What Works in Community News

How The Baltimore Banner’s embrace of DC sports fits with its editor’s civic-minded mission

*The Washington Nationals will soon be covered by The Baltimore Banner. Photo (cc) 2022 by All-Pro Reels / Joe Glorioso.*

The gutting of The Washington Post may prove to be an opportunity for The Baltimore Banner. According to an announcement, the Banner, a digital nonprofit startup, will cover Washington teams, including beat coverage of the Nationals baseball team and the Commanders football team. The Banner’s editor-in-chief, Audrey Cooper, is quoted as saying:

This decision is part of our unwavering commitment to serve Maryland with honest, independent journalism. It builds on last week’s announcement that we are expanding our news coverage into Prince George’s County and represents another step in strengthening our statewide reach.

At a time when so much pulls communities apart, sports bring us together. The Washington Post’s decision to eliminate its sports section creates an opportunity for us to serve more Marylanders with The Banner’s distinctive mix of fearless accountability reporting, engaging storytelling and sharp analysis.

I found Cooper’s comments about sports bringing people together to be especially interesting because they parallel something she told Mike Blinder recently on the Editor & Publisher vodcast:

America is having a hard time having civil, civic conversations right now and I think the reason behind that is because of the shrinking local news ecosystem. If we spent more time worrying about whether our kids are being educated, whether our roads are paved, whether our water is safe to drink, and less time about these national culture fights that, to be honest, don’t affect our day-to-day lives, I think there’s a chance that local news has to re-teach Americans how to have civic conversations.

To me, saving the great American experiment means saving local news. And I think it’s difficult to find a place in America right now where that’s not, where Baltimore is like second to none. I mean, I think what’s happening here and what the Banner is doing is the most interesting experiment in local news, and I wanted to be a part of it.

This echoes a theme that Ellen Clegg and I explore in our book, “What Works in Community News,” and on our podcast. The nationalization of everything has a lot to do with why we are so polarized. We live in communities, in neighborhoods, but the phony controversies that are ginned up in the national media — especially on Fox News — gain more resonance than they should when we lack reliable sources of local news to inform us about what really matters.

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The Jeff Bezos-owned Post’s decision to eliminate its sports staff and cut back on metro coverage was mind-boggling. As Poynter media columnist Tom Jones observed (second item), the Post’s sports section was “legendary,” and it “was once known for having some of the best sportswriters in the business with the likes of Shirley Povich, Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Sally Jenkins and Thomas Boswell, just to name a few. And the sports department of today — well, of last week — also had a deep talent pool with brilliant journalists including Chuck Culpepper, Dave Sheinin and columnists Candace Buckner and Barry Svrluga.”

The Banner’s move follows a bid by Washington City Paper to purchase the Post’s sports and metro sections. Tina Nguyen reported in The Verge that though soon-to-depart publisher Will Lewis was receptive, the talks went nowhere, and the paper went ahead with massive cuts — initially reported as 300 of the paper’s 800 journalists, but which is now being revealed as even worse than that. (Former Post reporter Paul Farhi, writing for Washingtonian, places the number at 350 to 375 positions eliminated out of a total headcount of 790.)

If the Banner’s embrace of Washington sports and coverage of Prince George’s County is successful (previously the Banner started covering another Washington suburb in Maryland, Montgomery County), I hope it might lead to more — maybe even a Washington Banner. The Post is supposedly going to continue covering national politics. But when Bezos bought the paper in 2013 from the legendary Graham family, the Post was primarily a regional paper that had more in common with The Boston Globe or The Philadelphia Inquirer than it did with The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps the Banner, City Paper, Washingtonian and others can make up for that local news gap. It would also be nice if one or more of them amped up their book coverage, as the Post’s standalone book section was a casualty of the bloodletting. (And the entire photo staff. Good Lord.)

The Banner is quite a story. Earlier this week I wrote an article for The Conversation about five large regional newspapers that have achieved sustainability of a sort. Four of them are either owned by billionaires or owe their current success to billionaires. I could have mentioned the Banner as well. Hotel magnate Stewart Bainum founded and endowed the Banner after he was spurned in his bid to purchase The Baltimore Sun and then all of Tribune Publishing from the hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

The Banner launched in 2022 and, according to Cooper in her interview with Blinder, has 75,000 paid subscribers. As of last September, the newsroom staff comprised nearly 100 people. It’s won a Pulitzer Prize, and — Boston trivia alert — Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory serves on its board of directors.

