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narratives that cherry pick stories of vulture capitalists, job loss statistics and print closures are incomplete or out of date, painting an inaccurate picture of a news and information ecosystem on life support.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

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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Two Alden papers, the Boston Herald and The Denver Post, will end commenting

At least two daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group will end reader comments on July 1.

The Boston Herald announced the move earlier today, saying that the change was being made to “dramatically speed up the performance of the website” as well as on its mobile platforms. The Denver Post took the same action last week, although editor Lee Ann Colacioppo cited bad behavior rather than technology, writing that the comment section has become “an uncivil place that drives readers away and opens those trying to engage in thoughtful conversation to hateful, personal attacks.”

Both papers emphasized that readers will still be able to talk back at them through social media platforms.

Wondering if this were a MediaNews-wide action, I tried searching about a half-dozen papers in the 60-daily chain and could find no similar announcements. I found something else interesting as well. The eight larger dailies that comprise the Tribune Publishing chain, which Alden acquired a couple of years ago, are now included as part of MediaNews Group, although they are still listed separately as well. (A ninth, the Daily News of New York, was split off from Tribune and is being run as a separate entity.)

The moves by the Herald and the Post represent just the latest in the long, sad story of user comments. When they debuted about a quarter-century ago, they were hailed as a way of involving the audience — the “former audience,” as Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen put it. The hope was that comments could even advance stories.

It turned out that comments were embraced mainly by the most sociopathic elements. Some publishers (including me for a while) required real names, but that didn’t really help. The only measure that ensures a civil platform is pre-screening — a comment doesn’t appear online until someone has read it and approved it. But that takes resources, and very few news organizations are willing to make the investment.

The best comments section I know of belongs to the New Haven Independent, where pre-screening has been the rule right from the start. Keeping out racist, homophobic hate speech opens up the forum for other voices to be heard. The New York Times engages in pre-screening as well.

So kudos to the Boston Herald and The Denver Post — and I hope other news outlets, including The Boston Globe, will follow suit.

Linda Shapley talks about journalism, leadership and the power of diversity

Linda Shapley. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

On the new episode of the “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I speak with Linda Shapley, the publisher of Colorado Community Media, who describes herself as a longtime denizen of the state’s media ecosystem. Indeed, she was at Colorado Politics and worked for 21 years for The Denver Post. “I’ve been a lieutenant for a lot of really great generals,” she once said. “This is my opportunity to be a general.”

CCM is a group of about two dozen weekly and monthly newspapers in the Denver suburbs. They were saved from chain ownership two years ago when they were purchased through a deal led by the National Trust for Local News. Last August we spoke with Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, the co-founder and CEO of the trust.

Shapley has talked about the power of representation as a visible Latina leader in an industry that has traditionally been dominated by white men. She says she hopes to use her position to encourage more diversity in journalism. Her mentor at the Post, Greg Moore, was a previous guest on What Works. You can listen to his episode here.

Shapley grew up in northeastern Colorado, in a rural county. Her father had a dairy farm. When I was in Colorado doing research for our book-in-progress, “What Works in Community News,” she told me that dairy farming is a lot like newspapers, because cows don’t know it’s Christmas.

Also this week, we talk with Madison Xagoraris, a graduate student in the Media Advocacy Program at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. Xagoraris recently reported on KefiFM, a Boston-based Greek music outlet dedicated to serving the Greek and Greek American communities in the Boston area and throughout New England.

Ellen has a Quick Take about retired journalists who are busy launching startup newsrooms. Nieman Reports has a piece by Jon Marcus that looks at the Asheville Watchdog in North Carolina, and the New Bedford Light in Massachusetts. These journalists say they want to help bolster the profession they gave their lives to by setting up nonprofit community news sites and mentoring younger reporters and editors. They aren’t playing pickleball.

I’m in a Colorado state of mind: My Quick Take is on the fifth anniversary of the Denver Rebellion, when the staff of The Denver Post rose up against further newsroom cuts being imposed by its hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital. That rebellion sparked a revolution in Denver journalism.

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

Five years after the Denver Rebellion, local news is surviving in Colorado

The Buell Media Center, home of The Colorado Sun. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

Of all the alarms that have been sounded over the decline of local news, perhaps none was louder than the one in Denver, Colorado, five years ago this month. In what became known as the Denver Rebellion, editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett wrote a front-page editorial calling for the Post’s hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital, to sell the paper to local interests. Plunkett wrote:

We call for action. Consider this editorial and this Sunday’s Perspective offerings a plea to Alden — owner of Digital First Media, one of the largest newspaper chains in the country — to rethink its business strategy across all its newspaper holdings. Consider this also a signal to our community and civic leaders that they ought to demand better. Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom. If Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell The Post to owners who will.

Unfortunately, Alden did not sell; after all, there were still profits to be squeezed out. At one time, the Post employed a newsroom of about 300 people, and its competitor, the Rocky Mountain News, had another 300. But the Rocky was shut down by a different chain owner years ago, and by the time that Plunkett wrote his manifesto, Alden was in the process of downsizing the Post again, from about 100 journalists to 60.

