Please join us Jan. 9 for the launch of ‘What Works in Community News’

I hope you’ll join Ellen Clegg and me for the launch of our book, “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” The event will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 9, at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith. It’s free, but Booksmith asks that you register in advance. Ellen and I visited nine parts of the country to report on independent local and regional news projects, most of them startups, most of them digital. We came away with profound respect for the news entrepreneurs we met and with optimism for what the future holds.

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What public media can learn from NJ Spotlight News: An excerpt from our book

John Mooney, founder and executive director of NJ Spotlight News. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.

Ellen Clegg and I are delighted to report that the first excerpt from “What Works in Community News” has just gone live at Current, a publication for people in public media. Current has published a section from our chapter on NJ Spotlight News, which merged a digital startup covering state policy and politics in New Jersey and the state’s public television outlet, NJ PBS. “What Works in Community News,” published by Beacon Press, goes public on Jan. 9. And thank you to Mike Janssen, Current’s digital editor, for making this happen.

Read the excerpt at Current.

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How Denver’s media are reporting a ruling to keep Trump off the Colorado ballot

Donald Trump at the Air Force Academy Commencement in Colorado Springs in 2019. Photo by Trump White House Archived.

Following the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Donald Trump has disqualified himself from appearing on the state’s Republican primary ballot, I thought I’d check in with the Denver media to see how they covered it. I started with The Colorado Sun, a digital startup that is one of the projects Ellen Clegg and I write about in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.”

The Sun has a lengthy account by its chief political reporter, Jesse Paul. His story plays it straight, although it’s informed by his deep knowledge of the players in Colorado. What stands out to me is that the court went to some lengths to determine that Trump did, in fact, try to foment an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Under the 14th Amendment, insurrectionists may not run for federal office, although that clause is the subject of many different interpretations. Paul quotes from the majority decision:

The record amply established that the events of Jan. 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.

The Colorado court’s decision will almost certainly be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. If it’s upheld, then Trump would be banned not just from the state’s primary ballot but also — should he be the Republican nominee — the general election ballot in November 2024. Other states are considering the same action.

In The Denver Post, the city’s legacy daily newspaper, reporter Nick Coltrain interviews University of Colorado law professor Doug Spencer, who says that the purpose of the Colorado lawsuit that resulted in Tuesday’s ruling is to ensure that Trump can’t be elected to a second term next fall. Spencer told Coltrain that the lawsuit “was never really about keeping Trump’s name off Colorado’s ballot, because he was never going to win our electoral votes. It was about using our state law to get a ruling like this — and maybe now other courts will look at this and maybe not be so skittish.”

Colorado Public Radio, which may be the state’s largest news organization, takes on an issue that is sure to be raised by Trump’s lawyers and supporters: How can a state court find that Trump engaged in an insurrection given that there has been no federal finding to that effect? After all, the Senate failed to convict Trump after the House impeached him on what was essentially an insurrection case; he has not yet gone to trial on insurrection-related criminal charges; and there has been no congressional resolution passed by both branches finding that he tried to overturn the election.

But Bente Berkeland’s story for Colorado Public Radio notes the majority decision finds that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not require any further legal proceedings in order for its provisions to take effect. She writes that the decision…

…also reaffirms that, under Colorado law, the court has jurisdiction to bar disqualified candidates from the Republican Party’s primary ballot. They also concluded that the judicial branch is empowered to apply the clause.

“Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach,” the ruling states. “Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.”

The city also has a second daily newspaper — The Denver Gazette, a digital-only outlet started several years ago by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz. The Gazette has a hard paywall, but I see that it leads today’s e-paper (there is no actual print edition) with a story on the court’s decision written by reporter Michael Karlik.

So now it’s on to the U.S. Supreme Court. Just as a layperson, it seems to me that the most significant issue before the Supremes is whether they can determine on their own authority that Trump engaged in an attempted insurrection or if instead they’re constrained by the lack of a congressional determination or a criminal conviction. We may assume that Trump begins with two aces in the hole: Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. Can he get to five?

