What Works – Page 5 – Media Nation

Why concerns about the Portland Press Herald’s funding are overblown

Recently Max Tani of Semafor and Richard J. Tofel, who writes the newsletter Second Rough Draft, have raised questions about whether the folks involved in the purchase of the Portland Press Herald and its affiliated Maine papers from the retiring publisher, Reade Brower, have been sufficiently transparent in disclosing who the funders are.

The papers were bought during the summer by the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that has been involved in several acquisitions aimed at preventing legacy newspapers from falling into the hands of corporate chain ownership. In Maine, Tani and Tofel argue, the billionaire George Soros may have been more deeply involved than was previously known, while the involvement of another billionaire who was reportedly part of the purchase, Hansjörg Wyss, hasn’t been disclosed at all.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is essentially a non-issue. Tofel himself notes that the previous management of the papers remains in place and that “invocations of Soros as a sort of bogeyman have long since become a principal way to dog whistle anti-Semitism; it ranks right up there with ‘globalist’ in this rhetoric.”

More to the point, the Press Herald itself followed up on Tani’s reporting, and it sounds like the full story behind the purchase will be revealed soon. (I was interviewed for the piece, written by reporter Rachel Ohm.) Longtime Press Herald publisher Lisa DeSisto, now the CEO and publisher of the Maine Trust for Local News, the nonprofit that has been set up to own the papers, is quoted as saying, “We want to make more of a splash and have a more comprehensive introduction to the Maine Trust rather than just [putting things out in] pieces. We’re really waiting to announce a broader vision.”

Added Will Nelligan, who’s the Maine project lead for the National Trust: “We will announce that coalition of Maine funders when we announce the Maine Trust.”

No, the announcement didn’t come in September, as had been originally promised. But is that really a big deal as long as disclosure is on its way? The papers themselves, by the way, remain for-profit entities, so it seems unlikely that either the National Trust or the Maine Trust will be looking for ongoing support to prop them up.

If you take a look at the National Trust’s funders, you’ll see that, in addition to Soros’ Open Society Foundations, they include a number of respected journalism funders, including the Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Democracy Fund and the Lenfest Institute, which owns The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Gates Family Foundation, by the way, is a Colorado-based philanthropy that has nothing to do with Bill or Melinda Gates.

When I asked University of Maine journalism professor Michael Socolow to weigh in, he emailed me comments he had previously posted on X/Twitter, noting that Tani and Tofel had emphasized Soros’ and Wyss’ liberal politics but adding they had been unable to back up whether that was relevant. (To be fair, Tofel seemed less impressed with that angle than Tani.) Socolow said:

I’m not sure there’s a story here. Neither Tani nor Tofel specify the ways the new ownership has altered editorial content. They’re seemingly insinuating that the new ownership purchased the newspapers to shape news content for partisan political reasons. But how much disclosure and transparency about Reade Brower and his business interests did these publications publish before the sale? It’s not clear to me why there needs to be a new, and apparently higher, standard simply because the ownership is now non-profit versus commercial. If evidence emerges that the sort of meddling Tani and Tofel insinuate begins occurring, then I agree we have an important story. But we’re not there yet.

Let me end with a couple of disclosures: Ellen Clegg and I interviewed National Trust co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro on our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News,” and we wrote about the National Trust’s successful effort to save two dozen community newspapers in the Denver suburbs in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.” I worked with DeSisto at The Boston Phoenix and Ellen later got to know her at The Boston Globe, and we both consider her to be a first-rate, ethical news executive.

The purchase of the Press Herald papers by the National Trust was unalloyed good news, and it sounds like the questions that Tani and Tofel have raised will be answered soon.

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Catherine Tumber tells us why reliable local news matters in fighting climate change

Catherine Tumber in Buffalo, New York. Photo by Chris Hawley. Used with permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Catherine Tumber, who was a former colleague of mine at The Boston Phoenix, a longtime friend and a source for my 2013 book, “The Wired City.” These days she’s an independent scholar and journalist who’s affiliated with the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She’s also a fellow at the MassINC Gateway Cities Innovation Institute and a contributing editor for The Baffler.

