Texas Tribune CEO Sonal Shah at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin last September
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Sonal Shah, the CEO of The Texas Tribune, a pioneering nonprofit newsroom. Shah, a Houston native and first-generation immigrant, took over as chief executive in January 2023 after co-founder Evan Smith decided to move on.
Shah is part of a major transition at the Tribune and brings broad experience in government, the private sector and philanthropy. She is a trained economist who worked on the Obama presidential transition team, worked in philanthropy for Google, and was national policy director for Pete Buttigieg’s run for president.
I’ve got a Quick Take about Advance Local, a local news chain in New Jersey that is ending its print editions — including the storied Star-Ledger of Newark — and going fully digital.
Ellen’s Quick Take is on The Minnesota Star Tribune’s editorial non-endorsement in the presidential race and an alternative endorsement of Kamala Harris written on a blog by former Strib staffers.
Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong. Photo (cc) 2014 by NHS Confederation.
News that the Los Angeles Times would not endorse a candidate for president has quickly ballooned into yet another crisis for Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s feckless and irresponsible owner.
Mariel Garza, the Times’ editorials editor, quit on Wednesday, reports Sewell Chan in the Columbia Journalism Review. “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza told Chan. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Chan, by the way, is a former editorial-page editor at the Times. He was recently named editor of the CJR after previously working as editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune.
Soon-Shiong, a billionaire surgeon, responded to the criticism with a post on Twitter suggesting that he wanted to publish a side-by-side analysis of Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s strengths and weaknesses, but that the editorial board refused to comply:
In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years. Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision. Please #vote.
Needless to say, the purpose of a newspaper’s opinion pages is to express opinions, not to offer “non-partisan information.”
Now, let’s back up a bit and look at the role of owners at large metropolitan newspapers like the LA Times. Ethically, owners should stay clear of news coverage, but Soon-Shiong reportedly violated that edict by interfering with a story about a friend whose dog had bitten someone, of all things. Natalie Korach reported in The Wrap earlier this year that the incident played a role (along with deep cuts in the newsroom) in executive editor Kevin Merida’s decision to quit in January of this year.
On the other hand, owners are free to exert their influence on the editorial pages. Indeed, at one time the lure of exercising political influence was one of the main reasons that rich people bought newspapers. So Soon-Shiong did not act unethically in killing an editorial endorsing Harris for president. Even so, his actions were high-handed and disrespectful, and by acting as he did at the last minute — instead of, say, announcing a no-endorsement policy earlier this year — he precipitated a crisis. In fact, as Max Tani noted in Semafor on Tuesday, the Times had endorsed in state and local races just last week.
Another consideration is the effect that endorsements actually have on political campaigns. A good rule of thumb is that the smaller and more obscure the race, the more that a newspaper’s opinion might actually influence the outcome. A presidential endorsement is the opposite of that, which Garza acknowledged in her resignation letter:
I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.
But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.
Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state — and one of the largest in the nation still — declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it.
Garza gets at something that is at least as important as influencing voters. An endorsement is how a news organization expresses its values. And what Soon-Shiong has expressed is that his newspaper is going to remain neutral at a time when a fascist (according to two generals who served under Trump, John Kelly and Mark Milley, language that Harris herself has now adopted) is seeking to return to office.
Newspapers like The New York Times and The Boston Globe have endorsed Harris. Yet, in a potentially ominous sign, The Washington Post so far has not.
Unlike the public manner in which the LA Times’ non-endorsement has played out, there’s no indication of what’s going on at the Post. Independent media reporter Oliver Darcy writes that the Post’s silence is starting to raise eyebrows, as well as new questions about its ethically challenged publisher, Will Lewis. Darcy writes that the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, “has repeatedly been targeted by Donald Trump over the years” and “is not alone amongst the rich and powerful who may prefer to stay as far away from politics as possible this election cycle.”
Let’s hope the Post is heard from soon.
The Sun is shining
A little over a year ago, The Colorado Sun announced it was switching from a hybrid for-profit/nonprofit ownership model to nonprofit governance. At the time, co-founder and editor Larry Ryckman (now the publisher) said that whatever misgivings he might have about the nonprofit model, it gave the Sun an easier story to tell to prospective funders.
