By Alexa Coultoff
FALL RIVER, Mass. — Keith Thibault likes to say he “runs a news department of one” out of the TV production studio at Bristol Community College.
When Thibault was growing up in this southeastern Massachusetts city, known for its collection of World War II naval vessels and 19th-century textile mills, he would frequently turn on the television to watch a daily regional news program that informed the communities of Fall River and New Bedford about what was happening in their neighborhoods. People came to cherish the newscast, called “Local Cable News 13,” which aired for more than 20 years before shuttering in 2006.
René Kochman, who worked as the program’s director and helped steer local coverage, recalled that “it was quite well watched, and although we were never able to track the viewership, we knew by the community’s response that it was successful and valuable.” Kochman’s tasks included knocking on doors and helping produce a “Pet of the Week” segment with a local dog, cat or hamster.
Thibault and Kochman said the presence of a strong local news source after “Local Cable News 13” stopped airing was — well — absent.
After graduating from Fitchburg State University in 1987 with a degree in communications, Thibault worked at New Bedford radio station WNBH for six years and managed the public access television station in New Bedford for another six before deciding to try his hand at revitalizing local news in Fall River. That venture, Fall River Community Media, or FRCMedia, operates out of Bristol Community College and is supported by a cable television license with Comcast.
Thibault’s quip about being “a news department of one” notwithstanding, he has a staff of three videographers, two full-time and one part-time. A new program premieres every Thursday, and Thibault publishes short stories detailing the news segments on the website throughout the week. He also has a weekly interview segment with Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan.
In focusing on community stories and “things that matter to people,” like housing and affordability in the blue-collar city, Thibault hopes to reignite a sense of civic engagement.
Local news and civic life
About 94,000 people live in Fall River, according to U.S. Census data. The city’s median income of about $54,000 is barely more than half the statewide average, and the percentage of residents holding high school diplomas or college degrees lags as well.
In other words, it’s exactly the sort of community that swung toward Donald Trump last fall. Trump won Fall River in 2024 by 504 votes, attracting state and national media coverage as the press tried to make sense of what had happened in a city so historically Democratic that the last Republican presidential candidate it had voted for was Calvin Coolidge — and he’d had the advantage of once serving as governor of Massachusetts.
One possible factor that media and political experts are exploring is the decline of strong local news sources that bring communities together and help combat partisan divides. According to the Medill School at Northwestern University, some 3,300 newspapers have closed since 2005. And Paul Farhi and John Volk of Medill’s Local News Initiative reported that communities lacking a reliable source of news and information were more likely to swing toward Trump in the 2024 election.
That’s not because voters in such communities don’t have the information they need to be informed voters. Rather, places without reliable local news also tend to have lower income and educational levels, which correlates with MAGA support.
“People didn’t necessarily vote for Trump because they lack local news,” Farhi and Volk wrote. “Instead, a simpler and more obvious correlation may be at work: News deserts are concentrated in counties that tend to be rural and have populations that are less educated and poorer than the national average — exactly the kind of places that went strongly for Trump in 2024 and in 2020.”
Fall River isn’t rural, but the rest of it matches up. And though it would be unfair to call the city a news desert, there is no question that it’s underserved. That starts with The Herald News, a venerable daily paper now owned by the Gannett chain, which is notorious for cost-cutting and that has hollowed out or closed many of its daily and weekly newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts over the past few years.
A healthy local-news ecosystem is a necessary precondition for civic life. Some local-news experts believe that community journalism can help ease partisan polarization by encouraging cooperation on issues and concerns on which people may find they may have something in common. Again, correlation isn’t causation, and the goal of fixing the local-news infrastructure shouldn’t be to swing red communities back to blue. But there is value in helping people of very different political persuasions see that they have much in common as well.
“Local issues do not map neatly onto the red-blue divide that we see on cable news. There’s no Republican or Democratic way to shovel snow off the sidewalk,” said Ellen Clegg, a veteran journalist and the co-founder of Brookline.News, a nonprofit local news outlet.
Clegg, who researches the future of local news as the co-leader of What Works, says that dedicated local-news reporters are “essential to our participation in local life” and help neighbors put aside political differences.
Most thriving independent local news outlets in the state, however, are financially supported by higher-wealth communities such as Brookline, Newton, Concord and Marblehead. This means gateway cities like Fall River lose out, Clegg said.
“There’s a trend that we’re seeing all across the country that higher-wealth communities who are able to support nonprofit news are supporting nonprofit news outlets,” Clegg said. “Predominantly minority communities don’t get the coverage they deserve because it’s difficult to sustain a nonprofit model.”
Which brings us back to Fall River, its lack of news coverage and its shift to the political right. According to FRCMedia’s Keith Thibault, the challenge isn’t that voters cast their ballots for Trump — it’s that they are growing increasingly disengaged from local politics.
Support for Trump aside, voter turnout in Fall River dropped dramatically last year — and that translates to a growing lack of interest in down-ballot races for the state Legislature and various county offices. In both 2016 and 2020, 60% of registered voters cast their ballot. In 2024, that percentage fell to 49%, according to data from Secretary of State William Galvin’s office. And even that was higher than turnout in 2023 for city positions.
