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In Colorado, an intriguing experiment — and a disturbing anti-press move by the GOP

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On April 8, 2024

In Local News

The Colorado Statehouse in Denver. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

Two stories about journalism from Colorado this morning, one intriguing, one disturbing. The state’s media ecosystem is one of the subjects of our book, “What Works in Community News.”

• Intriguing. Colorado media-watcher Corey Hutchins reports: “More than two dozen Colorado newsrooms have launched an unprecedented collaboration to better cover the 2024 elections.” These news outlets, led by the Colorado News Collaborative, have embraced what New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen calls the Citizen’s Agenda, whereby journalists will report on the issues that the public is most concerned about and gear their coverage around what they learn. It’s a more substantive approach than the horse-race model of political coverage, which focuses on polls and day-to-day sparring among the candidates.

Unprecedented? Not really. The Citizen’s Agenda is a revival of the public journalism movement of the 1990s, and Rosen was at the center of that, too. It faded away back then, although it never disappeared entirely. See, for instance, my account of this 2013 event on education reform sponsored by the New Haven Independent. The Colorado experiment, though, represents what could be the most fully realized example of public journalism in many years.

• Disturbing. Colorado Sun political reporter Sandra Fish was removed from a meeting of the state Republican Party “after being told that party Chairman Dave Williams found her ‘current reporting to be very unfair,'” according to Sun reporter Jennifer Brown. Although Fish had received a text from a party official telling her not to come, she showed up anyway and was able to obtain a press credential — only to be identified an hour later and escorted from the scene by a sheriff’s deputy.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Sun editor Larry Ryckman wrote in an email to subscribers. “The Founding Fathers understood that a free press is a pillar of a healthy democracy – and not just when reporters write stories politicians might like. That’s why they enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution. The public has a right to know. Public officials should be accountable and willing to have their words and actions scrutinized in the light of day.”

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The Chicago public media merger, hailed two years ago, hits some serious bumps

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On April 5, 2024

In Local News

Half full or half empty? Photo (cc) 2014 by bradhoc

Among the projects that almost made it into “What Works in Community News” was the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Public Media, which merged two years ago. It struck Ellen Clegg and me as a leading example of how public media could step up to preserve local and regional news, especially after the city’s leading paper, the Chicago Tribune, fell into the hands of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

Now the combined enterprise is laying people off. Dave McKinney of WBEZ, which is part of Chicago Public Media, reports that about 15% of 62 union content creators at the radio station are losing their jobs, and that four positions on the business side at the Sun-Times would be cut. In all, 14 jobs will be eliminated.

McKinney notes acidly:

The job cuts coincide with the debut of a $6.4 million, state-of-the-art studio at WBEZ’s Navy Pier office and follows a double-digit-percentage pay increase for Chicago Public Media’s top executive. Additionally, other high-level executives departed the not-for-profit news organization in December.

The announcement follows cuts and threats of cuts at a number of public media outlets around the country, including WAMU in Washington, Colorado Public Radio and, in Boston, WBUR and GBH, neither of which has announced layoffs but have pointedly said cuts may be coming.

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Could Boston’s two newsy public radio stations merge? Plus, local news tidbits.

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On April 4, 2024

In Local News, Media

WBUR’s CitySpace. Photo (cc) 2023 by Todd Van Hoosear

Before social media, when blogging was everything, a lot of us wrote what were known as “link blogs” — that is, a running list of links with little in the way of commentary. Now that social media is (are?) falling apart as a way for distributing journalism, I’m trying to get back to that, mixing in some short posts with longer pieces.

But there’s a problem. I have a sizable contingent of readers who receive new posts by email and, at least at the moment, I don’t have a way of giving them the option of receiving one daily email with the day’s posts. I’d like to do something about that once the semester ends and I have some time. No one wants to receive multiple emails with short posts throughout the day. So here are three media stories I don’t want you to miss, pulled together in one post.

• Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan follows up the paper’s recent stories on struggles at the city’s two news-oriented public radio stations, GBH (89.7 FM) and WBUR (90.9 FM), with a closer look at whether both of them can survive in their current form. As someone who was a paid contributor to GBH News from 1998 to 2022, I have to say a lot of us were puzzled in 2009 when GBH announced it would turn its classical- and jazz-oriented radio station into a direct competitor with WBUR. You might say that it worked until it didn’t, and now there are some serious questions. The most provocative: Could the two radio stations merge? The answer: Probably not, but who knows?

• The local news crisis has led a number of college and university journalism programs to step up with their own solutions. At Northeastern, for instance, we publish The Scope, a grant-supported digital publication that covers social-justice issues in Greater Boston. Well, The Daily Iowan, an independent nonprofit newspaper that covers the University of Iowa, is going several steps further than that, acquiring two struggling weekly community newspapers. “It’s a really great way to help the problem of news deserts in rural areas,” the paper’s executive editor, Sabine Martin, told The Associated Press.

