Month: June 2024

By Ellen Clegg

Sewell Chan’s illustrious career has taken him across the country and across the pond. He has served as a reporter and editor in Washington, New York, London, Los Angeles — and, most recently, the nation-state of Texas as editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune.

Now, he’s returning home. Chan, who grew up in New York City, will join the Columbia Journalism Review, which is published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, as executive editor in September. In business since 1961, CJR — now primarily digital — has been without a top editor since Kyle Pope left in 2023 to become executive director of strategic initiatives at Covering Climate Now. New York Times media writer Katie Robertson has more here.

The Texas Tribune is featured in our book, “What Works in Community News.” Because co-author Dan Kennedy and I wanted to visit every community we wrote about, I flew to Austin in July 2022 during the tail end of a COVID spike to interview Chan and outgoing CEO Evan Smith at the Tribune’s downtown headquarters.

Although the office had gone hybrid and was sparsely populated, both men were generous with their time, recounting the history of the pioneering digital site and talking passionately about their mission. Among many other cogent observations about our business, Smith also schooled me about the “blessings of the 40 Acres,” a nickname for the University of Texas’ Austin campus. And my interview with Chan was a reunion of sorts: He wrote for The Boston Globe’s City Weekly section, which I edited, when he was a student at Harvard University.

The only child of parents who immigrated from China, Chan grew up in New York City and attended Hunter College High School, a publicly funded school known as a destination for bright and creative students. He began his professional journalism career as a local reporter at The Washington Post in 2000 and moved on to a long stint at The New York Times, where he was a metro reporter, Washington correspondent, deputy op-ed editor and international news editor.

In 2018, he moved west to become a deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, reporting directly to Times executive editor Norman Pearlstine, who was installed after billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the Times that year and began rebuilding the beleaguered newsroom. Chan ultimately became editorial page editor at the Times, where he directed coverage that won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2021 for editorials on the California criminal justice system. Chan and his staff published a noteworthy editorial that apologized for past failures in coverage on race, as part of a larger series.

But Soon-Shiong proved to be a reckless and erratic owner, and Chan ended up leaving to start over in the Lone Star State. When he began his job at the Tribune in October 2021, Chan wanted to focus on disinformation, the role of media, and the state of democracy. That meant getting outside the blue bubble of Austin.

“I really feel that the crisis in our democracy is not going to be fixed from the coasts,” he told me. “We need to help restore America from the inside out, if you will, and from the bottom up.” He wanted to diversify the Tribune’s readership and re-center “the Texas part of the Tribune. We’re not The Austin Tribune, we’re The Texas Tribune.”

He also wanted to venture beyond political coverage, explaining that “there are a lot of issues — from broadband access to health care — that are particular to rural areas. A lot of publications don’t cover them very well.”

He added: “We are not trying to change Texas. We would like, however, to improve the functioning of democracy in Texas, and we do that by shining the light of accountability and by holding power to account.” Chan was able to add bureaus in outlying towns during his three-year tenure — although the Tribune also weathered its first round of layoffs and a union drive.

Before I interviewed Smith and Chan, I had already played tourist in Austin: I waited 90 minutes in line on a 100-degree day to sample the brisket at Franklin Barbecue. (Worth it!) I toured the State Capitol, which has oil portraits of Texas luminaries like Vice President John Nance Garner, David Crockett, U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan and Gov. Ann Richards.

Chan suggested that I continue my sightseeing and offered to play host. So the day after our interview, he picked me up in his car and we headed for the LBJ Presidential Library. It’s an active research center, and a tour guide told us that Lady Bird used to come into her office at the library, which was on exhibit, to work. We also stopped in at the Harry Ransom Center to see one of the few intact copies of the Gutenberg Bible. The lure of movable type runs deep.

Chan’s leadership comes at an important moment for CJR. At a time when news outlets compete with any number of platforms and pretenders slinging disinformation, the journal is an essential voice that can remind the public of the role of the fourth estate in sustaining a democratic way of life that sometimes feels all too fragile.

By Dan Kennedy

Every reporter knows that the proper relationship between journalism and government is arm’s-length, even adversarial. Our job is to hold elected officials to account, not ask them for handouts.

So why were 10 publishers, journalists, academics, and advocates on Beacon Hill (in person and virtually) on Wednesday asking for the creation of a state commission that could propose ways of helping news organizations? The answer: The local news crisis has become so acute that it’s time to consider some unconventional approaches.