The Minnesota Star Tribune unveils a free live blog, gift links and family subscriptions

The Star Tribune’s headquarters. Photo (cc) 2019 by Tony Webster.

The Minnesota Star Tribune, which is already getting a lot of attention for its outstanding coverage of ICE’s violent and indiscriminate rampage through Minneapolis and St. Paul, has unveiled some ideas that ought to be considered by every large regional newspaper in the country.

Granted, newspapers owned by corporations and hedge funds aren’t likely to emulate these common-sense ideas, even though they might boost revenue in the long run. But there are still some independent dailies such as The Boston Globe and The Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as a few high-quality chains such as Hearst and Advance, that could learn from the Star Tribune.

The Strib is one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I highlight in our book, “What Works in Community News.” The changes were announced in a press release on Friday. They include:

► An end to the paywall for live blogs covering breaking news, which will ensure that “its public service journalism is accessible to all.” The Strib’s free live-blog coverage of the ICE occupation has been essential. Moreover, Minnesota residents whose first exposure to the paper’s journalism was through the live blog might be enticed into buying a subscription.

► Unlimited gift links so that subscribers can share articles with friends. The press release doesn’t specify whether those links will be shareable on social media as well, but that is the standard practice at most papers that offer gift links. This is another forward-looking move that will give non-readers a chance to sample the Strib’s coverage and decide whether they want to become paying customers. The Globe, to cite one contrary example, lets you email a gift link to friends, but it’s kludgy and it doesn’t work on social. The Strib’s approach sounds like it will be cleaner and more intuitive.

► A family-plan digital subscription with up to four unique log-ins, offered at a slightly higher price than an individual subscription. The New York Times does this, but I’m not aware of other papers that do it.

► A nonprofit fund that can accept tax-deductible donations to support the Star Tribune’s journalism. (The Local News Fund was started in 2024, but it was re-announced Friday.) Some might object to this; the Strib, like the Globe, is a for-profit owned by a billionaire. But those billionaires have invested a considerable amount of resources into their papers, which are marginally profitable at best. If you accept the proposition that even a billionaire owner shouldn’t be expected to run their paper at a loss, then this is a good way to support high-quality regional news coverage.

Even amid high-profile setbacks, public funding for local news is expanding at the state level

*The Illinois State Capitol in Springfield. A new law in Illinois provides tax credits and other benefits to bolster local news. Photo (cc) 2023 by w_lemay.*

The dawn of Donald Trump’s second term signaled a shift in efforts to bolster local news with government assistance.

For several years, Congress had considered measures to provide tax credits that would help news organizations and to force Google and Facebook to pay for the journalism they repurpose. Despite some bipartisan support, especially for tax credits, those measures fell short, with no prospect of success under Trump and his MAGA allies.

As a result, attention has turned from Washington to state-led initiatives, which have proven to be a mixed bag.

Read the rest at Poynter Online.

Voices on the ground: Local news outlets report on cheers, jeers for the U.S. raid on Venezuela

Protesters in Raleigh, N.C. Photo (cc) 2026 by Laura Leslie / NC Newsline

All news is local. Following the deadly U.S. raid to pluck President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, out of Venezuela, local news organizations reported on the reaction in their communities. This morning I’m taking a look at how three of the outlets that Ellen Clegg and I profile in our book, “What Works in Community News,” are handling the news.

“‘A Huge Step Towards Change, Hopefully A Positive One,’” by Tom Breen, the New Haven Independent.

Jose Lara, a Venezuelan expat living in West Haven, Connecticut, told Breen he was hopeful that Maduro’s arrest would lead to better days for his home country. “I’m feeling excited,” Lara said at a gathering outside New Haven City Hall. Breen writes:

Like Lara, many who showed up on Saturday night were optimistic that this time is different.

“Excitement, first and foremost,” Laura Almeyda said when asked how she is feeling today. Also, “confusion. Uncertainty. But hope. We’re faithful and joyful. This is a huge step towards change, hopefully a positive one.”

Breen observes, though, that others, such as U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., are warning that Trump’s action was “a fundamental violation of the Constitution” that could lead to “endless conflict.” And he links to another indy digital outlet in Connecticut, CT News Junkie, where Karla Ciaglo reports on the (mostly) negative reaction from Democratic officials and left-leaning activist groups.

