What Works

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Dan and Ellen talk to Mike Blinder, the publisher of Editor & Publisher magazine, which is now much, much more than a magazine. It’s a cutting-edge multimedia source of information on innovation in our industry. Mike hosts E&P’s weekly Vodcast series, “E&P Reports.” He’s also been a guest on this podcast previously, and today’s he’s back to talk about a new venture.

Blinder has a new vertical on public media called Public Pulse. It’s newsy and filled with insider information. It aggregates the latest on stories like conflict ignited by Uri Berliner at NPR, and features reporting on trends like the collaboration of universities and public radio stations. There’s already an excellent publication in this space called Current, and Public Pulse is a welcome addition to that.

Ellen has a Quick Take on a big award going to MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. The nonprofit Memphis news outlet, which we profile in our book, “What Works in Community News,” will receive the Lorraine Branham IDEA Award from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. We discuss other media criticism up for awards as well.

Dan gives a shoutout to a New Hampshire news project previously featured on the podcast. InDepthNH recently revealed some pretty disturbing details about a state representative — and it came only after a four-year quest to obtain public records. It demonstrates why journalists need to be persistent.

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

By Dan Kennedy

Richard J. Tofel has been looking into the details of legislation that created a $90 million fund to ease the local news crisis in New York State, and he has some questions. The two most important: Are newspapers owned by publicly traded companies truly excluded, as initial reports would suggestion? And what, exactly, is a newspaper?

As I wrote the other day, the program would seem to exclude Gannett, a publicly traded corporation that owns 12 daily newspapers in New York, including the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester and the Times Herald-Record of Middletown. But Tofel isn’t sure of that, observing that “a separate provision makes all of the newspapers eligible, despite being owned by public companies, because their print circulation has declined by more than 20% in the last five years — as has that of almost every print publication in the country.”

The other major issue is whether digital-only outlets would be eligible. Tofel writes that “whether digital news organizations will be included within what the law refers to as ‘newspapers’” is still up in the air, adding that if “the regulatory definition of ‘newspapers’ excludes digital entrants and isn’t targeted at local news jobs, the bill will have amounted to a belated incumbency protection act for a failing field.”

Among the 200 members of the Empire State Local News Coalition who pushed for this legislation is The Batavian, a digital-only for-profit in western New York. I’ve already heard from Howard Owens, the publisher, who’s worried that his outlet may not be eligible for any subsidies unless the language is clarified.

The fund would set aside $30 million a year for three years to provide assistance to local news organizations that hire and retain journalists — although that, too, is unclear; it’s possible the money would be used for business-side employees, Tofel says. It could serve as a model for other states, but first the details have got to be nailed down.

In an appearance on Editor & Publisher’s vodcast earlier this week, Zachary Richner, the founder of the Empire State coalition, said that the final language had yet to be fully worked out. That will be done not through legislation but administratively, via a governmental agency called Empire State Development.

 

By Dan Kennedy

New York will become the first state to offer a tax credit aimed at helping local news organizations. According to Rebuild Local News, which has been pushing for several different tax credits at the federal and state levels, the New York legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul have agreed to a budget provision that will set aside $30 million a year for three years in order to offset the cost of hiring and retaining journalists.

Although the plan is multi-faceted, there are two aspects that I think are especially worthy of note.

The first is that calling it a “tax credit” is something of a misnomer — rather, it’s a payroll credit available to all news publishers, including nonprofits, which don’t pay taxes, and for-profits operating at a loss, which are also exempt from taxes under most circumstances. Zachary Richner, the founder of the 200-member Empire State Local News Coalition, explained that in a recent appearance on “E&P Reports,” a vodcast hosted by Mike Blinder, publisher of the trade publication Editor & Publisher. Given the importance of nonprofit startups in helping to solve the local news crisis, it makes sense to include them.

The second is that newspapers owned by publicly traded corporations are ineligible for assistance. That would exclude Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, which is notorious for its slash-and-burn approach to managing its newsrooms. According to the chain’s website, Gannett currently owns 12 daily newspapers in New York, including well-known titles such as the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester and the Times Herald-Record of Middletown.

Gannett shouldn’t be rewarded for destroying newspapers, but the provision does lead to some anomalies. For instance, Alden Global Capital, which, like Gannett, is notorious for driving up profits by hollowing out its newspapers, would presumably be eligible for assistance because it is a privately held hedge fund rather than a public company. On Twitter/X, I asked Steven Waldman, the president of Rebuild Local News, whether Alden would be able to put its hands on some state money. His answer: “Yes. I think so.”

