Month: December 2021

By Dan Kennedy

The Haverhill Gazette marked its 200th anniversary in 2021, and WHAV Radio has taken note of the occasion in a lengthy tribute. The Gazette, an independently owned daily for most of its existence, launched WHAV in 1947 under the auspices of a publisher who was distantly related to the Taylor family, which then owned The Boston Globe. The station was revived about 15 years ago and converted to a nonprofit, low-power FM station (it also streams) by local advertising executive Tim Coco, who continues to run it as an independent source of news.

Coco and David Goudsward trace the Gazette from its founding in 1821 to the present day. I had no idea that Haverhill’s favorite son, the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, was the editor for a brief period in the 1830s.

A long series of events that led to the shrinkage of the Gazette began in 1957, when William Loeb, the notorious right-wing publisher of the Manchester Union Leader (now the New Hampshire Union Leader), took advantage of a strike at the Gazette by starting a competing paper, the Haverhill Journal. Coco and Goudsward write that the Gazette was sold to a consortium comprising The Eagle-Tribune, then of Lawrence, now of North Andover; The Sun of Lowell; and Vermont’s Burlington Free Press.

Although the arrangement somehow managed to pass antitrust muster, I’m old enough to recall stories that The Eagle-Tribune and The Sun weren’t going to let the Gazette get too good. The Gazette changed hands several more times and in 1998 was sold to The Eagle-Tribune. Today, the Gazette is a weekly. Both the Gazette and The Eagle-Tribune, which remains a daily, are owned by CNHI, a corporate newspaper chain based in Montgomery, Alabama. As Coco and Goudsward write of the Gazette:

It is better off than the thousands of newspapers that have succumbed in recent years, but still a shadow of its former self — the victim, first of consolidation that reduced it from a robust daily to a weekly, and then of the loss of its advertising base to electronic media.

For several years, I followed news coverage in Haverhill quite closely, as it was the first community chosen by the Banyan Project in which to launch a cooperatively owned news organization, to be known as Haverhill Matters. The idea never came to fruition despite years of planning. During those same years, Coco was building WHAV into a vital source of local news and information, both over the air and online.

By Maaisha Osman

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The New Haven Independent, a nonprofit digital news organization, has been delivering local news to residents here since 2005. Several months before this year’s mayoral elections, the Independent hosted debates with candidates running for mayor, conducted candidate interviews on its community radio station, WNHH, and followed candidates door-to-door.

On Election Night, Nov. 2, the newsroom was packed with reporters, interns, volunteers, freelancers and radio hosts — an enthusiastic group dedicated to covering elections for mayor, city council and other positions locally and across Connecticut. The crew dug into takeout pizza amid artworks at La Voz Hispana de Connecticut, the Spanish-language newspaper where the Independent and WNHH are based.

Reporters and volunteers were sent out to 42 polling stations in New Haven and neighboring Hamden to call in results. Arrangements were made with the city to keep up with absentee ballots in order to report on the margin of victory between New Haven’s two mayoral candidates, incumbent Justin Elicker (who won re-election) and John Carlson. A live spreadsheet was posted on the Independent’s website to keep track of the votes. Later, reporters went out into the field to livestream candidates’ speeches and interview them.

While the Independent was gathering results, WNHH was relaying them to its audience and talking about them in a manner that was both raucous and entertaining. Anchored by the station’s morning host, Babz Rawls Ivy, the discussion featured former Independent reporter Markeshia Ricks, local journalist Michelle Turner and station manager Harry Droz — as well as a considerable amount of red wine. Joining them remotely was Christine Stuart, editor of the politics-and-policy website CT News Junkie, who provided some statewide context.

Ricks, a former reporter for the Independent, was one of Rawls Ivy’s panelists. She recalled the Independent as a go-to-place for people and campaigns where they could get the results immediately. She thinks that audience-engagement tools like Facebook Live have also played an integral part in their newsroom.

“You could watch it on local news,” she said, “but they couldn’t transmit it as quickly.”

In contrast to the widespread pessimism over the decline of local news, Paul Bass, the founder and editor of the Independent and WNHH, is optimistic.

“I think it’s the golden age of journalism,” he said. He loves the blend of textual form, photography and videography all merging to create a story. “You can bring the traditional view of journalism with these new tools to looking at stories in new ways [that are] so much deeper where you connect so much more to readers,” he said.

Bass cited a Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020, where he was on-site to cover what he thought would be a tiny gathering that no one knew about. The next thing he knew, there were thousands marching onto the highway and facing off with State Police while he streamed the event on Facebook Live. He said that 50,000 people watched and many people joined the march.