“Venezuelans in Memphis feel euphoria now that ‘nightmare’ is over — but dreams for future uneasy” (reg. req.), by Jody Callahan, The Daily Memphian.

As with the New Haven Independent, The Daily Memphian — supplemented with coverage by The Associated Press — focuses on the Venezuelan diaspora community in Memphis, Tennessee. Here’s part of the Memphian story:

“We have been dreaming of these days for so long. We have been hopeful of a day when we see [these leaders] out of the country and really democracy back in our country,” said Daniel Bastardo Blanco, who works in communications in Memphis. “We remain incredibly hopeful that freedom is about to restart in our country.”

But Venezuelan natives living in Memphis also said that their euphoria was also mixed with fear for friends and relatives still living in the South American country, where some citizens were killed in the strikes, as well as tremendous uncertainty about what happens next.

“It was a little bit of a shock,” said Pedro Velasquez, whose family runs nonprofit medical clinics in both Memphis and Venezuela. “As I read about how it was executed, and that there weren’t as many civilian casualties, that it was more localized and over in 20-30 minutes, it sort of made me breathe a little easier.”

“Hundreds march through Minneapolis to protest U.S. attack on Venezuela” (reg. req.), by Kyeland Jackson, The Minnesota Star Tribune.

Jackson leads with Andrew Josefchak of the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition and a left-wing supporter of the Maduro government, who joined with more than 200 others to protest Trump’s action on Satuday. “The peace movement in this country, in Minneapolis at least, wasn’t going to let that [military action] go by without organizing an emergency demonstration against it to show that people in the U.S. don’t want this,” Josefchak was quoted as saying. “They don’t want war.”

The Strib also quotes Democratic opponents of Trump’s action like U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican supporters like U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer. And we hear from a Venezuelan expat who supports the raid despite concerns about her mother’s safety:

Soleil Ramirez watched footage of explosions across Caracas moments after the strike began, worrying for her mother, who lives near a military base.

Ramirez, chef and owner of the Crasqui restaurant in St. Paul, said her mother is fine — and the military operation was reason to celebrate.

“Let us celebrate this victory because we haven’t been celebrating anything in the last 26 years,” she said.

A note on the photo: NC Newsline, which covers North Carolina, is part of States Newsroom, a network of 50 nonprofit news outlets covering politics and public policy. Its journalism is available for republication under a Creative Commons license. Ellen and I recently hosted publisher and CEO Chris Fitzsimon on our “What Works” podcast.

Rick Goldsmith tells us about ‘Stripped for Parts,’ his jeremiad against hedge-fund journalism

On the latest “What Works” podcast, I’m flying solo because co-host Ellen Clegg is recovering from knee-replacement surgery. But fear not — she was behind the scenes making sure this episode got recorded properly, and she edited what you are listening to. She’ll be back on the air soon.

Our guest is Rick Goldsmith, a veteran filmmaker who has taken a close look at the state of corporate journalism in America. His documentary “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink” tells the story of Alden Global Capital, the secretive hedge fund that has bought up many of our greatest newspapers and stripped them of their real estate and slashed their newsrooms.

He focuses on one of Alden’s papers, The Denver Post, and the rise of The Colorado Sun, a digital startup begun by former Post journalists. The story of what happened in Colorado is also one that we tell in our book, “What Works in Community News.”

The reason we’re having Rick on now is that you’ll be able to watch “Stripped for Parts” through Dec. 31 for free on the PBS app, which you can access through Apple TV, Roku, Google Play and most smart TVs. The various options for watching the film are explained here.

I’ve got a Quick Take about Jay Rosen, who retired earlier this year from New York University and is now taking on a new challenge. Jay is probably best known to his younger followers as an incisive media critic. But his true passion, going back to the 1990s, is finding ways to involve members of the public in the production of journalism. Now he’s doing it again with a project called News Creator Corps — and it could have implications for local news.

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

Public journalism redux: Post-academia, Jay Rosen returns to where he started

*Jay Rosen. Photo (cc) 2017 by the Moody College of Communication.*

Jay Rosen has been one of the major thinkers in journalism since the 1990s. Younger followers may think of him mainly as a media critic, and there’s no doubting his influence in that field. Through his blog, PressThink, and his social media presence (especially back in Twitter’s heyday), Rosen showed an uncanny ability to frame issues in a way that made a lot of us think about what we were doing.