Read the rest at CommonWealth Beacon.

Well, this was fun. Ellen and Dan recently spoke with Charlotte Henry, the U.K.-based host of “The Addition,” a podcast about tech, media and politics. Charlotte turns out to be a sharp interviewer with a sense of humor, so we hope you’ll give it a listen. Here’s part one, and here’s part two. Of course, you can also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

On the new “What Works” podcast, Ellen and Dan talk with Peter Bhatia.  Bhatia is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who is now chief executive officer of the Houston Landing, a nonprofit, non-partisan, no-paywall local news site that launched in spring of 2023. He has also been editor and vice president at the Detroit Free Press, from 2017-2023, and served as a regional editor for Gannett, supervising newsrooms in Michigan and Ohio.

His résumé includes helping lead newsrooms that won 10 Pulitzer Prizes. He is the first journalist of South Asian heritage to lead a major daily newspaper in the U.S. He has also been involved in some recent controversies, and, as you’ll hear, he doesn’t shy away from talking about them.

In Quick Takes, Dan talks about an important press-freedom case in Mississippi. The former governor, Phil Bryant, is suing Mississippi Today over its Pulitzer Prize-winning series on a state welfare scandal that got national attention and even managed to touch former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. Bryant says he needs access to Today’s internal documents in order to prove his libel case, and a state judge has agreed. Mississippi Today has decided to take the case to the state Supreme Court. It’s a risk, because it will set a precedent in the Magnolia State — for better or worse.

Ellen highlights an interview with Alicia Bell, the director of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy. Bell talked to Editor & Publisher about her upcoming report on what it will take to build a thriving local news ecosystem for BIPOC communities across the country. Her estimate: it will take somewhere between $380 million to $7.1 billion annually to truly fund BIPOC journalism across the U.S. That’s a big number, but Borealis is a pioneer in this space, and it’s important research as national efforts like Press Forward roll out.

You can listen to our conversation here and access an AI-generated transcript. You can also subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

By Dan Kennedy

As I noted previously, the Massachusetts legislature is taking another crack at forming a local news commission after its first attempt disappeared into the ether several years ago. On Wednesday, I was one of 10 academics, publishers and advocates who testified in favor of such a commission before the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses. If you want to catch up on what happened, two reporters were there as well.

Chris Lisinsky of State House News Service writes:

Tax credits for local publishers, grant funding for news organizations, and state-covered wages for recently graduated reporters who cover underserved communities are all on the table as Massachusetts lawmakers consider how best to support the ailing local journalism industry.

And here’s how Aidan Ryan of The Boston Globe begins his story:

The crisis facing local news is ravaging civic life everywhere — even in Massachusetts — a parade of journalists told legislators on Wednesday, as they called on state government to take steps, including considering tax breaks, to support struggling local newsrooms.

Our Northeastern colleagues in the School of Journalism, the College of Social Sciences and Humanities and Khoury College of Computer Science are making a major announcement about a polling initiative to help local newsrooms during the upcoming election season. Please see the information below.

Empowering local journalism through enhanced capacity for local and state-level surveys

In partnership with Knight Foundation and the Knight Election Hub, Northeastern University is offering to boost polling capacity for newsrooms during election season. At no cost to newsrooms, our social science and data team at Northeastern University, building on a multi-year runway of state-level polling with support from the National Science Foundation, is offering to conduct two waves of surveys during the 2024 election season. Survey questions and directions will be co-created in partnership between the academic and news teams. 

To be eligible, please sign up here through the Knight Election Hub: https://www.knightelectionhub.org/ 

And feel free to email us if you are interested and want to learn more: j.wihbey@northeastern.edu

More details:

Northeastern University has developed the capacity for conducting low-cost, large-scale surveys, based on our experiences with our COVID States Project/Chip50 (see https://www.chip50.org/about-us.) Our project has, since April 2020, surveyed around 25,000 Americans, across all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, approximately every 6-8 weeks. With the support of the NSF, NIH, and a handful of foundations, we have conducted 1400+ state-level surveys since April, 2020, producing 100+ public facing reports and a wide set of “data dashboards.” 