According to a Pew Research Center study, 48% of U.S. adults consume news on social media channels, with Facebook outpacing all other social media sites. The use of Facebook Live results in greater timeliness and a higher level of audience engagement.

Still, those who get their news primarily online are among the least trusting of news and less knowledgeable about current affairs. Americans are concerned about misinformation online being an even bigger problem than perceived media bias. But local broadcast news remains among the most trusted sources of information, with fewer news consumers citing local news as a source of falsehoods than any other type of media. With their relentless focus on local, the Independent and WNHH are helping to counteract distrust.

Bass thinks that mis- and disinformation in his newsroom are handled in a more skillful way because the communication is upfront. “Local [newsrooms] are better because you are showing up at the meeting in person,” he said. “At least here, when I am interviewing someone I have covered for 30 years, I can remember they lied about this last time, or I was wrong five times when asking the question.”

The need for local journalism has not changed over time, but the economic dynamics capable of sustaining a profitable model for local journalism have. Bass chose the nonprofit model for the Independent, he said, because he didn’t think there was enough money in for-profit, explaining, “I saw the model being destroyed.”

Strong engagement can help sustain and support strong, independent media for every community in the U.S.

A Nieman Lab report notes that as more community journalists launch nonprofits, they’re doing so with small staff and “a scrappy startup mentality” focused on direct engagement with audience and members. The bigger picture shows that nonprofit news outlets generated an estimated $500 million in revenue in 2019. Foundation grants make up the largest share of revenue.

Bass also lauded the nonprofit model because it’s funded by people who believe in journalism for the sake of democracy. “It actually fundamentally changes the way you do journalism,” he said.

Unlike flashier news websites, the Independent resembles a blog. There is a steady cascade of articles in reverse chronological order and a sidebar for smaller stories. Articles are edited quickly, so typos slip through, which they also make fun of in the newsroom. Readers who spot typos are rewarded with a mug adorned with the Independent’s logo.

Perhaps most important, the Independent has helped build community and inspired young journalists. Laura Glesby, who is just finishing her studies at Yale University, didn’t realize that she wanted to become a reporter until she started working as an intern at the Independent. She was one of the freelancers helping out on Election Night, and will begin working as a staff reporter at the Independent next month.

“I learned a lot from working here,” said Glesby. “And I love that the Independent does on-the-ground reporting where you get to meet people who aren’t just experts or politicians but just people who live here and hear their perspectives.”

Bass came to New Haven more than 40 years ago and has spent his career covering his adopted city, mostly at the Independent and, before that, the New Haven Advocate, a now-defunct alternative weekly. Now 61, he continues to believe in the importance of community journalism.

“I think the bedrock of democracy is local news,” said Bass. “That’s where the larger issue stemmed from, and I think that local reporting is the bedrock of a free press.”

Maaisha Osman is a graduate student at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. Additional reporting by Northeastern journalism graduate student Zhaozhou Dai.

Our latest “What Works” podcast features Damon Kiesow, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he holds the Knight Chair in Digital Editing and Producing. But Dan and Ellen first met him about 10 years ago when he was at The Boston Globe, developing mobile products for Boston.com and BostonGlobe.com.

At the time, the new Globe.com site had been launched with a paywall, and featured the Globe’s journalism. Although print revenue is still significant, the paywall strategy seems to be paying off now in terms of digital subscriptions. Kiesow and others were working on emerging technologies in mobile and social media. Kiesow focused on human-centered design: how readers interact with a print newspaper versus a digital side. Does some 150 years of experience reading print make a difference? Why is doom scrolling on digital platforms so exhausting? Tune in and find out.

Plus Ellen takes a quick look at a powerful newspaper collaboration in South Carolina that is rooting out scandal after scandal, and Dan offers an update on the vibrant digital archive of the late, great Boston Phoenix, housed at Northeastern University and now freely available online.

You can listen here or on your favorite podcast app.

By Ellen Clegg

The Charleston Post and Courier, a family-owned newspaper in South Carolina that traces its lineage back to 1803, is wrapping up a remarkable year-long project that afflicts the comfortable and the corrupt on an industrial scale. 

The project, called, “Uncovered,” harnesses the investigative power of The Post and Courier (the paper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2015) and puts it to work alongside 17 community newspapers, at least a few of which are struggling. The editors of The Post and Courier are direct about their dual targets, which they sum up in this headline: “News deserts and weak ethics laws allow corruption to run rampant in South Carolina.” 

