“NJ Spotlight News” anchor Briana Vannozzi, right, interviews U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.
NJ PBS chair Scott Kobler has issued a statement in which he criticizes New Jersey government officials for “intransigence or maybe even apathy” over the public broadcasting funding crisis.
As I noted Wednesday, NJ PBS may shut down in June 2026 following a breakdown in negotiations between the state and WNET of New York, the public media organization that runs the New Jersey operation. In addition to losing some $1.5 million in federal funds, NJ PBS’s allotment of state funds has been cut from $1 million for the coming year to just $250,000.
The cuts are likely to affect NJ Spotlight News, a website covering statewide politics and public policy as well as the name of NJ PBS’s daily half-hour newscast. The two operations merged in 2019. Although WNET has pledged to keep the news operation alive online and on its New York-based station, Thirteen, regardless of what happens, its reporting capacity is likely to be reduced unless a well-heeled benefactor or two steps up.
The MAGA right’s war on public broadcasting has come for an innovative statewide news collaboration in New Jersey, leaving its ultimate fate uncertain.
NJ PBS, the state’s public television outlet, may shut down in June 2026 following massive budget cuts at both the federal and state levels. The Republican Congress, acting at the behest of Donald Trump, eliminated $1.1 billion in funding for public television and radio over the next two years — including about $1.5 million for New Jersey’s TV station, according to Daniel Han of Politico. Meanwhile, the New Jersey state legislature, facing its own pressure from Trump cuts, reduced funding to NJ PBS by $750,000, reports Victoria Gladstone of NJ.com.
The upshot is that WNET of New York, the nonprofit umbrella organization for NJ PBS, was unable to reach an agreement with the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority to continue operating the station beyond June 2026. WNET says it will look for a new partner to keep NJ PBS on the air.
For news consumers, the effect could be considerable. NJ PBS is one of a tiny handful of public television stations that offers a daily evening newscast. Since 2019, that newscast has been produced in conjunction with NJ Spotlight News, a 15-year-old digital news outlet covering state politics and public policy. It’s a true collaboration, with the newscast and video clips posted on the website and with Spotlight reporters frequently popping up on the air. The story of how Spotlight and NJ PBS merged is told in “What Works in Community News,” the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote.
John Mooney, the co-founder and executive director of NJ Spotlight News, declined to comment when I contacted him this morning. We interviewed John last spring on our “What Works” podcast.
Lucas Frau of NorthJersey.com reports that two Democratic state senators, John Burzichelli and Andrew Zwicker, are hoping to find a solution to save NJ PBS. According to their statement:
The shutdown of public TV in New Jersey will have real-life consequences, depriving the state’s residents of invaluable news and educational programming. The television network has played a pivotal role in New Jersey, bridging the divide between New York and Philadelphia with trusted information relevant to the lives and civic activities of the state’s residents.
Even if WNET is unable to find a partner, it will continue to offer the daily Spotlight newscast on Thirteen, its New York-based television station, which reaches a large segment of New Jersey viewers, and on a variety of digital platforms. Anchor Brianna Vannozzi shared all this with viewers on Tuesday.
In other words, coverage will continue, both on the newscast and on the website. The question is whether NJ Spotlight News will be able to continue offering the same in-depth reporting that has been its hallmark. As is too often the case these days, the answer is probably “no” — unless wealthy benefactors step up.
Photo by Peggy and Marco Lachmann-Anke via Pixabay
Nearly four years ago, Ellen Clegg and I began tracking solutions to the local news crisis with our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News.” Our first guest was Lori Ehrlich, at that time a state representative who was working to launch a commission to study the state of community journalism in Massachusetts and make some recommendations.
The commission has twice failed to achieve liftoff, but Ellen and I have built a multidimensional project. We wrote a well-received book, “What Works in Community News,” which was published by Beacon Press in 2024. And we are involved in other ways as well.
Today the What Works project, which is part of Northeastern University’s School of Journalism and affiliated with the university’s Center for Transformative Media, comprises several different initiatives:
Our website, where we post updates to the projects that we write about in our book, new episodes of our podcast, and news and commentary about other developments in local news.
Our podcast, on which we interview enterpreneurs and thought leaders on an every-other-week basis. We’ll be back later this month with our 105th episode following a summer hiatus.
Our Bluesky feed, where we link to coverage and smaller items that don’t quite meet the criteria for a full blog post. If you’re not interested in joining Bluesky, you’ll find our news feed embedded on the website. If you’re reading What Works on your laptop, just cast your eyes to the right.
A database of independent local news organizations in Massachusetts. Although much of our work is national in scope, we also believe we can offer unique value to the grassroots journalism community right here at home. Look for links to “Mass. Indy News” in the upper right corner of this blog and at the What Works website. You can also bookmark it at tinyurl.com/mass-indy-news.
