What Works

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen and Dan talk with Jennifer Peter, who was named editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project in September. The Marshall Project is a national nonprofit that covers issues related to criminal justice. She’s only the third editor in 10 years, replacing Susan Chira, a former New York Times editor. Peter started her career as a reporter, working for 12 years at newspapers in Idaho, Connecticut and Virginia before joining The Associated Press in Boston.

From the AP, she moved to The Globe, where she rose quickly through the ranks. She was regional editor, politics editor and city editor. As metro editor, she oversaw The Globe’s Boston Marathon bombing coverage, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. In 2018 she was promoted to managing editor, the number-two position in the newsroom. In our conversation, Peter tells us about The Marshall Project’s mission, including its foray into local news in Cleveland, St. Louis and Jackson, Mississippi.

A production note: Dan is at Northeastern, but Ellen is beaming in from a studio at Brookline Interactive Group, which handles multimedia for the town of Brookline. BIG, as it is known locally, is also host to a class of Brandeis students who travel to Brookline to report and write stories for Brookline.News, the nonprofit newsroom Ellen is part of. BIG provides audio and video of Brookline civic meetings and also works with Brookline public school students on multimedia projects.  

Dan has a Quick Take about yet another newspaper that’s gone out of business, although this one has an unusual twist. The devastating wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles area last January have claimed the Palisadian-Post, a twice-monthly newspaper that had been publishing since 1928. The problem is that many of the residents were forced to leave, and though rebuilding is under way, the community hasn’t come close to recovering.

One of Dan’s Northeastern students, Abbie O’Connor, is from the Pacific Palisades — her home is still standing. She wrote several times in his opinion journalism class during the semester about how the Palisades were affected by the fire. Among other things, an enormous number of Palisades residents moved to Manhattan Beach, re-creating the sense of community they had in their former homes.

Abbie’s final project was an enterprise story on racial and economic disparities in the rebuilding resources that are being made available to the mostly white, affluent residents of the Pacific Palisades and the lower-income, historically Black community of Altadena.

Ellen’s Quick Take is about Brian McGrory returning as editor of The Boston Globe in January. McGrory left in early 2023 to become chair of Boston University’s journalism department. He’ll replace Nancy Barnes, who announced earlier this month that she’d be stepping aside. Although McGrory’s departure from BU is not being described as a leave of absence, he says he expects to return to his academic post no later than 2027.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Dan and Ellen talk with Chris Fitzsimon, publisher and CEO of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest nonprofit news organization covering state government. Chris is also the host of a new podcast called “Stories from The States.” Recent topics on the pod include the impact of Medicaid cuts, ICE detention and redistricting.

States Newsroom has a presence in all 50 states, with its own news organizations in 39 states and partnerships with existing nonprofits in the other 11. In Massachusetts, States Newsroom partners with CommonWealth Beacon. (Disclosure: Dan is a member of CommonWealth’s editorial advisory board.) The project also has a bureau in Washington, D.C. States Newsroom publishes its journalism under a Creative Commons license, which means that it is free to republish as long as proper credit is given.

Fitzsimon knows his way around state politics. From 2004 to 2017, he directed a team of seven journalists at NC Policy Watch, which he founded. He also hosted a weekly radio show and wrote a syndicated column on North Carolina politics and government. From 1991 to 1994, he was the spokesperson, speechwriter and policy adviser for the North Carolina speaker of the house. Before that, he was a television news reporter covering politics and government.

Dan has a Quick Take about The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. In 2019, the Tribune became the first legacy daily newspaper to become a nonprofit. Unlike a few notable hybrids like The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tampa Bay Times, which are for-profit papers owned by nonprofit foundations, the Salt Lake paper is a true nonprofit, just like your local public television or radio station. And the Tribune has been so successful that it recently announced it plans to drop its paywall.

Ellen’s Quick Take is on an investigation by Spotlight PA into the director of the Penn State Cancer Institute. The news outlet, which is a nonprofit that provides reporting to more than 90 outlets throughout Pennsylvania, uncovered damaging clinical practices and a toxic work environment. After the story ran last month, the director resigned.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Dan and Ellen talk with Todd Landfried, co-founder and CEO of N2 Media Holdings. As consumers cut the cord on cable TV, he hopes to develop a sustainable model for local news production.