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The “production of innocence” was his phrase for “a public showing by professional journalists that they have no politics themselves, no views of their own, no side, no stake, no ideology and therefore no one can accuse them of — and here we enter the realm of dread — political bias.”

Continue reading “Public journalism redux: Post-academia, Jay Rosen returns to where he started”

Ellen Clegg surveys how the Memphis media are covering Trump’s troop deployment

Memphis skyline photo (cc) 2015 by Luca Saroni.

My What Works partner Ellen Clegg has written a new post on how the Memphis media are dealing with Trump’s troop deployment. She’s got updates from The Commercial Appeal, the Daily Memphian, the Tennessee Lookout, MLK50 and the Institute for Public Service Reporting and the Memphis Flyer.

Nonprofit local news is growing, but the revenue mix remains unbalanced, according to a new INN report

Public domain photo via the Library of Congress.

Nonprofit local news is on the upswing, according to a new report from the Institute for Nonprofit News. An INN survey of nearly 400 digital-first nonprofit news organizations showed that the median outlet raised $532,000 in revenue in 2024, up from $477,000 the previous year. That’s an increase of 11.5%.

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In addition, local news organizations now make up 51% of INN’s membership, up from 48% in 2023. The remainder of the projects are regional, statewide and national.

INN is a vitally important organization in the world of local nonprofit news. Through its NewsMatch program, news publishers are able to leverage local donations with matching funds — one-to-one in some cases. The program has raised more than $400 million since 2017. INN’s ethical guidelines have been widely adopted by the nonprofit journalism community. The organization also acts as a fiscal sponsor for fledgling nonprofits that have not yet received IRS approval for full 501(c)(3) recognition.

Continue reading “Nonprofit local news is growing, but the revenue mix remains unbalanced, according to a new INN report”

Recognition for ‘What Works in Community News’ from the Mass Book Awards

*In the Great Hall at the Massachusetts Statehouse for the Mass Book Awards.*

I was thrilled to attend the Mass Book Awards ceremony at the Statehouse earlier today, when “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,” which Ellen Clegg and I wrote about possible ways out of the local journalism crisis, was recognized as one of the top dozen nonfiction books in Massachusetts.

Our book was one of nine that were longlisted. In addition, the top nonfiction award went to “We Refuse: A History of Black Resistance,” by Kellie Carter Jackson, with honors going to “Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit,” by Robin Bernstein, and “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border,” by Ieva Jusionyte. The awards are sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Unfortunately, Ellen wasn’t able to make it, but I was honored to attend and be recognized along with the other winners.

It was also great to reconnect with Gayatri Patnaik, the director of Beacon Press, who embraced our vision and helped bring it to fruition. Our immediate editor, Catherine Tung, has since moved on to a senior editing position at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, but she provided crucial support when we lost a year during COVID. She also gave us good advice that we tried to follow in our reporting — to assess how well the local news projects we were writing about were covering arts and culture, a crucial part of civic life. That said, most of them weren’t, with the New Haven Independent and its affiliated low-power radio station, WNHH, standing as notable exceptions.

I’m also proud of the professional partnership Ellen and I have developed as we’ve built out the book into a wider project, What Works: The Future of Local News, based at Northeastern University in the School of Journalism and affiliated with the Center for Transformative Media. What Works comprises a frequently updated website on developments in local news; an every-other-week podcast featuring news entrepreneurs and thought leaders; conferences and webinars; and a database of independent local news organizations in Massachusetts.

The Colorado Sun embraces a democratic nonprofit model that looks a lot like a co-op

*Larry Ryckman, co-founder and publisher of The Colorado Sun. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.*

For at least 15 years, local-news visionaries have been thinking about ways to build a media organization owned and governed by its staff and members of the community. The idea is to create a news cooperative — that is, a co-op, similar to a food co-op or a credit union. Members might contribute money or labor, and in return they’d have a say in hiring and coverage.

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I followed efforts to build such a co-op in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where longtime journalist Tom Stites wanted to test out a concept he called the Banyan Project with a site called Haverhill Matters. Unfortunately, years of anemic fundraising went nowhere, and in January 2020, the local organizers shut it down.

Continue reading “The Colorado Sun embraces a democratic nonprofit model that looks a lot like a co-op”