“Whether I agree with it or not, whether I even like it or not, the reality is that many individuals, many institutions and philanthropic groups, have concluded that journalism should be nonprofit,” Ryckman told me in an interview for Nieman Lab. “I have my own thoughts on that, but that is reality.”
Well, now the switch has paid off. Ryckman announced earlier this week:
The Colorado Sun has been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the American Journalism Project. AJP is a national nonprofit whose purpose is to boost nonprofit journalism around the country, and it has thus far committed $62.7 million to 49 news organizations across 35 states.
The grant will be spread over three years, and the funds will be used to strengthen the long-term sustainability and future expansion of The Sun. This will include growing our fund development efforts and bolstering our business operations to allow us to deepen our impact in Colorado, while laying the foundation for the next era of high-quality, nonprofit journalism in our state — ensuring that Coloradans have the news they deserve for generations to come.
Before becoming a nonprofit, the Sun was a public benefit corporation, a for-profit that operates under certain restrictions and requirements. It also had a relationship with a nonprofit organization, which allowed donors to support the Sun’s journalism with tax-deductible contributions.
The Colorado Sun’s good news notwithstanding, the local news crisis continues unabated and may be getting worse. That was the message at a webinar Wednesday to mark the release of the third annual State of Local News report from the Medill School at Northwestern University.
“The crisis in local news is snowballing,” said Tim Franklin, the John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill. Franklin said that more than 3,000 newspapers have closed since 2005, about a third of the total, with a concomitant decline in newspaper jobs, which he called “a staggering loss.”
Zach Metzger, who runs the project now that founder Penelope Abernathy has retired, added: “News deserts are continuing to expand.”
I plan to look more closely at the data and write a follow-up at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, Sophie Culpepper of Nieman Lab has a thorough overview of the new report.
What does it mean to “publish” something? In the pre-social media era, that question was easy enough to answer. It became a little more complicated in 1996, when Congress passed a law called Section 230, which protects internet providers from liability for any third-party content that might be posted on their sites.
But those early online publishers were newspapers and other news organizations as well as early online services such as CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy. None of them was trying to promote certain types of third-party content in order to drive up engagement and, thus, ad revenues.
Today, of course, that’s the whole point. Algorithms employed by social media companies such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), Twitter and TikTok use sophisticated software that figures out what kind of content you are more likely to engage with with so they can show you more of it. Such practices have been linked to, among other things, genocide in Myanmar as well as depression and other mental health issues.
So again, what does it mean to “publish”? I’ve argued since as far back as 2017 that elevating some third-party content over others could be considered publication rather than simply acting as a passive receptacle of whatever stuff comes in over the digital transom.
A print publication, after all, is legally responsible for everything it encompasses, including ads (the landmark Times v. Sullivan libel decision involved an advertisement) and letters to the editor. It would be neither practical nor desirable to hold social media companies responsible for all third-party content. But again, if they are boosting some content to make it more visible because they (or, rather, their unblinking algorithms) think it will get them more engagement and make them more money, how is that not an act of publishing? Why should it be protected by federal law?
Earlier this week, investigative journalist Julia Angwin wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times (gift link) arguing that the tide may be turning against the social media giants, in part because of TikTok’s aggressive use of its algorithmic “For You” feed, which has been emulated by the other platforms. A showdown over Section 230 may be headed for the Supreme Court. She writes:
If tech platforms are actively shaping our experiences, after all, maybe they should be held liable for creating experiences that damage our bodies, our children, our communities and our democracy….
My hope is that the erection of new legal guardrails would create incentives to build platforms that give control back to users. It could be a win-win: We get to decide what we see, and they get to limit their liability.
I don’t think there’s a good-faith argument to be made that reforming Section 230 would harm the First Amendment. We would still have the right to publish freely, subject to long-existing prohibitions against libel, incitement, serious breaches of national security and obscenity. And internet providers would still be held harmless for any content posted by their users. But it would end the legal absurdity that a tech platform can boost harmful content and then claim immunity because that content originated with someone else. (Ironically, those third-party posters are fully liable for their content if they can be identified and tracked down.)