Speaking appearances at which we talk about our book and evangelize about the future of local news. We also engage in ad hoc consulting with the leaders of news projects that are either startups or moving in new directions.
Gatherings for local news leaders both in person and via webinar. We’re already planning our second in-person conference, which will be held next year on Friday, March 13.
Ellen and I are trying to build something of lasting value and to push back against the narrative that local news is dead. Through independent community control and innovative nonprofit and for-profit business models, we believe the local news crisis is being solved one community at a time.
The Bedford Citizen, which may be the oldest nonprofit local-news startup in Massachusetts, is back on track after losing its top two newsroom employees earlier this year.
Bill Fonda is joining the Citizen as its new managing editor, replacing Wayne Braverman, who retired this past spring. Fonda, who worked nearly four years as editor of the award-winning Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in New Hampshire, is the citizen’s third managing editor; Braverman succeeded co-founder Julie McCay Turner in 2022.
Fonda’s hiring was announced Thursday in an email from Elizabeth Hacala, the Citizen’s board president and publisher.
The Citizen also recently hired a community reporter to replace the legendary Mike Rosenberg, who died while on the job last February. Rosenberg’s replacement, Piper Pavelich, had previously worked for The Lincoln County News, based in Newcastle, Maine.
The Citizen, which was founded in 2012, is among the projects that Ellen Clegg and I feature in our book, “What Works in Community News.” It began as an all-volunteer project and gradually added paid professional journalism, though it still has a significant volunteer component.
What follows is an article that will be published in the Citizen later today:
Bill Fonda is The Bedford Citizen’s New Managing Editor
Please join us in welcoming Bill Fonda as The Bedford Citizen’s Managing Editor.
Bill most recently spent nearly four years as the editor of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, a twice-weekly newspaper published by Newspapers of New England that covered 16 towns in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire.
During his time at the Ledger-Transcript, the paper won two first-place awards and one second-place award for General Excellence from the New Hampshire Press Association, was named a Distinguished Newspaper/Small Circulation Weekly by the New England Newspaper and Press Association and received second place in General Excellence for weeklies over 5,000 circulation from the New England Newspaper and Press Association.
Bill also spent 16 years with the former GateHouse Media (now part of Gannett) after beginning his career with Spotlight Newspapers outside of Albany in his native New York. Joining The Bedford Citizen is a return of sorts, as his time at GateHouse included serving as managing editor for newspapers in and around Concord, including Bedford.
It is that experience which makes him appreciative of what The Citizen has accomplished and continues to achieve.
“To see the work that has been done to build and rebuild local news coverage in Bedford is inspiring, and something I want to be a part of,” he said. “I hope that I’ll be able to help advance the good work that is already going on here.”
Ellen Clegg and I are excited to report that Rozzie Bound Co-op, an independent bookstore in Roslindale, Massachusetts, is hosting a GBH Listening Session on Thursday, Aug. 21 — and it’s designated our book, “What Works in Community News,” as the recommended read.
“Magdeila Matta, a community producer with GBH News, is looking to engage with folks and learn how they engage with the media, as well as open up space for people to share what’s going on in their communities,” according to the announcement. “Come to this session to talk to Magdeila about what news matters to you.”
“What Works in Community News,” a close-up look at successful independent news in nine different parts of the country, has been longlisted for a Mass Book Award by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.
Rozzie Bound Co-op is located at 739 South St. The listening session will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. And here’s a GBH News article on the story behind the bookstore.
For the past 16 years I’ve been reporting on the decline of local news and on efforts to offset it. But though it’s simple enough to spout anecdotes, it can be more challenging to come up with hard numbers, though some have tried.
The latest attempt dropped last week: a comprehensive study by Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack, the latter a platform that connects journalists and public relations professionals. I’ve been looking over some of the findings this week, and what’s interesting is that it’s based entirely on data from millions of articles published during the first three months of this year. That means it’s not dependent on the vagaries of counting news outlets by hand, but it also means the researchers had to pile assumption upon assumption and then hope they got it right. I think they did for the most part.
Dallas Morning News headquarters. Photo (cc) 2018 by Shaggylawn65.
This morning I want to share some good news about local news — and from a legacy newspaper company, no less. The Hearst newspaper chain has acquired The Dallas Morning News, adding to its constellation of Texas newspapers including the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman and the San Antonio Express-News.
Hearst is a privately held chain and, though corporate chain ownership is always problematic, the company has shown that it’s committed to strong regional and statewide news. We discussed Hearst’s strategy in Connecticut in our book, “What Works in Community News,” where Hearst has a cluster of newspapers that includes the New Haven Register, the Connecticut Post of Bridgeport, the Times-Union of Albany, New York (OK, not quite Connecticut), and the digital-only CT Insider. Hyperlocal is left to smaller outlets and digital startups.