Still, the Colorado decision was a landmark of sorts. As Paul wrote in the Sun: “The Colorado Supreme Court ruling marks the first time that the insurrection clause has been used to block a presidential candidate from appearing on the ballot.” That’s a dubious distinction in a long line of dubious distinctions for Trump, who, depending on how quickly the courts can move, might not only be disqualified from running but could also be sitting in a prison cell by Election Day.

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What’s next for Andy and Dee Hall, the retiring co-founders of Wisconsin Watch

Dee and Andy Hall. Photo by Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch is used with permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Andy and Dee Hall, co-founders of Wisconsin Watch. Wisconsin Watch was launched in 2009 as the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. It’s nonprofit and nonpartisan, and it has grown a lot over the last 14 years. Andy is retiring on Dec. 31 of this year and is helping the new CEO, George Stanley, with the transition.

Dee Hall, co-founder and former managing editor of Wisconsin Watch, is also moving  on, and is now editor-in-chief of Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom with a clear mission: Floodlight investigates “the powerful interests stalling climate action.” Floodlight partners with local and national journalists to co-publish collaborative investigations.

The podcast will resume after the holidays, and we fill in listeners in on events surrounding the launch of our book, “What Works in Community News,” which is coming out on Jan. 9. We’ll be talking about the book that night at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Ellen has a Quick Take on Signal Ohio, a well-funded nonprofit news startup in Ohio that’s now expanding into Akron. We’ve worked with a Northeastern graduate student, Dakotah Kennedy (no relation to me), on this podcast who’s now a service journalism reporter for Signal Cleveland.

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

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In New Haven, a pro-Palestinian protester targets a symbol of Judaism

The New Haven Independent reports that during a large demonstration on Saturday, a pro-Palestinian protester climbed a giant menorah on New Haven Green and inserted a Palestinian flag between the candle-holders — an act of pure, unadulterated antisemitism. Fortunately, reporter Jake Dressler writes, other protesters “pleaded with him to take down the flag” and that “the flag was taken down immediately by other protesters.”

Paul Bass, executive director of the Online Journalism Project (which makes him essentially the publisher of the nonprofit Independent), wrote on Threads: “If this incident blows up, I think one question will be how this relates to the discussion of when/ whether/ how to separate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism.” Indeed, the protester took the notion that criticism of Israel isn’t antisemitism and turned it on its head.

The Independent is one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I write about in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.”

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Our book makes the Sunday Times’ print edition

Great to see Serge Schmemann’s recent New York Times opinion piece about local news (free link) pop up in today’s print edition. Schmemann interviewed Ellen Clegg and me and cites our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.”

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Karen Rundlet to succeed Sue Cross as CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News

Karen Rundlet

The Institute for Nonprofit News, or INN, has a new CEO. Karen Rundlet will succeed Sue Cross, who announced earlier this year that she was leaving the post. Rundlet, who is currently senior director of the Journalism Program at the Knight Foundation, has worked with grant recipients such as City Bureau/ Documenters in Chicago, INN’s NewsMatch program, Sahan Journal (based in Minneapolis and one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I report on in our book “What Works in Community News”), Solutions Journalism Network and Military Veterans in Journalism.

Rundlet has also worked as a journalist and manager at the Miami Herald as well as the public radio program “Marketplace.”

INN is an important player in the world of local news startups. NewsMatch, which allows community journalism organizations to leverage local donations with matching national money, has been transformative. The organization also acts as a fiscal sponsor for nonprofits that have not yet obtained 501(c)(3) federal tax status — donors can make a tax-deductible gift that is administered by INN and is then passed along to the local media outlet. Its model code of ethics is used by local news organizations across the country; see, for instance, the “Ethics & Practices Policies” at The New Bedford Light.

According to the announcement of Rundlet’s appointment, more than 425 news organizations now make up the INN Network, supporting more than 5,000 people who work in nonprofit news in North America.

“Karen is uniquely positioned as a visionary, passionate and experienced journalist and philanthropist to propel the nonprofit news movement,” Marcia Parker, the chair of INN’s board of directors, said in a statement.  “As a leader of our field, she already is driving the national advances to redesign news media that is inclusive for communities of color and can bring trusted information to everyone.”