As Angwin notes, Ethan Zuckerman of UMass Amherst, a respected thinker about all things digital, is suing Meta for the right to develop software that would allow users to control their own experience on Facebook. Angwin also touts Bluesky, a Twitter alternative that allows its users to design their own feeds (you can find me at @dankennedy-nu.bsky.social).
We should all have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. But the platforms that control so much of our lives should should have the same freedoms that the rest of us have — and that should not include the freedom to boost harmful content without any legal consequences because of the fiction that they are not engaged in an act of publishing. It’s long past time to make some changes to Section 230.
Olivia Nuzzi departs
Olivia Nuzzi’s separation agreement with New York magazine was heavily lawyered, according to reports, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But the magazine’s statement that its law firm found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias” in her work needs to be placed in context. Liam Reilly and Hadas Gold of CNN report on Nuzzi’s departure.
Nuzzi, you may recall, was involved in some sort of sexual (but not physical) relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that may have encompassed sexting and nude selfies — we still don’t know.
But as I wrote last month, after Nuzzi’s relationship with Kennedy became public, she wrote a very tough piece about President Biden’s alleged age-related infirmities while Kennedy was still a presidential candidate and an oddly sympathetic profile of Donald Trump after Kennedy had left the race, endorsed Trump and made it clear that he was hoping for a high-level job in a Trump White House.
Maybe Nuzzi would have written those two stories exactly the same way even if she had never met Kennedy. But we’ll never know.
Media notes
• Billionaire ambitions. Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times reports (gift link) that a Florida billionaire named David Hoffmann has bought 5% of the cost-cutting Lee Enterprises newspaper chain, and that he hopes to help revive the local news business. “These local newspapers are really important to these communities,” Hoffman told Mullin. “With the digital age and technology, it’s changing rapidly. But I think there’s room for both, and we’d like to be a part of that.” Lee owns media properties in 73 U.S. markets, including well-known titles such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Buffalo News.
• Silent treatment. Patrick Soon-Shiong, whose ownership of the Los Angeles Times has been defined by vaulting ambitions and devastating cuts, has stumbled once again. Max Tani of Semafor reports that the Times will not endorse in this year’s presidential content, even though it published endorsements in state and local races just last week. The decision to abstain from choosing between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Tani writes, came straight from Soon-Shiong, who made his wealth in the health-care sector. Closer to home, The Boston Globe endorsed Harris earlier this week.
• Reaching young voters.Santa Cruz Local, a digital nonprofit, has announced an ambitious idea to engage with young people: news delivered by text messages and Instagram. “We want to reach thousands of students with civic news and help first time voters get to the ballot box,” writes Kara Meyberg Guzman, the Local’s co-founder and CEO. The Local’s Instagram-first election guide will be aimed at 18- to 29-year-olds in Santa Cruz County, with an emphasis on reaching local college students; Guzman is attempting to raise $10,000 in order to fund it. Santa Cruz Local was one of 205 local news organizations to receive a $100,000 grant from Press Forward last week. Guzman was also interviewed in the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, “What Works in Community News,” and on our podcast.
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with April Alonso, co-founder and digital editor of Cicero Independiente outside of Chicago. The nonprofit bilingual news outlet covers the communities of Cicero and Berwyn in Illinois.
Cicero Independiente and MuckRock, a Boston-based investigative news organization that specializes in public records and investigative reporting, won the 2024 Victor McElheny Award for Local Science Journalism, given by MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Program, for an investigation of air quality called “The Air We Breathe.”
April has an extensive background as a multimedia content creator. She was a multimedia fellow for The Chicago Reporter, and served as a multimedia content creator for “La Verdad,” a bilingual podcast.
I’ve got a Quick Take about a town north of Vancouver, in British Columbia, that has learned a bitter lesson about Canada’s law forcing Facebook’s parent company, Meta, to pay for news. The law has led to a rise in disinformation with fewer effective ways to combat it. Meta’s greed is at the heart of this, of course. But so, too, is the failure of government officials to realize that their proposed solution to help local news outlets would backfire in an ugly way.
Ellen’s Quick Take is on a new philanthropic effort created by The Minnesota Star Tribune. It’s called the Local News Fund, and it is soliciting donations supporting statewide journalism that will be matched by a $500,000 grant from a Minnesota foundation.
