On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Before he was at Penn, he taught media studies at NYU. He is the author of several books, including “Democracy without Journalism,” which I reviewed a couple of years ago for GBH News.
Pickard has contributed to the debate about the local news crisis in many different settings. He worked on media policy in Washington at the New America Foundation, and he served as a policy fellow for former U.S. Congresswoman Diane Watson.
I’ve got a Quick Take on a legislative proposal that’s now being considered in Massachusetts, inspired by a federal bill that died in the last session. The proposal would provide tax credits to anyone who subscribes or donates to a local news organization.
Ellen’s Quick Take is on something close to home. She’s joined a group of Brookline residents who are launching an independent nonprofit news site called Brookline.News. The steering committee has been raising funds, and is recruiting for a founding editor-in-chief.
By now it is widely understood that local news is in crisis. The United States has lost a fourth of its newspapers since 2005, and the loss has led to such ills as lower voter turnout in local elections, more political corruption, and the rise of ideologically driven “pink slime” websites that are designed to look like legitimate sources of community journalism.
Even in the face of this decline, though, hundreds of local news projects have been launched in recent years, from Denver, where The Colorado Sun was launched by 10 journalists who’d left The Denver Post in the face of devastating cuts, to MLK50, which focuses on social justice issues in Memphis. Some are nonprofit; some are for-profit. Most are new digital outlets; some are legacy newspapers. All of them are independent alternatives to the corporate chains that are stripping newsrooms and bleeding revenues in order to enrich their owners and pay down debt.
This trend is happening in the Boston suburbs, too, as Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, has closed many of its weekly newspapers and shifted most of those that remain from local to regional news. Affluent communities such as Marblehead, Concord, Bedford, and Lexington are all home to startups, with more scheduled to come online this year. So, too, is New Bedford, a gritty, working-class city where the nonprofit The New Bedford Light is filling much of the gap created by the shrinkage of Gannett’s daily The Standard-Times. (I’m also hoping to help facilitate a news startup in the community where I live.)
But these projects all must deal with the headwinds of chain owners. Gannett, a publicly traded company that controls about 200 daily papers, and the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, with about 100, have a stranglehold on readership and advertising in many communities, even where they offer little in the way of news and information.
Which raises a question: What if corporate chain ownership could somehow be made to disappear? As it happens, there are several Massachusetts examples that offer lessons for what happens when the slash-and-burn out-of-town owner sells to local interests.
Take Nantucket. Marianne Stanton, editor and publisher of The Inquirer and Mirror, purchased the weekly from Gannett in 2020 with the help of David Worth, a local businessman. Since then, she said in an interview, she’s expanded the editorial staff from four to seven full-time positions, upgraded the computer system, and boosted marketing and circulation efforts.
“We are doing this off of the revenues we earn,” she said, adding that Gannett had been planning to cut the budget and replace much of the local coverage with regional news even though “we were profitable, we were doing well.”
In Pittsfield, the story is similar. In 2016, a group of four local business leaders bought from Alden three small papers in southern Vermont as well as The Berkshire Eagle, once one of the most respected small dailies in the country, which had to slash much of its coverage following repeated budget cuts by Alden. They added staff, increased the size and improved the quality of the newsprint, and expanded coverage in areas such as investigative reporting and culture.
The upward trajectory has been somewhat uneven. In 2020 the Eagle cut back the number of days it offers a print paper from seven to five, a move that Fredric Rutberg, president and publisher, said was accelerated because of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The following year, the owners sold the Vermont properties. Still, there is little question the Eagle is doing far better than it would have under continued Alden ownership.
Rutberg said he believes that many more newspapers may be acquired by local owners as the chains realize that the economies of scale they hoped for may not exist. But what if that process could be speeded up? What if chain owners could be given incentives to unload their papers?