We know from our research that local television news is still highly trusted. His mission: to reinvent local news for the streaming era. Landfried’s idea, called The Local, is to develop statewide newscasts in Colorado, and eventually in all 50 states, that would be carried on the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube.

Ellen is back and fully bionic after a short hiatus for knee replacement surgery.

Dan has a Quick Take about a finding in a recent report by LION Publishers that gets into how to think about raising money. LION, as most of our listeners know, stands for Local Independent Online News. Anyway, its latest sustainability report found that startup news organizations can’t just hope that revenues are something that are going to materialize. Fundraising takes dedicated employees, as Dan will explain.

Ellen’s Quick Take is on an alt-weekly in Seattle called The Stranger that has become an influential political force, as The New York Times recently reported. This summer, 47 candidates for local office paid a call on the newsroom in order to seek an editorial endorsement. And they brought snacks!

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

The following is a press release from Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Researchers and local journalism experts at Northeastern University, in partnership with industry-leading audience research firm SmithGeiger Group, have published a survival guide for local TV newsrooms that are struggling to reach a new generation of news consumers.

The Reinventing Local TV News Project recommends that news organizations hire a Digital Content Creator, a role researchers tested in three major market newsrooms for a year of experimentation on digital platforms. Reinvent: A Survival Guide for Local TV News offers guidance for news organizations and journalists on how to integrate that new role into the newsroom, the most effective ways for Digital Content Creators to tell stories, and ways to measure the reach of that work.

Continue reading “Northeastern researchers offer a lifeline for TV newsrooms seeking younger audiences”

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Dan talks with Kade Krichko, the founder of Ori magazine, a beautifully crafted premium print publication devoted to grassroots storytelling across the globe. (Ellen is recovering from knee replacement surgery but is producing behind the scenes. She’ll return to the air soon.)

Kade describes himself as a world wanderer with a knack for misadventure. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, ESPN, Vice and Outside, among other publications. He admits to loving a good story, and writes, “If the tale has a pulse, I’m listening.” Kade is a Northeastern University graduate and a part-time lecturer in the School of Journalism. He created and taught a course in Sports, Media and Digital Storytelling.

Dan also checks in with longtime political journalist Jon Keller. Jon was recently laid off by WBZ-TV (Channel 4) after a 20-year career there. He was one of five staff members who lost their jobs as part of what appears to be a deep corporate purge by David Ellison, whose Skydance Media company bought Paramount earlier this fall. CBS is part of Paramount, and WBZ is part of CBS.

Jon is not going away, fortunately, and is still writing for MASSterList and Boston magazine. He has some sharp observations on the role of local TV news in covering state and city politics.

Later on in the podcast, Dan has a Quick Take about the latest bad news from our tech overlords. The Columbia Journalism Review reports that the new AI-powered web browsers designed to replace Chrome and Safari are able to circumvent a news organization’s digital paywall. Not always — it depends on the technology that was used to build the paywall. But at a time when publishers are already losing traffic because of AI, this is a direct assault on the business model for journalism in the digital age.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

The Plymouth Independent, a digital startup that ranks among the larger such projects in Eastern Massachusetts, has named a new executive editor. David Kidwell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from Chicago, will assume the Independent’s top editorial position in January. He succeeds founding editor Mark Pothier, who will remain as a staff reporter.

According to the Independent’s announcement:

Kidwell has had an outstanding career in journalism, spanning nearly 40 years. He started as a beat reporter for small town newspapers, going on to become an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald for 15 years and then the Chicago Tribune for 12 years. More recently, he worked as an editor at two nonprofit investigative groups in Chicago, the Better Government Assn. (BGA) and Injustice Watch.

Kidwell has won two Pulitzer Prizes, most recently at the BGA, where he conceived, oversaw and edited a series of stories about dozens of fire deaths that occurred because of lax enforcement of fire and building codes by local officials. In 2001, he was a member of the Miami Herald team that covered the story of the exiled Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez.

“I am very excited to start this new adventure in Plymouth, and to be working with such a team of seasoned journalists,” Kidwell said. “I believe what you have been building is not only important to the people of Plymouth, but to the future of journalism. I can’t wait to get started.”