We have some exciting news about one of our sister projects at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. The Scope, a professionally edited digital publication that covers “stories of hope, justice and resilience” in Greater Boston, has received a $100,000 grant from Press Forward, a major philanthropic initiative funding local news.
“Since its launch in late 2017, The Scope has become a national leader in leveraging university resources to help solve the news desert crisis. This grant is a vote of confidence in our model,” said Professor Meg Heckman in the announcement of the grant. “Rebuilding the local information ecosystem is a big job, and we’re thrilled Press Forward sees the School of Journalism as a vital part of the solution.”
Heckman has been the guiding force behind The Scope for several years now. Joining her in putting the grant application together were the school’s director, Professor Jonathan Kaufman, and Professor Matt Carroll.
The Scope was one of 205 local news outlets that will receive $20 million in grant money, according to an announcement by Press Forward on Wednesday. Several of the projects are connected in one way or another to What Works, our project on the future of local news:
• The Boston Institute for Nonprofit News, an investigative project that publishes stories on its own website as well as in other outlets. Co-founder Jason Pramas has been a guest on our podcast. Several other Boston-based outlets received grants as well: the Dorchester Reporter, a 40-year-old weekly newspaper; Boston Korea, which serves the Korean American Community in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire; and El Planeta, a venerable Spanish-language newspaper.
• The Maine Monitor, a digital project that covers public policy and politics. Now-retired editor David Dahl has been a guest on our podcast.
• InDepthNH, published by the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism. The site focuses on public policy and politics, and its founder, Nancy West, has been a podcast guest.
• Montclair Local (New Jersey), a hyperlocal website that is one of the projects we write about in “What Works in Community News.” In 2009, the Local merged with Baristanet, one of the original hyperlocal news startups, which I wrote about in my 2013 book, “The Wired City.”
• Eugene Weekly (Oregon), an alternative weekly that suffered a near-death experience earlier this year after a former employee embezzled tens of thousands of dollars. I wrote about that here and at our What Works website.
More on the shrinking Herald
Earlier this week I wrote about the latest paid circulation figures for the Boston Herald based on its recent filings with the U.S. Postal Service. I lamented that the numbers weren’t as complete as I would have liked because the Alliance for Audited Media was no longer providing its reports for free to journalists and researchers, as it had done in the past.
Well, it turns out that I was knocking on the wrong door. I now have recent reports for both the Herald and The Boston Globe. The AAM figures don’t significantly change what I reported about the Globe, but they do fill in some gaps for the Herald.
For March 2024, the most recent AAM report that’s available, the Herald’s average weekday paid print circulation for the previous six months was 12,272, a decline of 2,247, or nearly 15.5%, compared to its March 2023 totals. Sunday paid print circulation, according to the March 2024 report, was 15,183, down 2,690, also 15%.
As I explained earlier, AAM tallies up paid digital circulation differently from a newspaper’s internal count; among other things, AAM allows for some double-counting between print and digital. Nevertheless, its digital figures are useful for tracking trends.
In the March 2024 report, according to AAM, the Herald’s total average weekday paid digital circulation was 30,009, which actually amounts to a decrease of 2,250, or about 7%, over the previous year. Sunday paid digital in March 2024 was 29,753, down 1,952, or about 6.1%.
Needless to say, that’s not the direction that Herald executives want to be moving in — although I should note that, in its September 2024 post office filing, the Herald reported a slight rise in its seven-day digital circulation compared to the previous year.
What fresh hell is this?
The Boston suburb of Melrose is not a news desert. It has a newspaper, the Melrose Weekly News. But, like many communities, it would benefit from more news than it’s getting now, especially after Gannett shuttered the venerable Melrose Free Press in 2021.
So … artificial intelligence to the rescue? In CommonWealth Beacon, Jennifer Smith introduces us to the “Melrose Update Robocast,” which uses fake voices, male and female, to talk about local issues based on information that’s fed into it to produce an AI-generated script. (Note: Smith interviewed me for the piece, though I didn’t make the cut. I’m also on CommonWealth’s editorial advisory board.)
“In a way, what I’m talking about is an act of desperation,” “Robocast” creator Tom Catalini tells Smith.
Yet all across Massachusetts, independently operated news sites with real human beings are springing up to cover local news. Community journalism is how we connect with each other, and an AI-generated podcast can’t do that.
