The Bedford Citizen’s ad-rich annual guide gets a shoutout from Editor & Publisher

Over the past few years, revenues at The Bedford Citizen, a nonprofit community website in the Boston suburbs, have ramped up from zero to more than $100,000 a year. The Citizen has done it through voluntary memberships, sponsors, grants, the NewsMatch program and — perhaps most significant — an annual glossy publication called The Bedford Guide.

The Guide is a 64-page magazine that serves as an introduction to the town. It is loaded with ads, and from what I can tell, all of them are local, from life sciences giant Millipore Sigma, which has a facility in Bedford, to the Cat Doctor. According to the Citizen’s executive director, Teri Morrow, the 2022 Guide (the third) which came out in December, will produce about $40,000 in revenues.

Now Gene Kalb, a Citizen board member who’s the main force behind the Guide, has been recognized by the trade magazine Editor & Publisher as one of its “Sales Supernovas.” He told E&P’s Robin Blinder that flexibility is a key to the Guide’s success, explaining:

The pandemic hit us just as we started our second annual Bedford Guide. The initial strategy was to approach retail establishments in town. During 2020 with almost all restaurants and retail establishments closed, we shifted our focus to larger corporate industries in town. Our publication is all about supporting our community, and the corporate neighbors in town stepped up to help us. With the retail landscape improving this year, we had a nice combination of retail and corporate advertisers.

Such revenues have allowed the Citizen to grow from an all-volunteer project to a news organization with paid employees — a managing editor, a part-time reporter and a part-time operations manager — as well as freelance fees for contributors.

Founded in 2012, the Citizen continues to grow in other ways as well. According to Google Analytics, the site had more than a million page views in 2021. Those of us who follow such things know that’s a statistic of limited value, but here’s another that’s rock-solid: about 2,200 people have subscribed to the Citizen’s free daily newsletter in a town with fewer than 5,400 households, for a penetration rate of more than 40%. (Caveat: Email being what it is, no doubt there are a number of families with more than one subscription.)

The Citizen is one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I are tracking for our “What Works” book project. It’s encouraging to see how people in the community have come together to create a vibrant and sustainable source of local news.

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In our latest podcast, Chris Lovett talks about his career as a hyperlocal TV journalist

Chris Lovett

In our latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I speak with Chris Lovett, the just-retired anchor of Boston’s Neighborhood Network News. Topics we discuss include highlights from Lovett’s long career and his views on whether local access cable could help solve the community journalism crisis.

A Dorchester native, he’s interviewed local activists, politicos (including Tom Menino when he was a district city councilor) and neighborhood stalwarts. Lovett had a front-row seat as the changing media landscape shaped Boston, and he connects the dots between Menino’s early days as a frequent broadcast guest and Michelle Wu’s strategic use of social media. He has also shared his expertise with any number of Boston University students. And he’s not done with journalism yet, so stay tuned.

We also kick around the latest on the Local Journalism Sustainability Act and the NewsMatch program, introduced by the Institute for Nonprofit News, which matches donations to nonprofit news organizations and has proved to be an important source of revenue.

Please give us a listen — and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever fine podcasts are found.

Poynter shines a light on GBH News series about minority businesses and state spending

Gov. Charlie Baker. Photo (cc) 2020 by Josh Qualls / Governor’s Press office.

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Poynter has rounded up some of the highest impact local stories of 2020 — and among them is “The Color of Public Money,” a series produced by my friends at GBH. Paul Singer, investigations editor for the GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting, recounts his work revealing that the state had failed to live up to its promises in helping minority-owned businesses. Singer writes:

We first established that the value of state spending with minority-owned businesses has DECLINED over the past 20 years (adjusted for inflation). We then established that during Baker’s administration, the state began padding those numbers, taking credit for a bunch of stuff that is not actually “spending” by state agencies.

As a result of Singer’s work, Gov. Charlie Baker created a new state agency and has promised improvements.