We are now running a pilot project involving 10 newsrooms in 10 states (including all swing states). We are currently planning on conducting two surveys during the summer/fall of 2024, as supported by the National Science Foundation. The objective would be to partner with those newsrooms to establish: (1) what are broad policy questions relevant to the election that all/most of the newsrooms would be interested in; (2) what are policy questions relevant to the election distinctive to their state. We would meet with representatives of partner newsrooms before each of the two survey waves, working with them to translate their questions regarding public opinion into survey questions, which we would then field with our two existing surveys; and produce one long report regarding the policy issue of general interest (where we would have state-specific numbers, but also numbers for every state + DC); plus short reports summarizing findings.

We are also looking to continue this work after the 2024 election, and so an ongoing set of newsroom partnerships is an aspiration. 

The survey team is led by computational/data scientists and journalism faculty at Northeastern University. Lead faculty are: David Lazer, d.lazer@northeastern.edu ; and John Wihbey, j.wihbey@northeastern.edu.

If you have any questions about the Knight Election Hub, please reach out to elections24@knightfoundation.org.

By Dan Kennedy

There’s big news in the world of hyperlocal journalism this week: Kate Maxwell, the co-founder and publisher of The Mendocino Voice in Northern California, is moving on. The Voice, which is nominally a for-profit, is becoming part of the nonprofit Bay City News Foundation, which, according to an announcement on Tuesday, “will allow both organizations to expand the geographic reach and depth of their public service reporting.”

In a message to readers, Maxwell writes that “as part of this new chapter, I’ve chosen to move on from my role as publisher.” No word as to what she’ll do next. She adds:

Thanks to your support, we’ve published nearly 5,000 articles, reached millions of readers, created living wage jobs for experienced local reporters, held government officials accountable, received national funding and awards, and shared important Mendocino stories with readers around the state and country. Most importantly, we’ve been able to provide the diverse communities in Mendocino with news that’s been useful to you, our friends and neighbors.

Although the Voice will continue as a standalone free website, it will do so without either of the co-founders. The site’s first editor, Adrian Fernandez Baumann, left several years ago. Here’s part of an FAQ explaining what the change will mean for readers:

This partnership will give The Mendocino Voice the stability to maintain its news operation and support its journalists. It’ll create a regional network all along the coast as well as the inland areas and give reporters the opportunity to grow. It’s a promise of long-term sustainability. Joining with Bay City News Foundation means that we’ll have the capacity for deeper coverage of environmental issues, plus more resources for bringing you that news, including more photographers, data journalists and round-the-clock editors.

The Mendo Voice was the first project I visited in my reporting for “What Works in Community News.” I was on the ground during the first week of March in 2020, and we all know what happened that week. I covered an event the Voice hosted at a local brewpub on Super Tuesday, which I reported on for GBH News. Two days later, I was on hand as Maxwell and Baumann reported on a news conference to announce the first measures being taken in response to what was then called the “novel coronavirus.” The nationwide shutdown loomed.

The reason I wanted to include The Mendo Voice in the book that Ellen and I were writing was that Maxwell and Baumann were planning to convert the project they had founded in 2016 to a cooperative form of ownership. “We are going to be owned by our readers and our staff,” Maxwell told the Super Tuesday gathering. “We think that’s the best way to be sustainable and locally owned.”

After years of following a nascent news co-op in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which ultimately failed to launch, I was intrigued. Unfortunately, the co-op that Maxwell and Baumann envisioned did not come to pass, either. COVID-19 wreaked havoc with their plans, though the Voice continued to publish and provide “useful news for all of Mendocino.”  Baumann took a personal leave that ended up becoming permanent. And Maxwell was unable to move ahead with the community meetings she had envisioned to make the co-op a reality. “I think we basically had a year’s worth of events that we were planning,” she told me in 2022.

By then, the Voice was essentially operating as a hybrid — a for-profit that had a relationship with a nonprofit organization that allowed for tax-deductible donations to support the Voice’s reporting. Eventually, she said, the site was likely to move toward a more traditional nonprofit model.

The co-op idea is an interesting one, but to this day I’m not aware of a successful example at the local level. The Defector has made it work, but that’s a national project. In Akron, Ohio, The Devil Strip, an arts-focused magazine and website, tried for a while but then collapsed in an ugly fashion.

Maxwell and Baumann, two young journalists who launched The Mendocino Voice after leaving jobs at Mendo County newspapers being destroyed by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, built something of lasting value. Best wishes to both of them.

By Dan Kennedy

If there is an ur-source of data about the extent of the local news crisis, it is surely the map of news deserts compiled by journalism researcher Penelope Abernathy. First at the University of North Carolina and more recently at Northwestern University’s Medill School, Abernathy has produced perhaps the single most influential work on the local news crisis.