In Medford, where I live, we haven’t had a local news source for two years. But we do have a podcast, “Medford Bytes,” hosted by two activist residents who convene important conversations about what’s going on in the city, including a recent interview with the mayor about three contentious ballot questions that would raise taxes in order to pay for schools, road repairs and a new fire station.
That’s the sound of community members talking among themselves.
Photo (cc) 2015 by Tom Woodward. Digitally edited to remove license plate number.
In 2020, Massachusetts took what was billed as a major step forward in holding police officers accountable. Following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the state created the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission “to improve policing and enhance public confidence in law enforcement by implementing a fair process for mandatory certification, discipline, and training for all peace officers in the Commonwealth.”
But according to an investigation by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, the POST Commission has not collected the employment data it needs to do its job. The story, by BINJ editorial director Chris Faraone and Sam Stecklow, an investigative journalist currently on a fellowship with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Invisible Institute of Chicago, found that Mass. POST and its director, Enrique Zuniga, made a series of decisions that experts say undermine the agency’s mission. Faraone and Stecklow write:
Despite passing regulations that instruct it otherwise, POST’s database does not include the full employment history of all of the officers that are going through the state’s recertification process — only for officers who have had discipline sustained against them. This prevents the press and public from analyzing data about what are often known as “wandering cops,” who transfer between departments after committing misconduct.
Employment history data are basic information that 27 other states around the country, including Vermont, have released to a national reporting project.
“It doesn’t make any sense that the previous employment of these officers wouldn’t be tracked and recorded if the ultimate goal was to prevent police misconduct from occurring,” Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition,” is quoted as saying. “We’re only getting half the story without this information.”
Over the course of 3,500 words, Faraone and Stecklow go into great detail in explaining what data are missing and what the implications might be. As for the POST Commission, it has earned a New England Muzzle Award for only partially lifting the veil of secrecy that protects police officers who’ve been accused of misconduct.
The story, by the way, is the product of a partnership between BINJ and the Invisible Institute that Faraone explains here. Their investigation is being published not just by BINJ’s HorizonMass affiliate but also by The Shoestring in Western Massachusetts, Luke O’Neil’s Welcome to Hell World newsletter, and about a half-dozen hyperlocal weeklies and other publications.
And lest we overlook the mutual backscratching opportunities here, I’ve interviewed BINJ and HorizonMass co-founder Jason Pramas on “What Works,” our podcast about the future of local news, while Faraone and Stecklow give a shoutout to the Muzzle Awards in their article.
The Star Tribune of Minneapolis has been something of a doppelgänger for The Boston Globe as well as a model. Like the Globe, the Strib, as it is known, has emerged as a profitable, growing enterprise under the guidance of a billionaire sports owner.
In Boston, of course, that’s John Henry, who’s also the principal owner of the Red Sox. In Minneapolis, it’s Glen Taylor, the principal owner of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves. Both men have other sports interests as well. I wrote about Henry’s struggles with the Globe in my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls”; the paper didn’t really take off until sometime after that. My collaborator Ellen Clegg wrote about the Star Tribune in our 2024 book, “What Works in Community News.”
The parallels don’t stop there. The Globe, formerly a New England-wide paper that had contracted to Eastern Massachusetts, has been expanding in recent years, with editions in Rhode Island and New Hampshire and more to come. Executives at the Strib have been working to re-establish the paper as a Minnesota-wide entity.
Now the Strib has taken the next step. In a post for our website, What Works, Ellen writes about the Strib’s rebranding as The Minnesota Star Tribune and the innovative approach being taken by the Strib’s new opinion editor, Phillip Morris. Among other things, Morris is building up an ambitious roster of community writers known as Strib Voices and has abolished political endorsements in favor of a deeper dive into candidates and issues — something Ellen, as a retired editorial-page editor at the Globe, takes a keen interest in.
I’d be surprised if the Globe drops endorsements. Indeed, the paper just unveiled its first endorsement of the 2024 election, backing Mara Dolan in the Democratic primary for Governor’s Council. But at a time when they are increasingly seen as an anachronism, and with even The New York Times ending local and statewide endorsements, I’d also be surprised if it’s not at least being talked about at the Globe.
