On the latest “What Works” podcast, Dan and Ellen talk to Larry Ryckman, editor and co-founder of The Colorado Sun, the subject of a chapter that Dan wrote for our book, “What Works in Community News.” The Sun was launched by journalists who worked at The Denver Post, which had been cut and cut and cut under the ownership of Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that the Post staff called “vulture capitalists.”
The Sun was founded as a for-profit public benefit corporation. A PBC is a legal designation covering for-profit organizations that serve society in some way. Among other things, a PBC is under no fiduciary obligation to enrich its owners and may instead plow revenues back into the enterprise. And we’ve found that for-profit models are rare in the world of news startups. But that changed last year, when the Sun joined its nonprofit peers. Ryckman explains.
Dan gives a listen to a New York Times podcast with Robert Putnam, the Harvard University political scientist who wrote “Bowling Alone” some years back. In a fascinating 40 minutes, Putnam talks about his work in trying to build social capital. He never once mentions local news, but there are important intersections between his ideas and what our podcast and book are focused on.
Ellen reports on an important transition at Sahan Journal in Minnesota, one of the projects we wrote about in our book. The founding CEO and publisher, Mukhtar Ibrahim, is moving on and a successor has been named. Starting in September, Vanan Murugesan will be leading Sahan. He has experience in the nonprofit sector and also has experience in public media.
Our Reinventing Local TV News project, which is part of Northeastern’s School of Journalism, is getting a lot of attention from the trade publication Editor & Publisher. Professor Mike Beaudet, who heads the project, is the subject of a feature story in E&P and is the guest on this week’s E&P vodcast.
Beaudet, who’s also an investigative reporter with WCVB-TV (Channel 5), tells E&P’s Gretchen Peck and Mike Blinder that the goal is to come up with new ways of storytelling to appeal to younger audiences — a demographic that gets its news almost entirely by smartphone rather than a traditional television screen. Here’s how Beaudet puts it in an interview with Peck:
People are cutting the cord, and the whole idea of having “appointment television” has gone out the window, especially for younger people. That’s the challenge: We can’t rely on this audience to find local TV like you could in years past, as they get older, because they’re not consuming content the same way.
Mike and his collaborator, Professor John Wihbey, presented at our What Works local news conference at Northeastern last March. Given that local television is in relatively good financial health compared to the newspaper business, it’s vitally important that people like Beaudet and Wihbey come up with solutions before the problems of an aging audience become acute.
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 Timesexecutive 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Northeastern University has developed the capacity for conducting low-cost, large-scale surveys, based on our experiences with our COVID States Project/Chip50 (seehttps://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.
Kate Maxwell working out of borrowed space in March 2020. Photo (cc) 2020 by Dan Kennedy.
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.
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.