“Voters in Fall River are, at times, apathetic,” Thibault said. “Our turnout in local elections was under 20% for mayor, city council and school committee.”
While The Herald News has ceased collaborating with Thibault on hosting candidate forums and debates ahead of local elections, FRCMedia continues to steer the effort, he said.
Thibault said he invites candidates running for local offices to record three-minute statements on camera as if they were speaking directly to voters. These segments then air as part of the weekly broadcast during election seasons.
Though many journalism experts point to the lack of local news as a reason for low civic engagement in a community, many people no longer turn to traditional newspapers to gather their news.
“Our local paper is pretty bad, honestly,” said Kayla King, who has worked at the Fall River Library for almost four years and is the interim head of the reference department.
King has seen the effects of Gannett’s budget cuts in the lack of reporters available to cover events in the community that she believes should have visibility. The Herald News “doesn’t have the resources to keep a pulse on what’s happening,” she said.
As for the future, King said she would personally benefit from a strong local news outlet but added that she doesn’t know how realistic the expectations of its readership would be.
“I think local news can have a big impact when it’s done right, but how do you keep people’s attention when there are so many other things going on and people are so distractable?” she asked. “I definitely think there’s a place for it, but I don’t know what the solution is to make it both profitable and engaging.”
Though a digital news outlet, the Fall River Reporter, has emerged in recent years, headlines on the site focus on crime and motor vehicle incidents, lacking articles featuring community events and voices in Bristol County. The staff tab of the website lists nine reporters. The site also publishes stories from the State House News Service.
Writers and editors from The Herald News and the Fall River Reporter did not respond to requests for interviews.
Other Fall River residents say they gather their news outside of traditional papers.
“I don’t consume traditional news. I kind of just find things out from social media and stuff,” said Sophia Edge, who grew up in the city and works at the Fall River YMCA.
Edge, 18, described how the older generation in Fall River is “a little close-minded,” which is what she believes led to the majority Republican vote this election. She and her friends voted blue, but noticed how their hometown has become “a red city.”
“Whenever I do consume traditional news, it’s The Herald News, which is Fall River’s strongest news source. But I didn’t see a lot on anything election-wise,” Edge said. “I don’t see a lot about Paul Coogan, who’s our mayor, even though he comes to the YMCA every day.”
René Kochman, who formerly ran “Local Cable News 13,” now teaches high school students at B.M.C. Durfee High School about media literacy through Fall River Educational Television, or FRED-TV, which runs out of a studio there. High schoolers learn how to become producers and reporters and develop a general understanding of how to decipher real news in an age of technology.
“A lot of the hyper and extreme local news is now highlighted on social media, and that’s probably one of the things that helped bury local cable news coverage,” Kochman said. “News is very transient. It happens and then it’s gone.”
Kochman and Thibault both say their public-access channels have made a difference in the city’s youth and their understanding of the necessity of local news.
Reconnecting with journalism
Steven Waldman, president of Rebuild Local News, looked at “indirect clues” in exit polls conducted by NBC News to determine the role news consumption played in voter choices.
“Studies have shown that the contraction of local news has created a vacuum — which has been filled by partisan news sources and social media (both polarizing and more likely to spread misinformation),” Waldman wrote in a Politico Magazine article. “If we want to grasp the meaning of this election, we can’t ignore one of the biggest forces that shaped the electorate — or how the collapse of local news has changed the political equation.”
While Fall River may not qualify a news desert, it certainly lacks an availability of local news that residents are aware of and can base political choices on.
Thibault put it this way: Fall River voters care about “kitchen table issues,” and view Trump as a heroic champion who’s fighting for the underdog.
Although this disconnect from traditional news is a national issue, many media advocates believe that local news can be a guiding source to reconnect society with the press. And that starts at the youngest level, with educators helping students separate fact from fiction.
“Part of our role in the curriculum at Fall River Educational Television is to sift through the fake news and give these kids a basis to filter all that stuff because otherwise they’ll just get bombarded with it,” Kochman said.
Back in the glory days of “Local Cable News 13,” host Jim Phillips was dubbed the “dean of local news,” Kochman said. The news product aired live at 5:30 p.m. on weekdays and was rebroadcast at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m.
The program had a reputation of covering local events in a way that gave residents a window into each other’s lives.
Today, Thibault leans on similar practices.
Thibault, who says he enjoys being “the local journalist on local cable television,” said his day-to-day routine often involves running around the city to record interviews with business owners and residents who are leading community initiatives. He can be found busy at his desk in the TV production studio at Bristol Community College Monday through Friday.
While he has no way to track his television ratings or viewership, he hopes his efforts to produce local community-oriented news will pay off. The importance of strong local news matters, and Thibault hopes it will not be lost on a changing generation.
“We’ve worked so hard to be in it for so long,” he said. “So when you see things withering, it’s a concern.”
Alexa Coultoff is a junior at Northeastern University majoring in journalism and criminal justice.