Tumber is the author of “Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World.” She holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree from the University of Rochester as well as a bachelor’s in social thought and political economy from UMass Amherst. Our conversation is about a recent report that she co-authored for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy called “Greening America’s Smaller Cities.” She, along with Joseph Schilling and Gabi Velasco, offer a wealth of suggestions about how industrial legacy cities can be part of the climate solution. Our question to Cathy: How does the lack of reliable news and information in many of these cities contribute to the challenges of turning that vision into a reality?

In our Quick Takes, Ellen is back on the Midwestern beat with good news about a startup weekly paper called The Denison Free Press in Iowa. It’s scrappy as hell. Or heck, as they might say in Iowa. I’ve got a rave for a new effort to inject $500 million into local news over the next five years — with a caveat. The initiative, known as Press Forward, brings together 22 different foundations in an effort to provide a significant amount of funding for community journalism. But there may be less to that effort than meets the eye.

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

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We’re going public with our book, and we can’t wait to share what we’ve learned

Ellen Clegg and I are thrilled to go public today with our book, “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,” to be published on Jan. 9 by Beacon Press.

The book consists of a close look at nine different regions in the U.S. and the independent news organizations that are serving them, ranging from tiny outlets like The Mendocino Voice in Northern California and The Bedford Citizen in Greater Boston to larger statewide projects like NJ Spotlight News and The Texas Tribune; and from rural newspapers like The Storm Lake Times Pilot in Iowa to urban outlets serving communities of color like MLK50: Justice Through Journalism in Memphis, Tennessee, and the New Haven Independent.

We also include a series of conversations drawn from our podcast with leaders, thinkers and entrepreneurs in local news.

Through a blend of on-the-ground reporting and interviews, we show how these operations found seed money and support, and how they hired staff, forged their missions, and navigated challenges from the pandemic to police intimidation to stand as the last bastion of collective truth — and keep local news in local hands.

“What Works in Community News” is already receiving praise from such important figures as Margaret Sullivan, Steven Waldman, Penelope Abernathy, Greg Moore, Victor Pickard and Anne Galloway.

It’s been quite a ride. We can’t wait to share what we learned with you.

Advance orders are available through:

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Santa Cruz Local shifts to a nonprofit business model

Just two weeks after The Colorado Sun announced it was shifting from a for-profit to a nonprofit business model, Santa Cruz Local is taking the same step. The podcast-heavy Local, a much smaller project than the Sun, competes with Ken Doctor’s for-profit (the last time I checked!) Lookout Santa Cruz. Kara Meyberg Guzman, the CEO and co-founder of the Local, was a guest on our “What Works” podcast last year, as was Lookout founder Ken Doctor. Guzman is also featured in “What Works in Community News,” Ellen Clegg’s and my forthcoming book.

In an email to Local members, Guzman writes:

At Santa Cruz Local, we believe that Santa Cruz County is stronger when everyone has access to fair, accurate, high-quality local journalism. That’s why all our news is free.

Our business model depends on locals like you to donate, because many of our readers cannot. Santa Cruz Local recently changed our tax status to make it easier for you to donate. Now that Santa Cruz Local is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, your donations and membership contributions are tax-deductible.

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Press Forward, philanthropy and the inequities facing BIPOC news outlets

My Northeastern colleague Meredith Clark and her co-researcher, Tracie Powell, spoke with Nieman Lab about funding inequities for local news start-ups serving BIPOC communities and how that might play out following the Press Forward announcement, in which 22 philanthropic organizations have pledged to provide $500 million over the next five years.

Clark, who’s the director of Northeastern’s Center for Communication, Media Innovation and Social Change, spoke with Ellen Clegg and me on the “What Works” podcast last year and is featured in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.” Clark tells Nieman Lab’s Hanaa’ Tameez:

Really well-meaning people with access to social structures and access to capital are jumping in and wanting to get involved, but they’re not addressing some of the root causes that got us here in the first place. Instead, they’re building out infrastructures that allow the money to move from one place to another — but as it goes through that movement, it gets siphoned off.