Their premise: Corruption festers when people aren’t looking, when the spotlight doesn’t shine. 

As the story on the home page notes, “The stakes are high. Corruption could surge as so-called news deserts expand and federal and state prosecutors back off.” The editors issue a call to action: Let’s shine a light into the darkest corners.

Together, the coalition of newsrooms filed more than 50 FOIA requests and interviewed more than 560 public officials and whistleblowers. An online “corruption tracker” database enables readers who want to see what scandals the team dug up in a particular community. 

Of course, competition for scoops is tightly woven into the culture of most newsrooms. Over the years, that drive to get the facts out has benefited readers. But newspaper closures continue to spread, and ghost newspapers haunt more and more communities, particularly in rural areas. In South Carolina, seven papers shut down last year and two more moved to online only, according to the South Carolina Press Association. So it can be a boon when newsrooms put aside the competitive spirit for a bit to map out an investigative project that proffers solutions across a broader circulation area and provides an incentive to keep subscribing to the town paper. As I’ve reported previously, ProPublica and MLK50: Justice Through Journalism teamed up to investigate predatory debt collection practices in Memphis in an award-winning series entitled “Profiting from the Poor: Inside Memphis’s debt machine.”

As South Carolinians are finding, this network effect amplifies the power of the press to hold public officials accountable. As the Post and Courier editors write: “We have only begun.”

Our guest on the latest episode of the “What Works” podcast is Rhema Bland, the first permanent director of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting at the University of North Carolina school of journalism. She was appointed in October 2020 after working in higher education as an adviser to student media programs. She is a veteran journalist who has reported and produced for CBS, the Florida Times-Union, WJCT and the New York Daily News.

The Wells Society was co-founded by award-winning journalists Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ron Nixon and Topher Sanders. The society is named after the path-breaking Black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, who fearlessly covered the lynching of Black men and was present at the creation of the NAACP. The society’s mission is essential to the industry: to “increase the ranks, retention and profile of reporters and editors of color in the field of investigative reporting.” Bland and her colleagues host training seminars for journalists across the country, focusing on everything from entrepreneurship to racial inequality to COVID-19.

Also in this episode, Ellen talks about Ogden Newspapers’ purchase of Swift Communications, which publishes community papers in western ski towns as well as niche agricultural titles like the Goat Journal. And Dan shares news about federal antitrust lawsuits that are in the works against Google and Facebook by more than 200 newspapers.

You can listen here and sign up via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever fine podcasts are found.

By Ellen Clegg

Not all newspaper acquisitions involve hedge funds that gobble up trusted titles with deep community roots. Sometimes quieter transactions take place outside major urban centers that augur well for the preservation of local journalism, or at least strike a faint chime of hope. One such deal: Ogden Newspapers, a family-owned company founded in 1890, is purchasing Swift Communications, which publishes community papers in western mountain resort towns as well as niche agricultural titles like the Goat Journal.

Robert Nutting, the CEO of Ogden (and the billionaire owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates), and Bill Waters, CEO and chairman of the board of Swift Communications, had nothing but positive things to say about the move, according to a report in Editor & Publisher – although the announcement came as a surprise to some staff members. Here’s Nutting: “We are particularly excited to be working with a team that has been recognized as an innovator in community journalism.” And here’s Waters: “We know the time has come to pass the baton of stewardship to new owners who can carry forward the important mission.” The sale is scheduled to close December 31. No purchase price was disclosed. 

Just take a minute and mark those words: stewardship, mission, community journalism. They’re hopeful signals that Ogden does not intend to emulate vulture capital owners who have carpet-bombed local newsrooms across the nation. As my colleague Dan Kennedy writes, about half of us are likely reading a shadow paper that is owned by, or is in debt to, Alden Global Capital, Apollo Global Management or Chatham Asset Management. Even now, like Muncher in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” Alden is hungrily eyeing Lee Enterprises, which owns 77 daily papers. 

The 20 publications that Ogden has just acquired convey the spice and tang of the communities they cover and are most likely the sorts of publications, bursting with news about local politics and personalities, that James Madison had in mind when crafting the First Amendment of the Constitution. Some 11 of them are in Colorado’s high country, according to Colorado Public Radio, with titles like the Steamboat Pilot & Today and The Aspen Times. Others are dedicated to raising goats and maintaining the family farm, endeavors which touch on crucial issues like climate change and the nation’s groaning supply chain. A recent headline in The Fence Post: “Biden administration extends trucking waiver.” 