It’s something that Steven Waldman has been thinking about. The founder of Rebuild Local News, a coalition of more than 3,000 news and civic organizations, Waldman has put together a plan called Replanting Newspapers into Communities aimed at making it easier for the chains to sell and for local interests to buy. One of its goals is proposed federal legislation that would provide tax credits, pension relief, and loan guarantees for buyers that have a public service mission, and a range of tax incentives for chain newspaper owners to sell to such buyers. The proposal would also impose limits on new acquisitions by chain owners.
“I think we are in a new era where people understand that public policy has to be an important part of the discussion about how to save local news,” Waldman said in a recent podcast interview.
At a time of intense polarization at the national level, local news can be a way to bring us together — but overcoming the pernicious effects of corporate chain journalism is essential to providing the news and information we need to for self-governance. Independent local ownership is proving it can be done, one community at a time.
Dan Kennedy is a professor of journalism at Northeastern University. His latest book, “What Works in Community News,” coauthored with former Globe editorial page editor Ellen Clegg, who is launching a nonprofit news startup in Brookline, is scheduled to be published in 2024.
There is no substitute for journalism. For-profit legacy newspapers may no longer muster enough reporting capacity to cover their communities — especially if they’re owned by a corporate chain or a hedge fund. But independent journalism with reporters, editors and ethical standards are fundamental to providing the public with the news and information it needs to govern itself in a democracy.
Today we are seeing an explosion of independent local news outlets, mostly digital, mostly nonprofit. It’s happening in the Boston area and across the country. Yet a different kind of vision, stretching back to the earliest days of the web, persists: that members of the public can take charge of at least some of their own information needs. We used to call these people citizen journalists, and it became fashionable to sneer when that vision fell short of its most idealistic expectations. Yet it persists in some quarters and — harnessed properly — could still prove useful to grassroots democracy and storytelling.
Last week a report called “The Roadmap for Local News: An Emergent Approach to Meeting Civic Information Needs” was released by three respected media thinkers — Elizabeth Green of Chalkbeat, Darryl Holliday of City Bureau and Mike Rispoli of Free Press. Based on interviews with 51 thought leaders in local news, the report calls for reorienting ourselves from journalism to civic information in solving the local news crisis.
On this week’s “What Works” podcast, Ellen and I talk with Anne Larner, a civic leader in Newton, Massachusetts, a city of nearly 90,000 people on the border of Boston. Anne is on the board of directors of The Newton Beacon, an independent nonprofit news outlet covering Newton.
Anne has a long track record of civic engagement in Newton and in Massachusetts. She moved to Newton in 1973 and has served on the School Committee, the Newton League of Women Voters, and has been a PTO president, among many roles. She also served 15 years at the MBTA Advisory Board, a public watchdog agency.
Newton is a microcosm of what’s happening in local news all over the country. Years ago, Newton had four local newspapers: The Newton Times, the Graphic, the Tribune and the Tab. But Gannett shut down a number of Massachusetts newspapers last year, including the print weekly, the Newton Tab. The Gannett digital site, Wicked Local, is still up and running. But content is regional.
Ellen has a Quick Take on MLK50, the award-winning Memphis newsroom that focuses on poverty, power and justice. They’ve received two major philanthropic grants that allow them to build for the future. And speaking of MLK50, executive editor Adrienne Johnson Martin was here at Northeastern ahead of Martin Luther King Day to give a talk on their work in Memphis. We’ll feature some interviews from that by our colleague Dakotah Kennedy.
I’ve got news about the Rebuild Local News Coalition, a new nonprofit organization that’s advocating for solutions to the local news crisis. But wait. It’s not new. And the solutions that it’s proposing aren’t new, either. We talked with the co-founder of the coalition, Steven Waldman, last summer, and our conversation is worth a listen if you missed it earler. Still, this is good news, which I explain.
On this Friday morning, I’ve got three stories that I think are worth sharing with you. This is not the debut of a regular feature, but from time to time I run across good journalism that I want to put out there without much in the way of commentary. That’s what we used to use Twitter for, right?
