States Newsroom – Media Nation

Chris Fitzsimon tells us how States Newsroom has built a nationwide statehouse news network

*Photo (cc) by Rebecca Rivas / Missouri Independent, part of the States Newsroom network.*

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Chris Fitzsimon, publisher and CEO of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest nonprofit news organization covering state government. Chris is also the host of a new podcast called “Stories from The States.” Recent topics on the pod include the impact of Medicaid cuts, ICE detention and redistricting.

States Newsroom has a presence in all 50 states, with its own news organizations in 39 states and partnerships with existing nonprofits in the other 11. In Massachusetts, States Newsroom partners with CommonWealth Beacon. (Disclosure: I’m a member of CommonWealth’s editorial advisory board.) The project also has a bureau in Washington, D.C. States Newsroom publishes its journalism under a Creative Commons license, which means that it is free to republish as long as proper credit is given.

Chris Fitzsimon

Fitzsimon knows his way around state politics. From 2004 to 2017, he directed a team of seven journalists at NC Policy Watch, which he founded. He also hosted a weekly radio show and wrote a syndicated column on North Carolina politics and government. From 1991 to 1994, he was the spokesperson, speechwriter and policy adviser for the North Carolina speaker of the house. Before that, he was a television news reporter covering politics and government.

I’ve got a Quick Take about The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. In 2019, the Tribune became the first legacy daily newspaper to become a nonprofit. Unlike a few notable hybrids like The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tampa Bay Times, which are for-profit papers owned by nonprofit foundations, the Salt Lake paper is a true nonprofit, just like your local public television or radio station. And the Tribune has been so successful that it recently announced it plans to drop its paywall.

Ellen’s Quick Take is on an investigation by Spotlight PA into the director of the Penn State Cancer Institute. The news outlet, which is a nonprofit that provides reporting to more than 90 outlets throughout Pennsylvania, uncovered damaging clinical practices and a toxic work environment. After the story ran last month, the director resigned.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

A nonprofit news outlet gets blocked by Facebook after publishing a critical story

The Kansas Reflector, which has done some great work in exposing the illegal police raid on the Marion County Record in rural Kansas, got blocked by Facebook for what it reports was seven hours earlier today. Indeed, I got a notice from Facebook that something I’d linked to in the Reflector last August was being taken down.

Folks at the Reflector, a nonprofit that’s part of the States Newsroom network, are wondering if a story they published that was critical of Facebook had anything to do with it. Probably not. I’ve been kicking the hell out of Facebook for years without any problem. The only time I can remember ending up in Facebook purgatory was when I answered a question about the greatest single line in a song. My offending answer: “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” Guns, death, algorithms!

The Reflector quotes a Twitter post from Meta spokesman Andy Stone, who said, “This was an error that had nothing to do with the Reflector’s recent criticism of Meta. It has since been reversed and we apologize to the Reflector and its readers for the mistake.” As of this writing, though, you still can’t share a link to the story that criticized Facebook. I tried just to see what would happen and got the following message: “Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can’t be edited.”

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From Northeastern to the North Country: Em Cassel’s entrepreneurial journey

Em Cassel is editor and co-owner of Racket, a reader-funded website covering politics, music, arts and culture in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. (She was also a student in my digital journalism course at Northeastern University.)

Em made a name for herself as food editor, managing editor and editor-in-chief of City Pages in the Twin Cities. She was the first woman editor in the 41-year history of that publication. City Pages, which was bought by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2015, was shut down in late 2020. The company said it wasn’t economically viable, citing the pandemic. Em provides some inside scoop about that, and talks about the founding of Racket, which proudly claims on its website that it has “no bosses, some biases.”

I’ve got a Quick Take on the Montclair Local, a nonprofit weekly newspaper launched several years ago in New Jersey. The Local is well-funded and supported by a number of New York media types who live in Montclair. But what about less affluent areas?

My co-host, Ellen Clegg, reports on an effort to shut down an entire town that was uncovered by the Tennessee Lookout, part of the rapidly expanding nonprofit network called States Newsroom. The Lookout’s scoop was highlighted in the newsletter of The Emancipator, a re-imagined update on the nation’s first abolitionist newspaper for the digital age that is being launched soon.

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