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Paul Bass, a hyperlocal pioneer, talks about his national network of arts and culture reviewers

Paul Bass checks the 2021 New Haven election returns. Photo by Maaisha Osman. Used with permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Paul Bass, the founder and former editor of the New Haven Independent. Bass is originally from White Plains, New York, but he arrived in New Haven in the late 1970s to attend Yale, and he has been reporting on all the quirks and glory of his adopted hometown ever since.

Bass was the main subject of my 2013 book, “The Wired City,” and is one of the news entrepreneurs featured in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.” Bass launched the New Haven Independent in 2005 as an online-only nonprofit.

Last fall, Bass announced he was stepping aside as editor, handing the top job over to managing editor Tom Breen. But he’s continuing to play a role at the Independent and its multimedia arms, and he has just begun another venture: the Independent Review Crew, which features arts and culture reviews from all over, including right here in Boston via Universal Hub.

Ellen has a Quick Take on The Texas Tribune, the much-admired nonprofit news outlet started by Evan Smith and others in Austin. The Tribune has been a model for other startups, so it rocked the world of local news last month when CEO Sonal Shah announced that 11 staffers had been laid off.

I report on another acquisition by Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund that has earned scorn for the way it manages its newspapers. Alden acquired four family-owned newspapers in Pennsylvania. Worse, the family members who actually ran the papers wanted to keep them, but they were outvoted by the rest of the family.

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

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The Colorado Sun, a pioneering for-profit/ nonprofit hybrid, moves toward a fully nonprofit model

Larry Ryckman. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

The Colorado Sun is going nonprofit. The five-year-old digital news organization, launched by journalists who’d left The Denver Post following round after round of cuts by the paper’s hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital, had operated as a rare for-profit exception in the universe of local news startups. Now the Sun is joining its tax-exempt peers.

“Whether I agree with it or not, whether I even like it or not, the reality is that many individuals, many institutions and philanthropic groups, have concluded that journalism should be nonprofit,” editor Larry Ryckman said in a phone interview on Monday. “I have my own thoughts on that, but that is reality.”

The move was not entirely unexpected. The Sun is one of the projects highlighted in a forthcoming book by Ellen Clegg and me, “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,” which will be published by Beacon Press in early 2024.

Read the rest at Nieman Lab.

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Public notices are a crucial source of revenue — and of government accountability

Mathewson Farm in Johnston, R.I. Photo (cc) by John Phelan.

When we think about revenue sources for local news, we tend to focus on the obvious — ads, subscriptions, events and, for nonprofits, voluntary memberships and grants. What we often overlook are public notices, also known as legal ads, taken out by government entities to inform the public that a job is being put out to bid or a meeting is being held. Mandatory public notices also include foreclosures, the disposition of public property and other business.

Public notices represent a significant source of revenue for community news organizations — and they can be weaponized. The Boston Globe recently reported on one such example in Rhode Island. Amanda Milkovits wrote that the city of Johnston has removed public notices from the weekly Johnston Sun Rise and moved them instead to the daily Providence Journal, even though the Journal charges much higher fees and is read by few people in Johnston.

The mayor, Joseph Polisena Jr., told Milkovits that he wanted public notices to reach a broader audience, especially to let construction companies know about bids. But the city has also been at odds with the Sun Rise and its editor/reporter, Rory Schuler. Publisher John Howell was quoted as saying that Polisena once told him, “I’m not going to support somebody who is working against me,” and that the mayor said he wouldn’t advertise as long as Schuler was with the paper. (Polisena denied the charges.)

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The loss of city public notices is costing the Sun Rise some $12,000 a year. Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, told the Globe that the city might be violating the First Amendment if it could be shown that Polisena’s actions were retaliation for negative coverage.

What’s happening in Rhode Island is hardly unusual. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed a bill through the legislature that allows local governments simply to post public notices on their own websites — a cost-saving measure that also has the effect of making legal ads less visible. DeSantis’ disdain for the news media is well-known.

