Meet Anne Larner, one of a rising tide of local news entrepreneurs in the Boston suburbs
On this week’s podcast, Ellen and Dan talk with Anne Larner, a civic leader in Newton, Massachusetts, a city of nearly 90,000 people on the border of Boston. Anne is on the board of directors of The Newton Beacon, an independent nonprofit news outlet covering Newton. Anne has a long track record of civic engagement…
The (re)launch of Rebuild Local News is nothing new. It’s welcome nevertheless.
By Dan Kennedy Tuesday’s announcement about a new organization aimed at helping to ease the local news crisis was a bit of a head-scratcher. Here’s the lead of Sara Fischer’s story at Axios: Local journalism groups representing more than 3,000 local newsrooms have come together to create a new nonprofit that aims to save local…
Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub has been making digital connections in Boston since the early 1990s
On this week’s podcast, Dan and Ellen talk with Adam Gaffin, founder of Universal Hub and inventor of the French Toast Alert System. Universal Hub tracks news in the Boston area from the serious to the just plain weird by linking to hundreds of news outlets and local websites and by offering original reporting. His Twitter feed…
A Hearst daily in Connecticut will soon go weekly
By Dan Kennedy The Register Citizen of Torrington, Connecticut, is moving from daily to weekly print publication starting March 12. The paper is part of the Hearst CT chain, which has gone all-in on digital — so I wouldn’t criticize this move unless it results in less coverage. Dean Pagani broke the news Wednesday at…
Mike Blinder tells us how he revived E&P — and built a must-listen podcast about the news business
The podcast is back! Dan and Ellen took some time off to finish their book, which now has a name — “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” Barring any unexpected roadblocks, it will be published by Beacon Press in early 2024. Our latest podcast features…
The local news renaissance in Mass. needs to spread beyond the affluent suburbs
By Dan Kennedy People are starting to notice the local news renaissance in Eastern Massachusetts that’s been inspired by the Gannett newspaper chain’s never-ending cuts. Dana Gerber reported in The Boston Globe on Tuesday about “The Great Marblehead Newspaper War,” where three independent start-ups have been launched in response to Gannett’s evisceration of the Marblehead…
By Dan Kennedy There was news in Mark Shanahan’s Boston Globe story on the decline of the once-great Providence Journal under Gannett ownership: the Globe is opening a New Hampshire bureau sometime in 2023, a move similar to what it’s done in Rhode Island. At one time the Globe took New England coverage seriously, even…
A farewell to Twitter
We have deactivated the What Works account on Twitter in response to Elon Musk’s increasingly erratic leadership. We hadn’t been using it for much of anything other than tweeting out new posts from this website. You can sign up for free delivery of posts by email by scrolling down the right-hand rail, entering your email…
A bill to force Google and Facebook to pay for news moves closer to passage
By Dan Kennedy Note: Within a day, the JCPA was dropped from the defense-spending bill, perhaps marking its death knell. See update below. A controversial measure that could force Google and Facebook to pay for the news they repurpose has suddenly been revived in the last days of the lame-duck Congress. The Journalism Competition and…
Margaret Low of WBUR tells us how public radio fits into Boston’s regional news environment
On this week’s podcast, Ellen and Dan talk with Margaret Low, the CEO of WBUR, one of Boston’s two major news-oriented public radio stations. Margaret started as CEO in January 2020. She has had a 40-plus-year career with NPR, and started as an overnight production assistant at “Morning Edition.” At NPR, Low rose through the ranks…
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