I contacted the paper to ask whether students who report for the weeklies will be paid. Publisher Jason Drummond responded that the details are still being worked out, but that students will be paid for work they produce exclusively for the weeklies, which are also in the process of hiring paid student interns. The weeklies will be able to pick up stories from The Daily Iowan for free, but the Iowan’s staff members are already paid.

• Four years ago I visited The Mendocino Voice, which covers a rural area in Northern California; it was my first reporting trip for “What Works in Community News.” The Voice, I learned, has to devote a lot of its resources to covering the state’s extreme weather, especially wildfires. Now the Voice’s publisher and co-founder, Kate Maxwell, is putting together a Local News Go Bag Toolkit so that local news organizations can prepare for emergencies. “The emphasis is on preparing before a disaster — it’s the most important step that journalists, newsrooms, and communities can take. This project is designed to be useful for local newsrooms and journalists at any stage of a disaster,” writes Maxwell, who’s currently a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. The toolkit is a work in progress, and she’s asking for ideas from other journalists.

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Yankee Quill winner Ellen Clegg on why innovation must be part of journalism’s future

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On March 25, 2024

In Media

Ellen Clegg

Ellen Clegg — a retired Boston Globe editor, the co-author of our book, the co-host and producer of our podcast, the co-chair of the nonprofit Brookline.News, and my friend — was one of five journalists who received the prestigious Yankee Quill Award this past Saturday. Read about all five here.

The Yankee Quill recognizes great journalists who have also contributed to the betterment of our profession. As the Academy of New England Journalists puts it, “Selection for the award is not based on any single achievement, or for doing your job each day, but rather on the broad influence for good over the course of a career.” Her prepared remarks follow.

Thank you for this honor. Thanks to friends and colleagues, and thank you to my family for your support over many years when I worked nights and weekends, or got a ping from a boss at 5 a.m.

The Yankee Quill award recognizes past achievements over the long arc of a career. It’s about history and tradition.

But today’s honorees are also about the future. We’re innovating and experimenting, using digital tools that, 25 years ago, we never imagined would exist. We’re connecting with communities and readers in novel ways — deploying multimedia and measuring and nurturing audiences. Storytelling is as old as the Bronze Age and as new as TikTok.

The business of fact-based reporting that holds power to account, faces existential challenges. You know them well: digital disruption, the collapse of print advertising, the rise of platforms built on algorithms of anger.

As Professor Penny Abernathy has written, these forces have resulted in news deserts across the country — entire counties where there is no newspaper left at all. Some 2,900 newspapers have closed down since 2005 — nearly one-third of the nation’s total. About 43,000 journalism jobs have disappeared.

And, for sure, we didn’t always help ourselves. Legacy newsrooms were sometimes slow to recognize the promise — and, frankly, some of the perils — of digital publication. We were slow to change our business models. We were slow to put up paywalls that enabled us to assign a fair value to the work of our journalists. We were slow to adapt to a more frenzied pace, slow to restructure traditional newsrooms so they were digital-first.

But these same challenges have also prompted a wave of innovation and experimentation like never before. Steven Waldman, the cofounder of Report for America, calls it a replanting of local news.

Dan Kennedy and I began reporting on this phenomenon in 2019, for a book called “What Works in Community News.” We profiled nine media startups, and interviewed scores of enterprising journalists who are in the process of reinventing our business. We found an emerging movement that is nothing short of inspiring. It’s also sometimes a hard journey, fraught with uncertainty.

This wave of innovation isn’t temporary. It’s part of our future. I’m proud to be here today with journalists who are sustaining local news and providing the essential information that is so necessary to participatory democracy.

Thank you.

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Book excerpt: How Sahan Journal covers Minnesota’s immigrant communities

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On March 18, 2024

In Local News

Photo (cc) 2019 by Ellen Clegg

We’re thrilled to let you know that Nieman Lab has published an excerpt from “What Works in Community News” based on Ellen Clegg’s reporting from Minneapolis on Sahan Journal, a nonprofit digital project that covers the state’s burgeoning immigrant communities. Thanks to Nieman Lab editor Laura Hazard Owen for her help in getting our work out before a wider audience.

Read the excerpt at Nieman Lab.

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In Colorado, a used press will help preserve print papers

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On March 18, 2024

In Local News

Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy

Colorado media-watcher Corey Hutchins reports that the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that works to keep newspapers alive and out of the hands of corporate chain owners, has purchased a used printing press that will serve the two dozen papers it owns in the Denver suburbs as well as papers owned by other publishers. The trust bought those papers, known collectively as Colorado Community Media, back in 2021.

Ellen Clegg and I interviewed National Trust CEO and co-founder Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro and CCM publisher Linda Shapley for our book, “What Works in Community News.” They have both appeared on our podcast as well. When I met Shapley in her newsroom in the fall of 2021, she was in the midst of trying to pivot her papers to digital — but she acknowledged that print remained an important part of the mix for readers and, especially, for advertisers.