• The Washington Post isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon. Those of us who follow the trials and tribulations of The Washington Post have assumed that longtime publisher Fred Ryan had at least one foot on the proverbial banana peel. But according to Clare Malone, writing in The New Yorker, Ryan has emerged as more powerful than ever since the retirement of Marty Baron as executive editor. He seems to have no fresh ideas for reversing the Post’s declining fortunes, but Bezos apparently likes him. It doesn’t sound like Baron’s successor, Sally Buzbee, shares Bezos’ affection for Ryan, but she lacks the clout that the legendary Baron had.
• Questions about the police killing of Tyre Nichols. MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is among the projects that Ellen Clegg and I are writing about in “What Works in Community News,” our book-in-progress. The website, based in Memphis, focuses on social justice issues. In a list of questions that need to be answered about Nichols’ death, this one stands out: “Since 2015, Memphis police have killed at least 15 people. How many people would need to die at the police’s hands before city leaders concede that the latest incident isn’t an indictment of a few bad apples, but reflects an institution that requires immediate overhaul?”
• The Durham investigation was as corrupt it appeared. New York Times reporters Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner go deep (free link) into Bill Barr and John Durham’s years-long effort to discredit the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and to somehow drag Hillary Clinton into it. The best quote is from Robert Luskin, a lawyer who represented two witnesses Durham interviewed: ““When did these guys drink the Kool-Aid, and who served it to them?”
Tuesday’s announcement about a new organization aimed at helping to ease the local news crisis was a bit of a head-scratcher. Here’s the lead of Sara Fischer’s story at Axios:
Local journalism groups representing more than 3,000 local newsrooms have come together to create a new nonprofit that aims to save local news through bipartisan public policy initiatives.
Well … OK. Except that the organization has been around for a few years. Way back in July 2021 I quoted Steven Waldman and noted that he was the co-founder of the coalition. Its main policy goals — tax credits aimed at boosting subscriptions and advertising as well as giving publishers incentives to hire and retain journalists — are also nothing new. That’s the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, or LJSA, a federal bill that kicked around for several years before dying at the end of the last Congress. With the House now controlled by press-hating right-wing Republicans, we are not likely to see it resurrected anytime soon.
But if the coalition wants to relaunch and call new attention to its work, so be it. According to this announcement, Waldman is taking a more prominent position — he’ll now be the full-time president, and he’s cutting back on his work at Report for America, which he also cofounded. The coalition has also reorganized as an independent nonprofit.
Ellen Clegg and I talked with Waldman about the Rebuild Local News Coalition and the LJSA on the “What Works” podcast in mid-2022. You can listen to it here, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
From the Department of You’ve Got to Be Kidding: Gannett has announced that it will close its printing plant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and move the work to its presses in Auburn, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island. The daily papers that will be affected are the Portsmouth Herald, Foster’s Daily Democrat and — are you ready? — the Burlington Free Press, located not far from the Canadian border.
Word of the switch was published in the Portsmouth Herald on Wednesday. I have not been able to find it in the Free Press, either in print or online (my USA Today digital subscription gives me access to the replica editions of every Gannett daily in the country, which is why I was able to check). But assuming that Gannett’s own story is accurate, that is really a breathtaking move. According to Apple Maps, it’s a three-and-a-half-hour, 240-mile drive from Auburn to Burlington. Providence is even worse — about four hours and nearly 270 miles. And that’s right now, without any traffic to speak of.
The Herald offers this statement from Gannett:
As our business becomes increasingly digital and subscription-focused, newspaper printing partnerships have become standard. We are making strategic decisions to ensure the future of local journalism and continue our outstanding service to the community.
Ah, yes, digital subscriptions, Gannett’s standard answer to everything. Well, let’s look at the Burlington Free Press’ latest filings with the Alliance for Audited Media, shall we? For the six-month period ending last Sept. 30, the average weekday print circulation was 4,000, with another 6,012 on Sundays. Meanwhile, paid digital replica circulation was 1,051 on weekdays and 667 on Sundays. Nothing is listed for straight-up digital subscriptions, but in March 2021 the Free Press reported about 1,400 on weekdays and about 1,200 on Sundays for digital nonreplica. So, roughly, that’s a total of around 2,000 digital replica and nonreplica subscriptions. Not impressive, and clearly the Free Press’ print product is still what its readers are looking for.
