After reading Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro’s interview with Richard J. Tofel about her new report, “Rebuilding Local Journalism at Scale: A Field-Level Analysis of Infrastructure Needs,” I was concerned that she was going to propose widespread consolidation in the local and hyperlocal news space. I was alarmed enough to write a blog post reminding my readers of the old slogan “Local Doesn’t Scale.”
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So once the actual report came out, I set aside a couple of hours to read it carefully. It is more nuanced than her interview with Tofel suggested, and I found much of it to be both useful and thoughtful. A reminder: Hansen Shapiro is the co-founder and former chief executive of the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that purchased newspapers in Colorado, Maine and Georgia and ran them with rather mixed results. We interviewed her in “What Works in Community News,” the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, and she was a guest on our podcast.
Oddly enough, Hansen Shapiro’s conversation with Tofel garnered more attention than the report itself. Tofel told Nieman Lab that it was his all-time most-viewed post. Well, I’m here to rectify that. It’s a dense report, but it’s well worth reading. I’ll guide you through some of the highlights.