Ellen Clegg and I have cited her topline numbers — 2,900 newspapers, mostly weeklies, closed since 2005; 43,000 journalism jobs lost over the same period — countless times in talking about our book, “What Works on Community News.” Abernathy is also a professional friend who was kind enough to blurb our book and who’s appeared on our “What Works” podcast.

Compiling the sort of data needed to produce a reliable presentation like the one put together by Abernathy and her colleagues, though, is incredibly hard work. A lot of it depends on the methodology you use. New projects constantly come online; others flicker out. As such, I’ve tended to regard her study as most useful when viewed from 40,000 feet, less useful when you take a look at county-by-county results.

The most recent Medill data is from November 2023. Alice Dreger, who writes the blog Local News Blues, has been pointing out flaws in the numbers all year. Among other things: The Baltimore Sun, a legacy for-profit newspaper, and The Baltimore Banner, a digital nonprofit, were originally excluded; East Lansing Info, a sizable nonprofit in Michigan that Dreger helped found, was not on the list; and several projects serving Black communities, such as  AfroLA and Baltimore Witness, were missing.

I’ve noticed problems as well, especially with startups that were founded within the last couple of years in response to Gannett’s decimation of its weekly newspapers in Greater Boston. Some may have popped up after Medill’s deadline.

Now, Dreger reports, Medill is starting to make corrections after initially being unresponsive. That’s good. In fact, I would suggest that the Medill report and others like it should always be regarded as works in progress, subject to additions, deletions and other edits. I maintain a database of independent local news organizations and news-oriented public access stations in Massachusetts, and I’m always making changes to it.

I don’t think the problems Dreger found detract from the overall value of the Medill database. I do think it’s important to regard it as a living, breathing representation of the local news situation across the United States, valid in its essentials but always subject to change and updates. And kudos to Dreger for getting the ball rolling.

By Dan Kennedy

Nearly three and a half years after then-Gov. Charlie Baker signed a bill creating a local news commission, the Massachusetts legislature is ready to try again. The first commission lapsed without ever holding a formal meeting (one preliminary meeting was held before all the members had been appointed), so essentially we’re starting from scratch.

A public hearing will be held this Wednesday, June 26, at 10 a.m. to discuss the make-up of a journalism commission, the state of journalism in Massachusetts, and what the public would like to see a commission address. The hearing is being held by the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Business, and will take place in Room B-1 at the Statehouse as well as virtually over Teams. I’ve signed up to testify.

The original legislation would have created a 23-member commission. The new proposal would strip that down to a more workable nine members. I would have been guaranteed a slot on the first commission; there are no guarantees in the new legislation, but I’ve told Rep. Paul McMurtry, D-Dedham, who’s the House chair of the committee, that I’d be willing to serve. I’ve also offered his office some thoughts on how the commission might be structured and what areas it could address.

The local news landscape here has deteriorated considerably since then-Rep. Lori Ehrlich and I first started talking about a commission in 2018. Especially destructive was Gannett’s decision to close or merge a couple dozen of its weekly papers in the spring of 2022 and to jettison nearly all of its local coverage in favor of regional stories from around the chain. (Ellen Clegg and I spoke with Ehrlich on our very first “What Works” podcast in October 2021. Ehrlich is now the regional administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.)

On the bright side, we’ve also seen an upsurge in local news startups in the Boston area, mainly nonprofit. These projects are doing a better job of covering local news than Gannett had in many years. But some communities are without any journalism, and the startups tend to be located in affluent suburbs.

What could a news commission do? That would be up to the members. But a commission could shine a light on independent projects that are doing well in order to inspire folks in other cities and towns to try their hand. And it could propose some policy measures aimed at bolstering local efforts. One that seems especially promising are tax credits for news publishers who hire and retain journalists, as is being done in Illinois and New York. “Tax credits” is a bit of misnomer since they can be structured to benefit nonprofits as well as for-profits that are losing money.

Here’s the full announcement about Wednesday’s hearing:

Please be advised that the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses will hold a hybrid public hearing on Wednesday, June 26th starting at 10am in Room B-1 to discuss the composition of the Journalism Commission, the current state of journalism in the Commonwealth and matters that interested parties would like to see the commission address once the commission is formed. Instructions for providing oral and written testimony are below.