Alden’s MediaNews Group chain owns four dailies in New York, including The Record of Troy, and The Saratogian. Alden also owns New York City’s legendary Daily News, which is listed as being part of MediaNews but which I understand is managed separately.

If I might speculate, it could be that there are several privately held chain owners in New York that are doing good work and that proponents of the credit didn’t want to exclude them. The largest privately held national chain doing business in New York is Hearst, whose Times Union of Albany is a well-regarded paper (but is not part of the Empire State coalition). In any case, even if Alden’s papers get some of the money, it provides an incentive for them to do the right thing.

Some other details of interest, quoting Rebuild Local News:

• No newsroom can get more than $320,000.
• The subsidy to newsrooms will be based on the number of  employees. The benefit will be up to $25,000 per employee (50% of the salary  up to a $50,000 wage.)
• $13 million for firms with fewer than 100 employees, $13 million for bigger ones, $4 million for new hires.

As I said up top, there have been a number of tax credits proposed to help local news outlets over the past few years. The best known, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, would have created credits not just for publishers but also for subscribers and advertisers. President Biden included a credit for publishers in his Build Back Better bill, which died at the end of 2021.

The question, as always, is whether government assistance to local news is a good idea. U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., recently filed legislation to defund NPR in response to former senior editor Uri Berliner’s error-filled lament that the network has fallen in with the progressive left. Tenney, as it happens, is a lead sponsor of the Community News and Small Business Support Act, a bipartisan bill that would create tax credits for local publishers and advertisers.

Mike Blinder raised the issue of government interference with Richner and Waldman, who was also a guest on Blinder’s recent podcast. They responded, essentially, that the New York tax credit was worded in a neutral manner so that news organizations could not be punished for their specific content.

I agree that tax credits are about as neutral and arm’s-length as you can get in insulating journalism from government pressure. But it’s always going to be a challenge. Given that the New York credit expires after three years, you can be sure there will be a debate over whether to renew it as the expiration date approaches. That, in turn, will give politicians an opportunity to redefine eligibility requirements — and there’s always a possibility that some assessment of content might be part of that.

Still, the New York system seems like an experiment worth trying, and I’d like to see it spread to other states.

By Dan Kennedy

Public notices may not be the sexiest part of the local news business, but the revenue they bring in is crucial. Also known as legal ads, these notices — usually placed by local government to announce public hearings, bids and other business — must, in most states, be published in a print newspaper. But this requirement has come under question in recent years as more and more communities find themselves without a viable print paper. Why not let them advertise in a digital news outlet?

Recently Virginia became the first state to allow that option. ARLnow, a digital site that covers the Arlington, Virginia, area, reports that the state legislature recently approved a digital-only option by “overwhelming bipartisan majorities,” and that Gov. Glenn Younkin has signed it into law. The new system will go into effect on July 1.

The proposal, put together by the Virginia Press Association and a group of online publishers, requires that a digital outlet meet certain benchmarks in terms of readership and local staffing. According to a statement by Betsy Edwards, executive director of the press association:

The Virginia Press Association believes that independent, third-party local news sites (print or online) are the best place to publish government public notices. We supported this legislation because it utilizes local newspapers and news websites to provide the public with maximum transparency.

The Virginia law is just the latest sign that the monopoly held by print newspapers over public notices is beginning to break apart. Last year Oregon passed a law allowing public notices in replica editions with paid subscribers, and Indiana is on the verge of adopting a system that would ease, but not overturn, the print requirement.

In Massachusetts, there has been talk of changing the system, but proposals to allow digital-only publication are in the very early stages. It’s not an easy issue. Some independent print newspaper owners argue that public notice revenue is vital to their bottom line, and that it would be unfair to allow digital-only outlets to get that money.

On the other hand, there are some absurd situations out there. Bedford officials, for instance, advertise in The Sun of Lowell, a chain-owned paper with virtually no presence in the town, even though the community is covered by The Bedford Citizen, a digital nonprofit with a significant footprint.

What really matters is that government be required to advertise in independent outlets — unlike Florida, for instance, where one of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-press actions was to push legislation allowing officials to post public notices on their own official websites.

By Dan Kennedy

The ongoing shakeout in public media continues. The trade publication Current reported earlier this month that WNET, the nonprofit giant that controls public radio and television stations in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey, has eliminated 34 positions since December.