Endorsements of political candidates are fading into history. The latest blow was struck on Monday, when The New York Times said it would no longer endorse in local races (free link), although it will continue to endorse in the presidential contest.
In terms of influence, this has it exactly backwards. May we presume that the Times will endorse the Harris-Walz ticket this fall? Yes, we may. Meanwhile, readers in New York City and across the state — admittedly a shrinking share of the Times’ 10 million-plus subscribers, most of them digital — might genuinely want some guidance in deciding whom to vote for in state and local contests.
But there’s no turning back. Increasingly, communities are served by nonprofit local news organizations, which risk losing their tax-exempt status if they endorse candidates or specific pieces of legislation. As Tom Jones notes at Poynter Online, papers owned by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund stopped endorsing in 2022. Those include some of the largest papers in the country, such as New York’s Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and The Denver Post. Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, has cut back on opinion, including endorsements.
A newspaper endorsement is a recommendation to vote for a particular candidate written in the institutional voice of the news organization. At larger newspapers, editorial boards comprising the staff of the opinion section and sometimes some outside members make those decisions in consultation with the publisher. In many cases these boards interview the candidates before making their decision.
The opinion section of a newspaper is entirely separate from the news staff, with the editor and the editorial-page editor reporting directly to the publisher, who may or may not be the owner of the paper as well. Publishers have been known to overturn the editorial board’s recommendation — that’s their prerogative. At smaller papers these lines tend to get blurred. At now-defunct Boston Phoenix, where I worked for many years, the editorial board comprised publisher Stephen Mindich and the news staff. Then again, the Phoenix, as an alt-weekly, mixed opinion and reporting, so the wall separating news from commentary didn’t really exist.
There was a time when rich men bought newspapers mainly so that they could express their political views, with the news section taking a back seat to the editorial page. These days, though, endorsements are often regarded by political reporters as a hindrance in their efforts to convince candidates who were not endorsed by the opinion section that they will cover them fairly. My conversations with students over the years have led me to believe that they are skeptical of the whole notion of a news outlet speaking as an institution, and that they’re more comfortable with signed opinion pieces such as those that typically appear on the op-ed page.
When a local news organization chooses not to endorse, either on principle or to keep the IRS at bay, it loses an opportunity to share its expertise with its audience. For instance, the nonprofit New Haven Independent covers a city that is served a 30-member board of alders, as the city council is known. How is anyone supposed to keep track?
But there are other steps a news outlet can take. It can put together a guide to where candidates stand on the issues and link to that guide every time it publishes a story on that particular race. The guide can take the form of a series of articles or an issues grid — or both. And I should add that the Independent covers city politics with depth and fairness.
If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, Ellen Clegg and I talked with Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby about endorsements on our “What Works” podcast back in 2022. Ellen, who’s a retired editorial-page editor for the Globe which continues to endorse in state and local elections, is pro-endorsement; Jeff is against them. I’m (uncharacteristically) in the middle.
I’ll be speaking this Monday, Aug. 12, from 1 to 2 p.m. on “What Works: The Future of Local News” as part of the Summer Institute for Journalism Education at Fitchburg State University. The event will be held at the Fitchburg Historical Society at 781 Main St. and is free and open to the public.
I’ll discuss what caused the local news crisis as well as “What Works in Community News,” the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote about possible solutions. The three-day conference features a great lineup of speakers from journalism, public access television and academia, so I hope you’ll check it out. Please register here.
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I are talking with … each other. There’s lots happening in the local news space, and we want to hit some highlights.
We also have a programming note: This will be our final podcast this summer. We’re going to make like the French and take the rest of August off. Before signing off, though, we discuss the state of play for newsletters (who knew email is the killer app?); podcasts (we’re still free and we still do it for love, not money); and advertising (some newspapers are charging a fee if you’d like your digital feed served with no advertising.)
Ellen has a remembrance of Jack Connors, a legendary Boston advertising mogul and backer of local news who once tried to buy The Boston Globe. She also finds a refreshing stream of news about local people, businesses, and government on the home pages of hyperlocal outlets in swing states.
You can listen to our conversation here and access an AI-generated transcript. You can also subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
We have some exciting news about one of our sister projects at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. 
But 