Other stories in the Poynter roundup include secrecy over inmate deaths in Montana, a foundation in Miami that provides bloodhounds to law-enforcement agencies, a motorcycle gang that incited violence at a Black Lives Matter rally in Ohio, child hunger in West Virginia, and fake news about a bus in Columbus, Ohio, that was falsely claimed to have been used by rioters.

The Poynter roundup underscores the importance of local and regional journlism. National news organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are doing well, but community news is shrinking. During these final two days of 2020, I hope you’ll consider a donation to NewsMatch, which will double what you give to support nonprofit news. I gave earlier this week.

This year, NewsMatch added a new feature — rather than trying to figure out which nonprofits you want to support, you can just give to NewsMatch and let them figure out where your dollars can be put to the best use.

Northeastern journalism faculty supports creation of a state news commission

Photo (cc) 2017 by Ted McGrath.

We’re down to the wire with a legislative proposal to create a special commission that would study the condition of local news in Massachusetts. You can learn more about it here. Currently a conference committee is hashing out the details of an economic bond bill; the commission has been included as an amendment to the House version.

My colleagues in Northeastern University’s School of Journalism have signed a letter to the six members of the conference committee urging them to support the amendment creating the news commission. If you are so inclined, I hope you’ll add your voice. Some disclosures: I was involved in proposing the commission; I testified in favor of it last year; and I would be a member if the measure is adopted as written.

There’s never been a more crucial time for local news. Gannett, a national corporate chain that owns dozens of daily and weekly papers and websites in Greater Boston and environs, is staggering under debt and continues to cut, as Don Seiffert reports in the Boston Business Journal. This is also the time of year when you can donate to a local nonprofit news organization through NewsMatch and have your contribution doubled. And don’t forget that today is #GivingTuesday.

Our letter to the conference committee follows:

***

November 30, 2020

To the members of the conference committee:

  • Senator Eric Lesser, Co-Chair
  • Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante, Co-Chair
  • Senator Michael Rodrigues
  • Senator Patrick O’Connor
  • Representative Aaron Michlewitz
  • Representative Donald Wong

Community life and civic engagement are not possible without reliable, verified news and information. Unfortunately, local journalism is in the midst of a crisis. According to one widely cited study, more than 2,100 American newspapers have closed their doors over the past 15 years as Craigslist, Google, and Facebook have scooped up most of the advertising revenues that once paid for journalism. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the situation worse. And newspaper chains owned by Wall Street speculators and hedge funds have robbed local news executives of the revenues they need to invest in the future.

Which is why we faculty members at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism urge you to approve an amendment sponsored by Representative Lori Ehrlich — part of the House version of the Economic Bond Bill — that would create a special commission to study local news in Massachusetts and recommend some possible courses of action. The commission would comprise legislators, academics, journalists, and news-industry experts.

Massachusetts remains well-served by regional sources of news, including a robust daily newspaper, public media companies, and multiple television newscasts. At the local level, though, the picture is grim. Corporate ownership has resulted in the hollowing-out of dozens of newspapers across the Commonwealth. In all too many cases, these news outlets are failing to meet the information needs of the communities they ostensibly serve.

A commission could, among other things, shine a light on a number of independent news projects that are doing well in the hopes that they might inspire residents of other communities to undertake similar projects. A commission could also identify best practices and recommend legislation and policies to encourage local ownership or make it easier to start a nonprofit news organization.

Such efforts are urgently needed. Please approve the amendment and allow the commission to be formed and to begin its important work.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kaufman, Director
Belle Adler, Emeritus
Mike Beaudet
Rahul Bhargava
Matt Carroll
Myojung Chung
Joanne Ciccarello
Nicholas Daniloff, Emeritus
Charles Fountain
Michelle Hagopian
Meg Heckman
Carlene Hempel
Jeff Howe
Dan Kennedy
William Kirtz, Emeritus
Laurel Leff
Dan Lothian
Peter Mancusi
Meredith O’Brien
Walter V. Robinson, Emeritus
Jim Ross
Jody Santos
Alan Schroeder, Emeritus
Jeb Sharp
John Wihbey
Dan Zedek

Comments are open. Please include your full name, first and last, and speak with a civil tongue.