Readers with long memories may recall that DallasNews Corp. at one time was known as Belo, and that it owned The Providence Journal. Rick Edmonds, who analyzes the news business for Poynter, reports that the Texas transaction was worth some $75 million, writing:
Staff reductions on the business side can be expected as those Dallas Morning News functions are consolidated with the rest of Hearst, but except for production, I would expect the newsroom to remain nearly intact. The Morning News’s story on the deal said that it has 157 news employees.
Ken Doctor, a former newspaper industry analyst who now runs local news digital startups in Santa Cruz, California and Eugene, Oregon, had a positive take on the news.
“To have a state like Texas with one owner for those four markets is really something,” he said. “Hearst has held on to their newspaper business and is reinvesting. That’s really contrarian and a good sign for the industry. And they do great journalism.”
The deal ends 140 years of local ownership for the Morning News, which is a shame. Hearst publishes 28 dailies and 50 weeklies. But for the paper to wind up in the hands of a decent publisher rather than a cost-cutting behemoth like Gannett or Alden Global Capital is certainly good news for the News’ staff and the people they serve.
Nonprofit acquires Vt. weekly
A for-profit weekly newspaper in southern Vermont is going nonprofit. The Deerfield Valley News, founded in 1966, is being acquired by The Commons, a venerable nonprofit newspaper based in Brattleboro.
“We’ve never had the resources for more finely grained news coverage like gavel-to-gavel coverage of municipal government news, and The Deerfield Valley News will continue to perform that critical role, as it has, week after week, for years and years. That won’t change,” said Commons editor-in-chief Jeff Potter in a statement. The Valley News writes:
Randy and Vicki Capitani, owners of The Deerfield Valley News for nearly 35 years, have announced the sale of their venerable weekly print newspaper to Vermont Independent Media, publisher of the The Commons.
The sale was completed on June 27, bringing The Deerfield Valley News under the umbrella of Vermont Independent Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news corporation. The Deerfield Valley News will be a nonprofit sister publication of The Commons, an independent newspaper covering Brattleboro, the Connecticut River Valley, and southern Vermont.
Vermont Independent Media and its board of directors plan to maintain the The Deerfield Valley News as a paid-circulation newspaper serving the Deerfield Valley, and current subscriptions will be honored under the new management. The newspaper will continue to operate out of its Wilmington location, and editorial staff and other key personnel will remain in their roles.
N.H. paper shuts down. Again.
Sadly, another newspaper serving New Hampshire is shutting down. The Claremont Eagle Times ceased publishing several weeks ago, Steve Taylor writes in The Valley News. (That Valley News is based in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, and is not to be confused with The Deerfield Valley News.)
According to Taylor, the Eagle Times has struggled since its founding in 1950. Indeed, the news of its closing rang a bell, and sure enough, the paper closed for the first time in 2009. I guess at some point it was revived. When I took note of the first shutdown, there was another news outlet in town called Your Claremont Press. That no longer seems to be in existence, either.
The shutdown came not long after the staff walked out because their paychecks bounced. By the end, the once-daily print paper was coming out three days a week. Its website had reportedly not been updated since June 15, and it currently appears to be down.
Kevin Dale, executive editor of Colorado Public Radio. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.
I haven’t seen any explanation for why three public radio outlets in Colorado joined NPR in suing the Trump administration over its threat to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I’m glad they did, but it seems to me that all 246 member stations ought to sign on, including GBH and WBUR in Boston.
When I was in Colorado several years ago to interview people for the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, “What Works in Community News,” CPR was perhaps the largest news organization in the state, with a staff of 65 journalists. (I say “perhaps” because executive editor Kevin Dale thought one or two television stations might be bigger.) Some cuts were made last year as business challenges hit a number of public broadcasting outlets as well as NPR itself.
The basis of the lawsuit, writes NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, is that CPB is an independent, private nonprofit that is funded by Congress. The suit claims that the president has no right to rescind any money through an executive order; only Congress can do that. Moreover, the suit contends that this is pure viewpoint discrimination, as demonstrated by Trump’s own words — that NPR and PBS, which also relies on CPB funding, present “biased and partisan news coverage.”
There are two problems with direct government funding of journalism. The first is that it opens the door to government interference. The second is that, even if safeguards are built in to protect independence, the money can be reduced or cut off in the event of a crisis.
That is exactly what is happening in New Jersey and California. In the former, that state’s Civic Information Consortium, a pioneering effort to distribute taxpayer funds for journalism and other types of storytelling, is in danger of being zeroed out after receiving $3 million this past year. In the latter, a deal that California officials had reached with Google to pay for news is starting to come apart.