“I totally get that there are advertisers out there who don’t necessarily see digital as a way forward,” Shapley said. “But they recognize the fact that this is going to be how people find you. So I don’t see them as playing against each other but as something that can work in tandem.”

Now those papers — as well as papers owned by other publishers who’ve been hurt by the disappearance of Colorado’s printing presses — can continue to be offered in print as well as online.

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A couple of book notes

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On March 17, 2024

In Local News

A couple of notes about our book, “What Works in Community News.”

Larry Gennari has a review in the Boston Business Journal, writing: “Clegg and Kennedy present an impressive number of media business startup models in such places as California, Iowa, New Jersey, Minnesota and Tennessee, all centered on quality local news, which they argue enhances community, transparency and, ultimately, self-governance.”

And Dorothy Bergin, The Bedford Citizen’s 90-something copy editor, who we interviewed for the book, has featured it in her regular column, “Dot’s Reading Room.” She writes: “As the authors say, they are optimistic about the future of hyperlocal journalism. This is the spirit that has kept and still keeps The Bedford Citizen’s paid employees and volunteers from writers and reporters on the job!”

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Talking about ‘What Works in Community News’ with Mike Blinder of ‘E&P Reports’

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On March 11, 2024

In Local News

Ellen Clegg and I are thrilled to be the guests on the new episode of “E&P Reports,” a vodcast hosted by Mike Blinder, the publisher of Editor & Publisher, a venerable magazine and website that covers the news business. We’ve had Mike on our “What Works” podcast, and he is a hoot — witty, engaging and passionate about the future of journalism. You’ll hear those qualities in the questions he asks us about our book, “What Works in Community News.” You can subscribe to the audio-only version of “E&P Reports” on any of the major podcast platforms.

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Public radio cutbacks hit Colorado as 15 people lose their jobs

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On March 10, 2024

In Local News

Colorado Public Radio executive editor Kevin Dale. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

No sooner had I written last week that Colorado Public Radio may be the largest news organization in that state than deep cuts were announced. Fifteen jobs were eliminated, which, according to CPR’s Ben Markus, make up “the largest cut to the public broadcaster’s payroll in at least a quarter of a century.”

“I hate to see talented colleagues lose their positions for financial reasons,” Kevin Dale, CPR News’ executive editor, was quoted as saying. “CPR News has been growing into a powerful news source for the past six years. Our mission has been to become an urgent newsroom that also has time to devote to enterprise reporting and accountability reporting, and we remain dedicated to that.”

According to Markus, the cuts follow years of growth, from 48 employees in 2006 to 214 in 2022. When I interviewed Dale in 2021, he told me that about 65 of those employees were journalists. CPR had acquired a city-based digital site in 2019 called Denverite, and its staff members were part of that total. Unlike WAMU in Washington, which is shutting down its DCist site following a similar acquisition, CPR will keep Denverite going.

Although CPR’s woes are reportedly due to changes in audience behavior as podcasts from the likes of The New York Times and Spotify have cut into listenership, Markus’ story also suggests that the operation had been hiring beyond its means and noted that it had saddled itself with a new, yet-to-be-finished downtown headquarters last year costing more than $8 million.

The cuts also come amid austerity measures at several other public radio operations including WAMU, WBUR in Boston and NPR itself. Public radio is our leading free source of high-quality news and for years seemed to be immune from the headwinds that were devastating legacy newspapers. Corey Hutchins, who produces the newsletter “Inside the News in Colorado,” wrote that CPR “stood out as a bright spot amid a weakened local news landscape.” Hutchins is a journalism professor at Colorado College in Colorado Springs and works out of space refurbished by CPR as part of its earlier acquisition of KRCC.

I interviewed Dale in 2021 for Ellen Clegg’s and my book, “What Works in Community News.” Dale, who had previously worked at The Denver Post, described his mission as transforming CPR into a leading news organization by concentrating on in-depth journalism.

“Our goal was to become a primary news source,” Dale said, explaining that his operation tried to offer important contextual stories rather than breaking news. “I’ve been very careful all along to use the article ‘a’ instead of ‘the,’ because I think ‘the’ has connotations that end up in practices that we’re not interested in,” he said. “We’re not going to be out covering a major house fire or a major traffic jam unless it has implications beyond that.”

CPR is an anchor of the Denver and Colorado media ecosystem. I hope this proves to be a temporary setback and that the operation can soon begin growing once again.

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Talking local news in Keene

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On March 5, 2024

In Local News

I’m excited to be giving the Sidore Lecture at Keene State College in New Hampshire today at 6:30 p.m. I’ll be talking about our book, “What Works in Community News.” Keene, as you may know, is the home of The Keene Sentinel, a great independent news organization. The event is free, so if you’re in the Keene area, I hope you’ll drop by.

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