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What The New York Times is saying about ‘What Works in Community News’

A little more than a month from now, “What Works in Community News” will be released by Beacon Press — and it’s already receiving significant advance buzz. In addition to pre-publication endorsements from the likes of Margaret Sullivan, Steven Waldman and Penelope Muse Abernathy, The New York Times on Sunday published an opinion essay about the local news crisis in which our book is prominently featured. Times editorial writer Serge Schmemann interviewed Ellen Clegg and me, writing (free link):

[T]here are signs that things are looking up. In their book, Ms. Clegg and Mr. Kennedy chronicle various ways in which local and regional news organizations — whether paper, digital or radio — are trying to restore local coverage. Most are nonprofits, often assisted by a number of foundations that assist news start-ups. It’s not a flood, but what is certain, they write, ‘is that the bottom-up growth of locally based news organizations has already provided communities with news that would otherwise go unreported.’”

In addition, Booklist, the publication of the American Library Association, recently gave our book a starred review. The reviewer, Alan Moores, said: “For readers who despair at the collapse of traditional media nationwide, this survey is a bolster; for journalists looking to create such viable news sources in their own communities, its a highly useful road map.”

Ellen and I are thrilled that our book is receiving such a strong reception. We hope it will serve as an inspiration to spark the rise of still more local and regional news projects across the country. In the meantime, you can keep up on developments in local news as well as our podcast at our website, What Works: The Future of Local News.

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A new report finds that news deserts are spreading — but there are bright spots, too

Photo (cc) 2008 by Stefano Brivio

The release of a new report by Penelope Muse Abernathy on the state of local news is always a big deal. For 15 years now, she’s been tracking the extent of the crisis, and has done more than anyone to popularize the phrase “news deserts,” which describes communities without a source of reliable news and information. This week Abernathy, now at Northwestern University’s Medill School, issued “The State of Local News 2023.” It’s a downbeat report, although there are a few bright spots. Here’s a key finding:

The data and insights collected and analyzed in this 2023 report on The State of Local News paint the picture of a country and society increasingly divided between the journalism-have’s — mostly residents in more affluent cities and suburban areas where alternative news sources are gaining traction — and the journalism have-not’s, those in economically struggling and traditionally underserved metro, suburban and rural communities. This partitioning of our citizenry poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement and the proliferation of misinformation and information online.

Before I continue, a disclosure: Abernathy, who’s been a guest on our “What Works” podcast about the future of local news, was kind enough to provide a pre-publication endorsement of the book that Ellen Clegg and I have written, “What Works in Community News,” which comes out in January.

Abernathy’s principal collaborator on the new report is Sarah Stonbely, director of Medill’s State of Local News Project, who I interviewed in 2022 when she was at the Center for Cooperative Media, part of Montclair State University in New Jersey.

If you’d like a good summary of Abernathy and Stonbely’s report, I recommend Sarah Fischer’s overview in Axios, which leads with the prediction that the U.S. will have lost one third of its newspapers by the end of 2024.

The cleavage between affluent urban and suburban areas and less affluent urban and rural areas is one of the major challenges Abernathy and Stonbely identify, and it’s definitely something that Ellen and I noticed in our reporting for “What Works in Community News.” I recall asking folks at the start-up Colorado Sun why they were trying to stretch their resources to cover stories across the state rather than focusing on Denver. The answer: the Denver metro area was already fairly well served despite massive cuts at The Denver Post, owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. By contrast, there was very little news coverage in the more rural parts of the state.

As Abernathy and Stonbely put it: “The footprint for alternative local news outlets — approximately 550 digital-only sites, 720 ethnic media organizations and 215 public broadcasting stations — remains very small and centered around metro areas.” Indeed, this chart tells a rather harrowing tale. As you can see, people who live in news deserts are considerably less affluent and less educated than the national average.

The report also includes a section called “Bright Spots in the Local News Landscape.” Although the interactive map is a little hard to navigate, I can see that several projects that Ellen and I profile in “What Works in Community News” are included, such as NJ Spotlight News, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, The Texas Tribune, The Colorado Sun and the Daily Memphian.