Then again, Gannett has long since ceded the Burlington market to a terrific alt-weekly, Seven Days; a leading digital nonprofit, VTDigger; and Vermont Public Radio. I wrote about that in my 2018 book, “The Return of the Moguls.” We also recently interviewed VTDigger’s founder, Anne Galloway, on the “What Works” podcast.
On this week’s “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Adam Gaffin, founder of Universal Hub and inventor of the French Toast Alert System. Universal Hub tracks news in the Boston area from the serious to the just plain weird by linking to hundreds of news outlets and local websites and by offering original reporting. His Twitter feed is a must-follow and, thankfully, he’s set up shop on Mastodon as well.
I wrote a profile of Adam for CommonWealth Magazine in 2008. Adam has been a local connector since the earliest days of digital self-publishing — well before blogging, putting together a directory of websites called New England Online in the early ’90s and then transforming that into Boston Online.
Ellen has a Quick Take on a young journalist who lost her job at West Virginia Public Broadcasting after she reported on alleged government abuses in the state’s foster care and psychiatric system. The journalist, Amelia Ferrell Knisely, alleges that there was political interference with the station, WVPB, which receives state funding.
I examine an important First Amendment case involving a citizen journalist in Texas. Roxanna Asgarian of The Texas Tribune broke the story. It’s a complicated tale, but the root of it is whether a citizen journalist should enjoy the same right to sue the government over a violation of her constitutional rights as a recognized news organization.
Many of the local news projects that we’re interested in here at What Works are just a few steps beyond citizen journalism, and we are firmly of the belief that the First Amendment protections enjoyed by large news outlets should be applied to small outlets and citizen journalists as well. It remains to be seen whether a federal appeals court in Texas will agree.
Update: Current, a publication that covers public broadcasting, has more details on the situation involving Amelia Ferrell Knisely — including some toxic emails.
One of the more arcane aspects of writing a book is that you go through repeated rounds of editing, and each time you finish, you can let everyone know and take another bow, ha ha. Anyway, Ellen Clegg and I turned in the manuscript to our book about local news at the end of August, and then submitted our response to the first round of edits at the end of December.
Just now we submitted our response to what they call a “line edit” — a lighter edit aimed at clarifying what had been murky on previous rounds. So, yay us! After that comes the copy-edit and then the page proofs.
The book will be called “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” It is scheduled to be published by Beacon Press in early 2024. You can find out more information — and our podcast! — at our website, What Works.
The “What Works” podcast is back! Ellen Clegg and I took some time off to finish our book, which now has a name — “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” Barring any unexpected roadblocks, it will be published by Beacon Press in early 2024.
Our latest podcast features Mike Blinder, the publisher of Editor & Publisher, the once and future bible of the news publishing industry. Mike also hosts E&P’s weekly vodcast/podcast series, “E&P Reports” which has established itself as a must-listen for anyone interested in the state of the news business. Blinder has interviewed everyone from Richard Tofel, founding GM of ProPublica, to Jennifer Kho, the new executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, to professor and media critic Jeff Jarvis. Blinder probes important issues like government support for community journalism, the role of social-media platforms and the impact of chain consolidation.
I’ve got a Quick Take on the failure of two bills in Congress that would have provided some government support to newspaper companies. It’s fair to say that the federal government is not going to be riding to the rescue of local news, and that communities had better get about the business of providing coverage on their own.
Ellen reports on the City Paper in Pittsburgh, an alternative weekly, which has just been acquired by a subsidiary of Block Communications. The Block family has achieved some notoriety for its mismanagement of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Media observer Margaret Sullivan called the Post-Gazette a tragic mess under the Blocks.