The Steamboat Pilot & Today, for example, is a daily print newspaper distributed throughout Routt County, Colorado, which has a population of 25,000. “Its police blotter section is the source of a very popular and somewhat hilarious little book called Ski Town Shenanigans, which recounts bear, moose and partying episodes common to the area. It is a lovely little local rag, which we all rely upon to know what is happening in our part of the Rockies,” says Janice Symchych, an attorney and a 10-year resident of the surrounding ranch country who says she aligns with those “who share a collective sense of the importance of grassroots news and communication.” 

Marissa Ames, editor of the Goat Journal in Greeley, Colorado, says she’s optimistic: “Any time in journalism when we have stability and a promise of something bigger it’s really exciting.” The Journal, now in its 100^th year, is published every other month and is broadening its coverage to include stories about goats raised for angora fiber, goats used as pack animals and goats raised for milk and meat. Ames says she hopes Ogden can help increase the Journal’s digital presence. The print edition has a circulation of about 3,000, she says, but the Facebook page has more than 12,000 followers. “This is very much community journalism,” she tells me in an interview. “No matter where you live, who you love, or how you look, if you’re kind to your goats, we represent you. That ties us together as a community.”

Assuming the sale goes through, as of January 1, Ogden Newspapers will publish 54 daily newspapers. Nutting promised to keep the focus on local content, and vowed those operations will remain largely unchanged, according to Colorado Public Radio. 

By Dan Kennedy

A lawsuit filed by newspapers against Google and Facebook that claims the two tech giants violated antitrust laws is gaining momentum. Sara Fischer and Kristal Dixon of Axios report that more than 200 papers across the country have joined the effort, which is aimed at forcing Google and Facebook to compensate them for what they say are monopolistic practices that denied them advertising revenue.

I don’t see any New England newspapers on this list. But the papers that are involved in the lawsuits in some way represent about 30 different owners in dozens of states, according to Fischer and Dixon. About 150 papers owned by 17 different groups have actually filed suit so far.

What’s interesting about this is that it has nothing to do with the usual complaint about Google and Facebook — that they repurpose journalism from newspapers, and that the newspapers ought to be compensated. By contrast, the current lawsuits are aimed at practices that the plaintiffs claim are clearly illegal.

The Axios story doesn’t get into the weeds. But I did earlier this year shortly after the first lawsuit was filed by HD Media, a small chain based in West Virginia. Essentially, the argument is twofold:

• Google is violating antitrust law by controlling every aspect of digital advertising. Paul Farrell, a lawyer for HD Media, put it this way in an interview with the trade magazine Editor & Publisher: “They have completely monetized and commercialized their search engine, and what they’ve also done is create an advertising marketplace in which they represent and profit from the buyers and the sellers, while also owning the exchange.”
• Facebook is complicit because, according to a lawsuit filed by several state attorneys general, Google and Facebook are colluding through an agreement that Google has code-named Jedi Blue. The AGs contend that Google provides Facebook with special considerations so that Facebook won’t set up a competing ad network.

The two companies have denied any wrongdoing. But if the case against them is correct, then Google is profiting from a perfect closed environment: It holds a near-monopoly on search and the programmatic advertising system through which most ads show up on news websites. And it has an agreement with Facebook aimed at staving off competition.

“The intellectual framework for this developed over the last three to four years,” Doug Reynolds, managing partner of HD Media, told Axios.

The lawsuit also comes at a time when the federal government is beginning to rethink antitrust law. A generation ago, a philosophy developed by Robert Bork — yes, that Robert Bork, and yes, everything really does go back to Richard Nixon — held that there can be no antitrust violations unless consumers are harmed in the form of higher prices.

President Joe Biden’s administration, by contrast, has been embracing a more progressive, older form of antitrust law holding that monopolies can be punished or even broken up if they “undermine economic fairness and American democracy,” as The New Yorker put it.

The newspapers’ lawsuit against Google and Facebook is grounded in the Biden version of antitrust — Google and Facebook are charged with leveraging their monopoly to harm newspapers economically while at the same time hurting democracy, which depends on reliable journalism.

By Dan Kennedy

It’s rather late in the game to ask whether hedge funds can be stopped from buying up every last one of our local newspapers. After all, about half of us are already stuck with a paper that is owned by, or is in debt to, the likes of Alden Global Capital (Tribune Publishing and MediaNews Group), Apollo Global Management (Gannett) and Chatham Asset Management (McClatchy).

Still, with Alden having now set its sights on Lee Enterprises, a chain that owns 77 daily newspapers in 26 states, we need to take steps aimed at preventing what is already a debacle from devolving into a catastrophe.

Read the rest at GBH News.