Speaking of monetizing the news: Your $6 a month will keep this free source of news and commentary thriving — and you’ll receive a weekly newsletter with all sorts of exclusive goodies. Just click here.
New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, has proposed getting rid of the funding in his budget for fiscal year 2026. The consortium calls it “a potentially devastating blow to local media and civic information access across the state. Without this funding, NJCIC’s critical work could cease.”
Since it was launched in 2021, the consortium has granted some $9 million to 56 organizations. It’s administered by an independent board appointed by the governor and run out of Montclair State University. Ellen Clegg and I wrote about it in our book, “What Works in Community News.”
Murphy declined to comment on the cut when contacted by Terrence T. McDonald of the New Jersey Monitor, but McDonald noted that the governor’s office had said earlier this year that his budget proposal would include “some belt-tightening.” Even so, McDonald observed that next year’s budget was on track to be larger than the current year’s.
The California situation stems from a much-criticized deal that the state cut with Google last year. According to Jeanne Kuang of CalMatters, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has reduced a $30 million allocation to help pay for local news to just $10 million for the coming year as he wrestles with a $12 billion deficit.
That, in turn, trigged a cut by Google from $15 million to $10 million. The money — now just $20 million instead of $45 million — will be administered by a newly formed California Civic Media Fund, which Kuang writes will comprise “a board of publisher representatives to determine how to distribute it.”
California’s five-year deal with Google was reached after the state abandoned efforts to pass legislation that would have taxed Google for the news that it repurposes. One version of the tax would have brought in $500 million a year.
There are all kinds of problems with what essentially amounts to a link tax, started with the reality that news publishers benefit when Google links to their content. Users who click through encounter those publishers’ advertising, or may even be induced to subscribe if they have a paywall.
Now publishers are facing a much deeper threat from Google, as the search giant is going all-in on artificial intelligence, thus eliminating the need to click through.
“Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue,” Danielle Coffey, the CEO and president of News/Media Alliance, said in a statement reported by The Verge. “Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company.”
“DOJ remedies” is a reference to recommendations by the Department of Justice after Google recently lost two separate antitrust cases.
Ann and Jerry Healey. Photos (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.
When I wrote last week that the nonprofit National Trust for Local News had sold 21 of its Colorado newspapers to a corporate chain called Times Media Group, I observed: “I honestly don’t know what kind of reputation the company has. But it’s ironic that a nonprofit founded as an alternative to chain ownership has found it necessary to cut a deal with one of those chains.”
Well, now. According to Sarah Scire of Nieman Lab, the chain, which owned some 60 papers in California and Arizona before the Colorado deal, has reputation for “gutting” its properties. Scire writes:
The Times Media Group is, to put it mildly, an odd choice of buyer for the mission-driven National Trust for Local News. The Trust is a nonprofit that has emphasized the importance of local control for local newspapers and describes community newspapers as “vital civic assets.” The Times Media Group is an out-of-state, for-profit media company with a history of reducing local newsrooms.
Colorado media-watcher Corey Hutchins calls Scire’s article “the Nieman Lab story heard ’round Colorado.”
The papers that the Trust sold off are in the Denver suburbs; the nonprofit is retaining seven other papers in more rural areas, where it says the news desert problem is more acute. Among those laid off was Linda Shapley, the editorial director of Colorado Community Media (CCM), the umbrella group for the Trust’s papers before the selloff. I interviewed Shapley for our book, “What Works in Community News,” and she’s been a guest on our podcast.
Last week I tried unsuccessfully to connect with Jerry and Ann Healey, who sold CCM to the Trust in 2021. Jerry Healey did talk with Hutchins, telling him that he “kind of bought into their [the Trust’s] vision,” adding, “But after a while, I realized that it wasn’t working.”
In September 2021, I interviewed the Healeys at a coffee shop just outside of Hartford, Connecticut. They were there to visit their daughter, who worked for ESPN. They had sold their papers to the National Trust just a few months earlier, and at that time they were hopeful they had left their legacy in good hands. I interviewed Shapley at CCM’s headquarters in Englewood, Colorado, the following week.
What follows is an except from “What Works in Community News,” which I co-wrote with Ellen Clegg.
***
David Gilbert, a reporter with Colorado Community Media (CCM), was summoned into publisher and co-owner Jerry Healey’s office one day in the spring of 2021. “I’ve got news for you,” Healey told him. “I’ve sold the papers.” Healey wanted Gilbert to write the story about the transaction. CCM published 24 weekly and monthly newspapers in Denver’s suburbs. Gilbert, who’d been on staff for four years, imagined the worst — namely, a corporate chain owner was coming in that would slash costs and eliminate jobs. His first thought, he said, was “Oh, crap, time to pack up my things. I wonder if I can get my job back driving a truck.”