Among the operations affected is NJ Spotlight News, a hybrid operation comprising a website covering public policy and politics in New Jersey and a daily newscast that is broadcast on NJ PBS. Spotlight executive director John Mooney told me that the cuts resulted in “a couple layoffs” at his organization. Spotlight is also one of the projects that we profile in our book, “What Works in Community News,” and Current ran an excerpt in December.

Until very recently, public media had seemed largely insulated from the economic pressures that have affected other sectors of the news business, especially newspapers. In rapid succession, though, layoffs have hit a number of outlets, including Colorado Public Radio (also briefly profiled in “What Works”), WAMU in Washington and NPR itself. Boston’s two public broadcasters, WBUR and GBH, have also said they may have to reduce staff.

• E&P goes public (media). Current itself is about to get some competition. Editor & Publisher, a trade publication that covers the news business, announced this week that it is starting a vertical aimed at covering public media. E&P publisher Mike Blinder said in a press release:

We spent most of 2023 assessing the state of public media through editorial reporting and interviews with executives managing local public media operations across the U.S. We recognize that these key executives have been underserved in accessing essential information to continue building audience and revenue.

E&P’s venture, called Public Pulse, is free, whereas Current is paywalled. Current, though, has a reputation for being well-sourced and authoritative. We’re going to talk with Blinder about Public Pulse on the “What Works” podcast in an episode that should drop around the middle of next week.

Bill Mitchell has a kind review at Poynter Online of our book, “What Works in Community News,” pairing it with Brant Houston’s “Changing Models for Journalism.” He writes:

In practical terms, they are essential reading for anyone considering a news startup. For most people, journalist or not, launching a news venture without consulting these volumes invites the sort of outcome awaiting a novice cook attempting a French feast sans recipe.

Mitchell really gets what we’re up up to, noting that the book is the hub of a larger enterprise that includes a podcast, updates to our website and, last month, a conference on local news at Northeastern University that drew about 100 participants.

Also, a fun fact: Brant was Dan’s editor when he started working as a stringer at The Daily Times Chronicle in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1979. Not long after he started, Brant told him that he was thinking about leaving, and that if he stuck around, he might be able to take his job. And so he did, working at the paper for 10 years before kicking around for a while and eventually landing at The Boston Phoenix.

Brant has also been a guest on our podcast.

By Ellen Clegg

When two legends in digital publishing sit down to talk in unvarnished terms about the past, present and future of nonprofit journalism, it’s worth noting. And reading. That happened last week, in a virtual sense, when Richard Tofel, the founding general manager and former president of ProPublica, interviewed Evan Smith, the founding CEO of The Texas Tribune. (The interview, in Q&A form, is on Tofel’s “Second Rough Draft” newsletter and can be found here.)

Smith and Tofel were both present at the creation, as they say. Smith, the longtime editorial chief at Texas Monthly, a must-read statewide magazine based in Austin, joined venture capitalist John Thornton and political writer Ross Ramsey in launching the nonprofit, digital Texas Tribune in 2009 — a time when the once-robust political and statehouse coverage supplied by legacy newspapers like the Austin American-Statesman and The Dallas Morning News was heading toward a cliff. He is now a senior adviser at the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs’ philanthropy, and a professor of the practice at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

Tofel was the first employee and a moral force at ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit newsroom founded in 2007 to hold power to account — and to keep the essential practice of investigative journalism alive in an era marked by a business recession and rounds of staff layoffs and buyouts in newsrooms. He is now the principal of Gallatin Advisory LLC, but his journalistic opinions are very much his own, formed over a long career as an innovator.

Both projects are discussed in our book, “What Works in Community News.” I met with Smith and Tribune editor-in-chief Sewell Chan in their newsroom in Austin, and both men shared insights into the founding and the future of the Tribune as Smith prepared to move on and Chan succeeded Ramsey. And Wendi C. Thomas, founder of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, another project we profile in our book, forged an important partnership with ProPublica to bring national attention to her stellar investigative series, “Profiting from the poor,” which uncovered predatory debt-collection practices at a Memphis hospital.

It would do a disservice to the Tofel-Smith tango to try to summarize it in one paragraph, but here’s a taste, from Smith:

There is absolutely no way to put a one size fits all strategy in front of the [nonprofit] sector. What works in Texas works in Texas. There would be no value and no probability of success in exporting the model to other places — in scraping Texas off the nameplate and replacing it with Montana or Vermont or California or South Carolina — because what works in those places works in those places. … This is not something that — as “nonprofit journalism economics in a box” — can be purchased off the shelf and put in your checked baggage and taken home with you. You’ve got to figure it out on your own locally.