But journalism in Denver survived. Earlier this month, Plunkett wrote an opinion piece for The Colorado Sun looking back on the past five years. The Sun grew out of the Post: 10 senior people left after the rebellion and launched a digital-only news project that has grown to a couple of dozen people. This time around, Plunkett, now at the University of Colorado in Boulder, took a more optimistic view:

So much new talent has bubbled up around us as a result it’s difficult to keep track. The legislature’s got more reporters than you shake a stick at. Who could deny the excellence and the ambition of presenting and covering Denver’s recent mayoral debates?…

Hey, it’s heartening to see media companies banging around like they want to fight. Think of how bad off we’d be if we didn’t have such energy.

What’s happened in Colorado led Ellen Clegg and me to include it in our book, “What Works in Community News,” which will be published by Beacon Press early next year. I visited the Denver area in September 2021 and learned that the metro region is being well served. The Sun, the Post, Colorado Public Radio and another startup, The Denver Gazette, were all doing good work.

The problem, though, was in those places that weren’t within commuting distance of Denver. The news deserts that exist in the rural parts of the state were why The Colorado Sun was trying to provide some statewide coverage rather than merely focusing on Denver. So it was heartening to see that several papers whose owners wanted to move on have been acquired by a small chain. The indefatigable Corey Hutchins of Colorado College reports that O’Rourke Media Group, based in Arizona, is the new owner of Colorado papers in Salida, Buena Vista, Leadville, Park County and Fairplay.

“I feel like I’m taking over newsrooms that are well resourced,” the chain’s CEO, Jim O’Rourke, told Hutchins. “I like that, because that gives us an opportunity to come in and work with this team on things that we can do differently moving forward — things that we could do to help. And it’s better starting from a position like this versus going into a totally distressed situation where the previous company gutted the place.”

The news desert problem is real. But what’s happened in Denver and, now, in rural Colorado demonstrates what I’ve seen since I started reporting on the local news crisis some 15 years ago: Where there is failure there is also opportunity.

More: Ellen and I recently interviewed former Denver Post editor Greg Moore on our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News.” And in June 2021, I wrote about how 24 weekly and monthly papers in the Denver suburbs were saved through an effort that included The Colorado Sun.

Veteran editor Greg Moore on local news, diversity and life after Alden Global Capital

Greg Moore. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

On the new “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Greg Moore, former managing editor at The Boston Globe and longtime editor of The Denver Post. During his 14 years at the Post, the paper won four consecutive Pulitzer Prizes. He’s led coverage of major stories, including the Aurora movie theater shooting in Colorado and the case of Charles Stuart in Boston. Greg is now editor-in-chief of The Expert Press, which helps connect specialists with media. He’s still in Denver.

As one of the most senior Black journalists in the country, Greg has been at the forefront of advocating for more diversity in the media and for a new path forward for local and regional news. In fact, Greg resigned his position at The Denver Post in 2016 after he decided he couldn’t tolerate any more cuts to his newsroom at the hands of the Post’s hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital. As he put it in an essay for the Pulitzer Prize board, of which he is the former chair:

Local journalism is where accountability journalism matters most. It is focused on how dollars are spent and how priorities are set on the local level. It is often that base level reporting that becomes the seed corn for bigger national stories with datelines from the heartland and the tiniest suburbs.

In the Quick Takes portion of the podcast, I’ve got some bad news: people don’t like us. There’s been yet another survey showing that public trust in the news media is at an all-time low. But there are some problems with the survey, as there usually are — and those problems underline why the trust issue isn’t quite the steaming pile of toxic waste that it might seem, especially for local news.

Ellen has some good news for folks in Akron, Ohio. A local news startup called the Akron Signal has launched with a $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation.

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

How The Denver Post stood up to McCarthy and exposed the limits of mindless balance

The Denver Post’s former downtown headquarters looms over the Colorado Statehouse. The Post itself now operates out of its printing plant in the suburbs. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

The McCarthy era is often cited as a time when the limits of journalistic objectivity were exposed for all to see. For years, the press reported Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s false claims that he had a list of communists in a straight-up, deadpan manner, reasoning that it was their job to inform the country of what a United States senator was saying, not to offer any judgments.

But that’s not what Walter Lippmann had in mind when he first defined objective reporting a century ago. As he conceived it, objectivity was not acting as a conveyor belt for the lies of the powerful; nor was it mindless balance. Rather, it was an objective, fair-minded pursuit of the truth. Once you had determined the truth to the best of your ability, your job was to report it.

“We tell people in a forthright and unflinching way what we have learned because we’ve done the reporting,” retired Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said at a virtual appearance at Northeastern earlier this year. Baron defined objectivity as “independence and open-mindedness and a posture of listening and learning.”

Recently I read a book as part of my research into local news that is about as obscure as you can imagine: “Thunder in the Rockies: The Incredible Denver Post,” written by Post staffer Bill Hosokawa and published in 1976. And I was struck by how courageously the Post stood up to McCarthy — especially since, in previous decades, the Post had been mired in corruption and racism.