The report also highlights The Boston Globe as one of its good-news stories, observing that, under the ownership of John and Linda Henry, the paper has thrived on the strength of its digital subscriptions. In a sidebar, Tom Brown, the Globe’s vice president of consumer analytics, tells Abernathy that digital growth continues, although at a slower rate than during the COVID pandemic. Retention is down slightly, too. “We are nonetheless still seeing overall strong retention,” Brown says, “and we are investing in several areas of the business with the goal of engaging subscribers more and, in particular, our new subscribers.”

Editor Nancy Barnes adds that though the Globe is ramping up its coverage of the Greater Boston area as well as in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, it can’t fill the gap created by the gutting and closure of local weekly papers at the hands of Gannett, the giant newspaper chain that until recently dominated coverage of the Boston suburbs and exurbs.

“Having returned to Boston after many years away, I have been stunned by the decimation of local newspapers across Massachusetts and New England,” Barnes says. “However, our coverage strategy is not tied to specific Gatehouse newspaper communities [a reference to Gannett’s predecessor company]. We cover greater Boston in depth, but we don’t have the bandwidth to be the local news source for everyone.”

This week’s Medill report is the first of a multi-part series. Future chapters will be released over the next few weeks and into January.

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How NJ Spotlight News is leveraging its journalism to enhance its bottom line

NJ PBS in Newark, New Jersey, the headquarters of NJ Spotlight News. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.

It’s NewsMatch time — that annual holiday tradition when local and regional news nonprofits ramp up their fundraising efforts so that donations can be matched by the Institute for Nonprofit News.

This morning I received an email with the intriguing subject line “This was our favorite story of 2023!” from NJ Spotlight News, one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I are profiling in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Local News.” The top of the email reads:

Dear Dan,

Last week we kicked off our year-end campaign, and we couldn’t be more excited to share how your support made a big impact in 2023, plus give a glimpse into the exciting plans we have for 2024.

As a reader of NJ Spotlight News, you know you can depend on our nonprofit journalism day in and day out. But do you know what goes into producing just one story, from start to finish? Take, for example, our story last week on youth voting, which investigated college age voters in New Jersey and their attitudes towards politics. Here’s a look, by the numbers, of what went into it:

    • phone calls made: 6
    • internal meetings at NJ Spotlight News to plan/discuss: 3
    • days it took to produce: 10
    • people involved in its production: 7
    • cups of coffee consumed: 8
    • emails sent about it: 31
    • hours of transcription logged: 2 hours

We put everything we’ve got into all of our stories because we value in-depth, comprehensive reporting. These New Jersey stories need to be told and we believe sourcing our information from a variety of voices and perspectives is the best way to do so. And because of our hard work, we’re making a real difference in our New Jersey community.

The email did not link to the story, but here it is. Reported by Hannah Gross, Spotlight’s education and child welfare reporter, the story takes a deep dive into whether college students would vote in the following week’s state and local elections — a tough sell for younger voters given that there’s no presidential race on the ballot.

“People don’t realize how much change actually comes from the local standpoint,” Rowan University student Jamie Ivan told Gross. “Everyone thinks: ‘Oh, it’s not presidential, it doesn’t matter.’ Presidential elections matter a lot, but so do local ones. It affects your everyday life. It directly impacts you.”

Acting on a hunch, I checked to see if Gross is affiliated with Report for America, a project that places young journalists at local news organizations across the country. Indeed she is. Report for America is also featured in “What Works in Community News” — we interviewed RFA corps members at news projects such as The Colorado Sun and the New Haven Independent, and we also include a featured conversation with RFA co-founder Steven Waldman, edited down from our podcast interview with him.

NJ Spotlight News began life about a decade ago as a website covering statewide public policy and politics. Several years ago it merged with NJ PBS, and today comprises the original website plus a daily half-hour newscast, with a lot of cross-pollination between both sides of the enterprise. It’s an example of how public broadcasters can step up and help solve the local and regional news crisis — one of a number of business models that Ellen and I explored in our reporting on how to build a sustainable future for community journalism.

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