Not sure what we thought was so damn funny, but we enjoyed having a chance to talk recently with G. Wayne Miller and Jim Ludes, the hosts of “Story in the Public Square,” about our book, “What Works in Community News.” The program is produced by Rhode Island PBS and the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

The hedge fund Alden Global Capital, notorious for hollowing out its newspapers, is shutting down eight weekly newspapers in Minnesota. Louis Krauss of the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune reports that six of the papers are part of the Southwest News Media group and two are under the auspices of Crow River Media.

“The closings will leave the communities without their long-time local papers,” Krauss writes. “Two of the papers, the Shakopee Valley News and Chaska Herald, have been published for more than 160 years, while the Jordan Independent was founded 140 years ago.”

Alden owns 68 dailies and more than 300 weekly publications through its MediaNews Group as well as another seven larger-market dailies through Tribune Publishing. Tribune recently sold The Baltimore Sun to David Smith, the head of Sinclair Broadcasting; Smith’s first act was to meet with his staff and berate them. Alden also owns New York’s Daily News but for some reason has separated it from its Tribune holdings. In Massachusetts, Alden owns the Boston Herald, The Sun of Lowell and the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg.

A number of startup projects that we wrote about in “What Works for Community News” were founded by people who quit an Alden-owned paper rather than continue to put up with round after round of cuts. Examples include relatively large outlets like The Colorado Sun and small projects like The Mendocino Voice and Santa Cruz Local.

Now it looks like some opportunities are about to open up in Minnesota for entrepreneurial-minded journalists.

By Dan Kennedy

The Boston Globe published a story Friday about a New Hampshire state representative named Jonathan Stone, an ex-police officer who — according to recently released records that he tried to keep secret — “spoke of killing police and raping the chief’s wife and children.”

As the Globe notes, the story was broken on April 5 by Damien Fisher of InDepthNH, a nonprofit news organization that covers politics and public policy in the Granite State. Fisher’s story begins:

Republican Rep. Jon Stone’s New Hampshire law enforcement career ended when he threatened to kill fellow police officers in a shooting spree, and murder his chief after raping the chief’s wife and children, all while he was already under scrutiny for his inappropriate relationship with a teen girl, according to the internal investigation reports finally released this week.

Yikes. Fisher writes that he first filed a right-to-know request in 2020, and that the records were ordered released last month by New Hampshire’s Supreme Court. InDepthNH executive editor and founder Nancy West was a guest on our “What Works” podcast in November 2022.

In Ohio, DIY pink slime

Jack Brewster of NewsGuard, a project that tracks the rise of pink slime news sites, has written an essay for The Wall Street Journal (free link) that is at turns harrowing and hilarious. Spending just $105, he put together a website powered by artificial intelligence that’s designed to look like a local news outlet. Per his specifications, the site, which he called the Buckeye State Press, was designed with a right-wing bias, favoring Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno over the Democratic incumbent, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Brewster used an Israeli-based service called Fiverr.com to build the site, which in turn was programmed by a Pakistani freelancer named Huzafa Nawaz. Brewster writes:

From there, all I had to do was answer a few questions about what kind of site I was looking for and the topics I wanted the site’s articles to cover. The domain and site hosting added an extra $25 to the total. The entire AI content farm cost me just $105, and I literally have to do nothing to operate it. It runs itself, auto-publishing dozens of articles a day based on the instructions that I gave to it.

I’ve been following developments in pink slime off and on for the past decade, and what I’ve found is that they are pretty inept. That proved to be the case with Brewster’s experiment as well — at one point his site hallucinated Brown’s attendance at a local fig festival. At some point, though, these projects are going to evolve into effective sources of political propaganda, which we all need to be concerned about.

Google plays hardball in California

As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m skeptical of legislative attempts to force Google and Facebook to pay news organizations for the journalism that they repurpose. If anything, the notion has become more nonsensical over time, as Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has made it clear that it would just as soon eliminate news content on platforms like Facebook and Threads.

Google is a different matter, but no less complicated. News publishers want money from Google, but at the same time exactly none of them add the necessary code to their sites which would make them invisible to Google, because they’re dependent on traffic from the giant search engine, too.

Still, it’s hard not to be outraged by Google’s latest tactic. According to Jeremy B. White of Politico, Google is blocking access to some local news content in parts of California as it fights against state legislation that would force them to pay news organizations. White writes:

“We have long said that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism,” Google’s vice president for global news partnerships, Jaffer Zaidi, said in a Friday blog post. Zaidi warned the bill could “result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.”

Well, I guess so. These are the tactics of a thug, and yet another sign that the tech giants have amassed way too much power.