and former Denver Post editor Greg Moore have all been guests, and we hope to have Ryckman on once the book has been released), and an evolving social media presence (we’re currently on X/Twitter and Mastodon, but that may change).

So of course we want you to read our book. But we also hope you’ll turn to our other platforms to keep up on the latest.

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