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By the time McCarthy came along, the Post’s editor was a stand-up guy named Palmer Hoyt, who was unflinching in his insistence on holding the Wisconsin senator to account. In a memo to his staff, he defined true objectivity in such a compelling way that it ought to be taught to every reporter. I’m not going to quote the entire memo, but here’s a key excerpt:

It is obvious that many charges made by reckless impulsive officials cannot and should not be ignored, but it seems to me that news stories and headlines can be presented in such a manner that the reading public will be able to measure the real worth or value and the true meaning of the stories.

For example, when it is possible and practical, we should remind the public in case of a wild accusation by Senator McCarthy that this particular senator’s name is synonymous with poor documentation and irresponsible conduct and that he has made many charges that have been insupportable under due process.

In 1954, Hoyt received the John Peter Zenger Freedom of the Press Award. In his acceptance speech, Hoyt continued to speak boldly, turning media critic: “It is true that the number of newspapers critical of McCarthy has grown during the last year or two. But there are still many of them who are his supporters, his apologists, even his devotees.” And he singled out the Chicago Tribune and the Hearst papers as particularly egregious offenders.

It hardly needs to be said that we are facing a crisis of democracy today — perhaps the most serious since the Civil War, as Robert Kagan recently wrote in The Washington Post (free link). The brainless objectivity of the 1950s has morphed into something else. As Thomas Patterson of the Harvard Kennedy School has written, Donald Trump received an enormous assist from the press in 2016 by portraying his grotesque behavior and corruption as being equal to Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings — you know, her emails.

Today, Trump and his supporters, who seek to destroy the integrity of our elections in order to pave the way for an illegitimate second Trump term, are getting plenty of harsh coverage, as they should. But to absorb this through the media is to see it balanced against the Democrats’ struggles over its infrastructure bills and chaos at the border. It’s all both sides and false equivalence.

As New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen has said over and over again, the press is not equipped to cover a reality in which one of our two major political parties remains its normal self and the other has lurched into authoritarianism. You can see it in the headlines this week describing the debt-limit crisis as something the Democrats are struggling to solve — as if it’s a given that the Republicans have descended into madness and therefore can’t be blamed.

We are living through an incredibly ugly time. At the very least, we should remember what Palmer Hoyt said about the media’s obligation to tell the truth.

In Chicago, public radio steps up to fill the gap created by hedge-fund ownership

It looks like Chicago’s number-two newspaper is about to get a huge boost. Given that the dominant daily, the Chicago Tribune, is being gutted by its new hedge-fund owner, the move can’t come soon enough.

According to media writer Rob Feder, the Chicago Sun-Times and public radio station WBEZ are seeking to merge their operations. The Sun-Times, a tabloid that bills itself as “The Hardest-Working Paper in America,” has long labored in the shadow of the Tribune. But with the Tribune now controlled by Alden Global Capital, the Sun-Times/WBEZ combination could quickly emerge as the news source of record in our third-largest city.

Sun-Times reporter Jon Seidel writes that the newspaper would become a subsidiary of Chicago Public Media. What’s unclear — and maybe those taking part in the talks haven’t figured it out themselves yet — is whether the Sun-Times would become a nonprofit or if it would remain a for-profit entity owned by a nonprofit. It matters for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that nonprofits are not allowed to endorse political candidates.

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I couldn’t immediately find any numbers on how big the two entities’ reporting staffs are. But it’s significant that there would reportedly be no job reductions if the two operations are combined. WBEZ is one of public radio’s powerhouses, and the Sun-Times has maintained decent paid circulation — nearly 107,000 on Sundays and almost 100,000 on weekdays, most of it print, according to numbers it filed with the Alliance for Audited Media a year and a half ago. (The Tribune clocked in at 527,000 on Sundays and 256,000 on weekdays.)

According to a news release quoted by the Sun-Times, the combined outlet “would invest in journalism through expanded capacity to better serve Chicago; expand and engage with diverse audiences throughout the region, and expand digital capabilities to deliver a compelling digital experience across platforms and reach audiences where they are.”

Public radio can play a vitally important role in keeping regional news coverage alive in markets where legacy newspapers are shrinking. In Denver, for instance, Colorado Public Radio, combined with Denverite, which it acquired several years ago, now has what is likely the largest newsroom in the state — about 65 staff members, according to executive editor Kevin Dale. The Denver Post, cut drastically under Alden ownership, employs about 60 journalists, and The Colorado Sun, a well-regarded digital start-up, has 22, according to editor Larry Ryckman.

In Boston, public radio stations WBUR and GBH have probably the most robust news operations in the region after The Boston Globe. Unlike the Tribune, the Globe is independently owned and growing. But if that were to change, the public radio stations would be well-positioned to fill in the gap.

The WBEZ/Sun-Times announcement is the best journalism news to come out of Chicago since Alden acquired the Tribune earlier this year. Let’s hope it becomes a model for what might take place elsewhere.