Date of Hearing: Wednesday, June 26th, 2024
Time: 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Location: Room B-2 — Hybrid Hearing via Microsoft Teams
Subject Matter: Journalism

IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL TESTIMONY: For both in-person and virtual testimony, you must fill out the following form: https://forms.office.com/g/6VKVLTVXjj

WRITTEN TESTIMONY: Written testimony may be submitted to the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses by emailing the garrett.burns@mahouse.gov

DEADLINE TO PRE-REGISTER: For both in-person and virtual testimony, the deadline to register to testify is 12:00pm, Tuesday, June 25th, 2024. Individuals registered for virtual testimony will receive an email the day before the hearing with a link to join the hearing on Microsoft Teams.

SAME DAY SIGN-UP: Individuals who miss the deadline to pre-register for testimony may appear on the day of the hearing and sign up to speak in-person on forms provided by committee staff. Time permitting, when all pre-registered individuals have been called to testify, the Chairs will then call any individuals who sign up in-person on the day of the hearing.

ORDER OF TESTIMONY: The Chairs, at their discretion, will determine the order of testimony. It is the responsibility of the individuals registered to testify to be prepared to speak when called upon by the Chairs. If an individual is called by the Chairs and that person is not logged into the Teams platform, the Chairs will move on and call the next individual or panel. We respectfully request that all oral testimony be kept to 3 minutes or less.

If you have any questions or concerns please email garrett.burns@mahouse.gov.

By Dan Kennedy

Government assistance for journalism exists along a continuum. Media scholars such as Paul Starr and Victor Pickard have observed that the American press got an enormous boost starting in Colonial times by way of generous postal subsidies — a benefit that lasted until several decades ago, when market fundamentalists began demanding that the Postal Service cover its expenses. Public notices — advertisements that government agencies and corporations are legally obliged to take out in order to publicize certain types of meetings, contracts, bids and the like — are another form of subsidy.

As the local news crisis has deepened, other ideas have been put forward. As we write in our book, “What Works in Community News,” an independent board in New Jersey, the Civic Information Consortium, has awarded some $5.5 million to fund reporting and information projects over the past few years. In California, a $25 million appropriation is paying the salaries of recent master’s degree journalism graduates at UC Berkeley to cover underserved communities over a three-year period. Legislators in New York and Illinois are moving toward approving tax credits for local news publishers to hire and retain journalists after similar efforts at the federal level have stalled.

The challenge is to keep government assistance as indirect as possible so that journalism can maintain its vital role as an independent monitor of power. Which is why an idea that’s being discussed in Cambridge goes too far.

Boston Globe reporter Spencer Buell writes that the City Council is considering a proposal to set aside $100,000 a year in public money to support local news over the next three years. If enacted, the money, to be administered by an independent board, could be awarded to Cambridge Day, a longtime and well-regarded local newspaper, as well as other outlets. Among the proponents: Cambridge News Matters, a nonprofit that has been working with Cambridge Day and could partner with others as well. (Disclosure: I’ve offered some advice and counsel to Cambridge News Matters when I’ve been asked, and I told them just recently that I thought this was a dubious idea.)

Mary McGrath of Cambridge News Matters told Buell: “We heard loud and clear that quality local journalism is critical to democracy, that you can’t have a cohesive community without an informed citizenry. The business model to deliver this kind of journalism is broken.” Buell also interviewed me. Here’s what I told him:

We want local news organizations to be able to cover government and other institutions and keep an eye on them — not always in an adversarial way, but always in an independent way. If you’re going to have a direct transfer of money from local government to local news organizations, you’ve lost that. So I just don’t think this is a good idea.

Philosophical objections aside, what’s being discussed is pretty short money to put journalistic independence at risk. As Buell notes, Cambridge News Matters hopes to raise several million dollars in private donations over the next few years. The Boston area is home to many local news startups that were launched in response to the giant newspaper chain Gannett’s abandonment of its weekly newspapers, including the Cambridge Chronicle. None of them, whether nonprofit or for-profit, has had to rely on direct government funding.

I’m a longtime admirer of Cambridge Day and its editor, Marc Levy, as well of McGrath and the folks at the nonprofit. I would love to see more local news coverage in Cambridge than Marc is currently able to provide, and I have no doubt that everyone involved in this would make strenuous efforts not to be influenced by any government funding they might receive. But I just don’t see how this is the way to go.