Pothier, a Boston Globe alumnus, announced in August that he was planning to step aside. That the Independent was able to attract someone of Kidwell’s stature to take his place is a testament to how attractive a stable nonprofit news organization is at a time when good journalism jobs are scarce.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Dan is flying solo because Ellen is recovering from knee-replacement surgery. But fear not — she was behind the scenes making sure this episode got recorded properly, and she edited what you are listening to. She’ll be back on the air soon.

Our guest is Rick Goldsmith, a veteran filmmaker who has taken a close look at the state of corporate journalism in America. His documentary “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink” tells the story of Alden Global Capital, the secretive hedge fund that has bought up many of our greatest newspapers and stripped them of their real estate and slashed their newsrooms.

He focuses on one of Alden’s papers, The Denver Post, and the rise of The Colorado Sun, a digital startup begun by former Post journalists. The story of what happened in Colorado is also one that we tell in our book, “What Works in Community News.”

The reason we’re having Rick on now is that you’ll be able to watch “Stripped for Parts” through Dec. 31 for free on the PBS app, which you can access through Apple TV, Roku, Google Play and most smart TVs. The various options for watching the film are explained here.

Dan has a Quick Take about Jay Rosen, who retired earlier this year from New York University and is now taking on a new challenge. Jay is probably best known to his younger followers as an incisive media critic. But his true passion, going back to the 1990s, is finding ways to involve members of the public in the production of journalism. Now he’s doing it again with a project called News Creator Corps — and it could have implications for local news.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

By Dan Kennedy

The Midcoast Villager, an innovative weekly newspaper based in Camden, Maine, got The New York Times treatment last week. But though the Times lavished attention on the high-profile journalists who’ve been recruited to work there as well as the café it’s opened to extend public outreach, it missed entirely the Villager’s long history as a tech innovator — a history that extends all the way to the present.

The Times article and visuals, by Steven Kurutz and Cig Harvey, are certainly entertaining enough, starting with their portrayal of deputy editor Alex Seitz-Wald, who left a job covering Washington for NBC News to come to Maine. “I did an insane thing,” he tells the Times. “I left one of the last stable jobs in media and took a job in the worst sector of media — and possibly in the economy.”

Continue reading “The New York Times discovers Maine’s Midcoast Villager. Here’s the rest of the story.”

By Dan Kennedy

Finding news in the annual State of Local News report from Northwestern University’ Medill School can be a challenge because, frankly, it’s always the same depressing thing: newspapers keep closing; digital startups are rising, but not by enough to fill the gap; and be sure to tune in again next year, when the situation is likely to be even worse.

Still, there are a few interesting nuggets in the latest update, which was released Monday. In particular, I was drawn to some observations in the report about rural areas, which is where news deserts tend to be concentrated. News deserts, as defined by the project’s now-retired founder, Penny Abernathy, are counties without any locally based news organizations.

As newspapers continue to close, independent startups are filling the gap. But it’s uneven at best, with most startups concentrated in urban and suburban areas. The report puts it this way:

Over the past five years, we have tracked more than 300 startups that have emerged across the country. Support for both these new startups, which have opened in almost every state, as well as existing legacy outlets has come from a surge in philanthropic investment as well as public policy initiatives. Over the past year, such efforts have boosted a wide variety of news outlets. Overall, however, philanthropic grants remain highly centralized in urban areas, and state legislation has not been widely adopted throughout the nation, leaving many outlets in more rural or less affluent areas still vulnerable.

The report also finds that fewer than 10% of digital-only news organizations are in rural counties, and that the demographics of counties that do support digital projects “tend to be more affluent, with lower rates of poverty and higher rates of educational attainment.” Of course, internet connectivity tends to lag in rural areas as well.

Continue reading “Digital startups are a bright spot in the latest ‘State of Local News’ report, but rural areas are lagging”

By Paul Cuno-Booth
Granite State News Collaborative

It’s happened to all of us. You’re scrolling through your social media feed and see a link to what appears to be a news story, with a startling headline about something happening in your state or community. The text is formatted like a news article, and the website has the name of your town followed by some newspaper-y suffix — the “News” or “Post” or “Crier” or “Gazette.”

If you try to stay informed about what’s happening in your local community these days, you’re probably inundated with a flood of content, some of it more reliable than others.

Continue reading “How to spot trustworthy local news — and how you can tell when it’s not”