Colorado College journalism professor Corey Hutchins often tracks fights over public notices in his newsletter, Inside the News in Colorado. Recently he reported on a move by city officials in Aspen to designate the Aspen Daily News, which is locally owned, as the city’s “newspaper of record” over The Aspen Times, a daily owned by the Ogden chain, based in Wheeling, West Virginia. That peculiarity of Colorado law carries with it some major implications. Hutchins writes:

Newspapers that earn a city’s “of record” stamp means they are the ones a city pays to place legal notices and advertising. State law requires governments to publish certain things in local newspapers in order to keep residents abreast of public business. Being a city’s paper of record also can give a newspaper a sense of gravitas in a community.

In other words, more money for the Daily News, less for the Times, which became embroiled earlier this year in a dispute with county officials who were unhappy with the Times’ coverage of a billionaire’s development plans. (Hutchins does not claim there is a link between the county and city actions.)

According to Susan Chandler, writing for the Local News Initiative, such battles are under way across the country, with increasing pressure to move public notices from news outlets to government websites. Richard Karpel, executive director of the Public Notice Resource Center, told Chandler that these initiatives are part of Republican attacks on journalism, saying:

I don’t think the concept of legal notices is controversial. There needs to be a nonpartisan way to officially announce what the government is doing. What’s controversial is how it happens. We’ve seen it become more of a partisan issue in the last five or 10 years. In some states, there are Republicans who are in battle with the media as part of their political strategy. To that extent, it has become partisan.

In Massachusetts, change may be afoot as well. Currently, state law requires that public notices be placed in print newspapers, which has become increasingly difficult as the Gannett chain has closed and merged many of its weekly papers. A number of communities are being well served by nonprofit startups, but those tend to be digital-only. State legislators are considering ways to amend the law to allow public notices to be placed in web publications, especially in communities where there is no viable print paper.

I’ve consulted with state Rep. Ken Gordon, whose district includes Bedford, the home of a vibrant digital publication, The Bedford Citizen, but no print newspaper since Gannett closed the Bedford Minuteman about a year and a half ago. The town now publishes its public notices in The Sun of Lowell, which has virtually no presence in Bedford. Also of note: On the “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I interviewed Ed Miller, editor of the startup Provincetown Independent, a print and digital publication. Miller argues that the print requirement for public notices is essential, at least in places that still have a print newspaper.

Public notices aren’t sexy. It’s much more satisfying to talk about a local news outlet that has built a successful events business or has found a way to boost digital subscriptions. But they are essential. Not only do they provide as much as 20% to 25% of a small local newspaper’s revenues, but they an important part of accountability. Public notices on a government website can be hidden away or even changed. Since Colonial times, public notices have helped local journalism thrive and have kept citizens informed. The laws governing public notices need to be updated — but not overturned.

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Greater Boston arts and local news get a boost from three new nonprofit projects

There’s good news about local news in Greater Boston today on three fronts. I’ll start with an attempt to revive arts reviews — at one time a staple of mainstream and alternative publications, but now relegated to niche outlets like The Arts Fuse, a high-quality website edited by Boston University professor and former Boston Phoenix arts writer Bill Marx.

Recently Paul Bass, the executive director of the nonprofit Online Journalism Project in New Haven, Connecticut, launched a grant-funded project called the Independent Review Crew (link now fixed). Freelancers in seven parts of the country are writing about music, theater and other in-person cultural events. Boston is among those seven, and freelance writer-photographer Sasha Patkin is weighing in with her take on everything from concerts to sand sculpture.

You can read Patkin’s work on the Review Crew’s website — and, this week, her reviews started running on Universal Hub as well, which gives her a much wider audience. Here’s her first contribution.

Bass is the founder of the New Haven Independent, started in 2005 as part of the first wave of nonprofit community websites. The Online Journalism Project is the nonprofit umbrella that publishes the Indy and a sister site in New Haven’s northwest suburbs; it also oversees a low-power radio station in New Haven, WNHH-LP. Before 2005, Bass was a fixture at the now-defunct New Haven Advocate, an alt-weekly that, like the Phoenix, led with local arts and was filled with reviews. The Review Crew is his bid to revive the long lost art, if you will, of arts reviewing.

Other places that are part of The Review Crew: New Haven; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Troy/Albany, New York; Oakland, California; Hartford, Connecticut; and Northwest Arkansas (the Fayetteville metro area is home to about 576,000 people).

