It’s not just nostalgia: How print enhances advertising and visibility for local-news projects

Photo (cc) 2026 by Dan Kennedy

Last Thursday I had an opportunity to take part in a panel on the state of community journalism. I was struck by the nostalgia for print expressed by two editors who are many decades younger than I am, which is why I’m revisiting this still-relevant issue.

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The event, titled “Peril and Promise,” was a fundraiser for The Local News, a print-and-digital nonprofit founded a decade ago in Ipswich, Massachusetts. (Its print edition, as you can see, has a slightly different name: the Ipswich Local News.) The panel comprised Local News editor Trevor Meek; Taylor Ann Bradford, the editor of the H-W News, a fairly new nonprofit covering Hamilton and Wenham that offers print with a minimal digital presence (here is its Instagram page); Joel Barrett, news editor of The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, a chain-owned daily; and me. Moderating was retired editor Richard Lodge.

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Ed Miller of the startup Provincetown Independent on competing with Gannett

Provincetown Independent co-founders Ed Miller, the editor, and Teresa Parker, the publisher. Photo by Sophie Ruehr; used with permission.

Ed Miller is co-founder and editor of The Provincetown Independent. Founded in October 2019, the weekly competes with Gannett’s Provincetown Banner. The Independent covers Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet and Eastham, and Miller explains why he believes that a print-centric strategy is essential on the tip of the Cape.

The Independent is a hybrid organization — a for-profit public benefit corporation that works in tandem with a nonprofit that Ed and co-founder and publisher Teresa Parker have also created. Up until now, the nonprofit, the Local Journalism Project, has operated under the fiscal sponsorship of the Center for the Study of Public Policy. But they have now created their own independent nonprofit and applied for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. (Disclosure: Dan is an unpaid adviser to the Independent.)

As we learned from Ed in planning this podcast, the first meeting of the new LJP board was happening the very day the episode was taped.

Ellen has a Quick Take on the abysmal results for the News Leaders Association newsroom diversity survey.

Dan reports on a startup newspaper in Queen Creek, Arizona, that will be called the Queen Creek Tribune and will make its debut on Sunday, April 24. It will be a total-market penetration print paper with a 20,000 press run.

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