I’ve got all kinds of disclosures I need to share here. I gave Bass some guidance before he launched The Review Crew — not that he needed any. The Indy was the main subject of my 2013 book “The Wired City,” and I’ve got a lengthy update in “What Works in Community News,” the forthcoming book that Ellen Clegg and I have written. I also suggested Universal Hub to Bass as an additional outlet for The Review Crew; I’ve known Gaffin for years, and at one time I made a little money through a blogging network he set up. Gaffin was a recent guest on the “What Works” podcast.

In other words, I would wish Paul the best of luck in any case, but this time I’ve got a bit more of a stake in it.

***

The Phoenix was not the city’s last alt-weekly. For nearly a decade after the Phoenix shut down in 2013, DigBoston continued on with a mix of news and arts coverage. Unfortunately, the Dig, which struggled mightily during COVID, finally ended its run earlier this year. But Dig editors Chris Faraone and Jason Pramas are now morphing the paper into something else — HorizonMass, a statewide online news outlet. Pramas will serve as editor-in-chief and Faraone as editor-at-large, with a host of contributors.

HorizonMass will publish as part of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, founded by Faraone and Pramas some years back to funnel long-form investigative coverage to a number of media outlets, including the Dig. HorizonMass will also have a significant student presence, Pramas writes, noting that the project’s tagline is “Independent, student-driven journalism in the public interest.” Pramas adds:

With interns working with us as reporters, designers, marketers, and (for the first time) editors, together with our ever-growing crew of professional freelance writers, we can continue to do our part to train the next generation of journalists while covering more Bay State happenings than ever before. We hope you enjoy our initial offerings and support our efforts with whatever donations you can afford.

***

Mark Pothier, a top editor at The Boston Globe, is leaving the paper to become the editor and CEO of the Plymouth Independent, a well-funded fledgling nonprofit. Pothier, a longtime Plymouth resident and former musician with the band Ministry, is already listed on the Independent’s masthead. Among the project’s advisers is Boston Globe journalist (and my former Northeastern colleague) Walter Robinson, also a Plymouth resident, who was instrumental in the launch of the New Bedford Light. Robby talked about the Plymouth Independent and other topics in a recent appearance on the “What Works” podcast.

Pothier started working at the Globe in 2001, but before that he was the executive editor of a group of papers that included the Old Colony Memorial, now part of the Gannett chain. When Gannett shifted its Eastern Massachusetts weeklies to regional coverage in the spring of 2022, the Memorial was one of just three that was allowed to continue covering local news — so it looks like Plymouth resident are about to be treated to something of a news war.

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What’s the Buzz in Burlington, Mass.? Nicci Kadilak on what it’s like to be a one-person news source

Nicci Kadilak was among several local news entrepreneurs featured earlier this year by GBH News. Photo by Jeremy Siegel / GBH News. Used by permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Nicci Kadilak, an educator, author, mom and founder of Burlington Buzz. The Buzz is a hyperlocal online news site serving Burlington, Massachusetts, a town of 26,000 people north and west of Boston. Kadilak created the Buzz in early 2022, when a town election was on the horizon and the local Gannett weekly, the Burlington Union, switched to regional coverage — and later ended its print edition altogether. In the 1980s, Burlington was covered by two weekly papers and The Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn, where I worked for quite a few years.

Nicci uses the Substack platform and charges a range of subscription fees. She offers news stories about town government, cultural events, sports, and has a section that provides a platform for audio interviews of newsmakers. She allows reader comments, too. Nicci also writes essays at Nicci’s Notes, and her debut novel, “When We Were Mothers,” is available wherever you buy books online. (Nicci, Ellen and Dan met in a Zoom discussion of local news led by Simon Owens for his informative Media Newsletter.)

By the way, the Buzz was just named one of 74 finalists for a Lion Independent Online News (LION) Publishers’ Local Journalism Award. Listeners of this podcast will notice a number of other familiar news organizations as well.

In our Quick Takes on developments in local news, I report on another effort to leverage tax credits for local journalism, and Ellen checks in on the decline and apparent death of the Santa Barbara News-Press.

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