What Works

A little over five years ago, at a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square, Ellen and Dan sketched out a rough outline for the book that would become “What Works in Community News.” Today is our book’s official publication date. We owe a debt of gratitude to a lot of people, including our publisher, Beacon Press; the news entrepreneurs and thought leaders who we interviewed for the book as well as for our podcast; and our families for putting up with us.

Our launch party is today at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith, and it looks like we’re going to have a full house. If you haven’t registered but would like to tune in, you can do so here. In addition, on Thursday, Jan. 11, from 7 to 8 p.m., Dan will be giving a presentation on our book via Zoom. It’s being sponsored by the Tewksbury Public Library, but we know a number of other libraries are taking part as well. You can register here. Dan will be solo; we’re pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy, handling some events together and some with one or the other.

We are really looking forward to tonight in Brookline, and we hope to see you on the other end of the screen this Thursday.

By Dan Kennedy

Is there a silver lining hiding somewhere inside the rise of newspaper ownership by private equity? Brant Houston says yes. In a recent essay for the Gateway Journalism Review, Houston argues that what he calls the “Alden effect” has provided a significant boost to startup news projects as communities fight back against the destruction of their legacy newspapers. Alden is a reference to Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that owns two newspaper chains, MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, which between them control about 100 papers. Houston writes:

Alden Global is a call to arms for the creation or expansion of alternative, and often nonprofit newsrooms. A call to arms that should have been sounded years ago.

Call it the Alden effect.

Alden’s brazen and brutal harvesting of a disrupted and distressed news industry has made clear the long death spiral of newspapers and legacy media. And it has made clear how a new business model for journalism (usually a nonprofit model or a public benefit corporation) is needed and how independent digital newsrooms need to form deeper alliances.

Houston is the Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois. He talked about his new book, “Changing Models for Journalism,” in an appearance last June on the “What Works” podcast. And a personal note: He was my first editor at The Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn, Massachusetts, way back in 1979.

In his Gateway article, Houston traces such Alden-driven moves as a closer relationship between two existing nonprofits, Voice of San Diego and inewsource, in response to Alden’s acquisition of The San Diego Union-Tribune; the merger of WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times following Alden’s takeover of the Chicago Tribune; the founding of The Colorado Sun by 10 Denver Post journalists who’d had enough of Alden’s cuts; and the wealthy hotel magnate Stewart Bainum’s decision to found a high-profile nonprofit, The Baltimore Banner, after he lost out to Alden in a bid to purchase Tribune Publishing, whose holdings include The Baltimore Sun.

Ellen Clegg and I encountered the Alden effect over and over in our reporting for our book, “What Works in Community News.” We might call it the “Alden and Gannett effect,” since we also examined communities whose newspapers had been shredded by Gannett, our largest newspaper chain with about 200 papers. In addition to Denver, the projects we write about that have their origins in cuts by Alden and Gannett include:

• Memphis, Tennessee, where nonprofits such as MLK50 and the Daily Memphian are filling some of the gaps created by cuts at Gannett’s Commercial Appeal.
• The Bedford Citizen, a small nonprofit in the Boston suburbs launched about a dozen years ago as Gannett’s predecessor company, GateHouse Media, hacked away at the local weekly and ultimately closed it.
• Mendocino County, California, where two refugees from Alden papers started a digital site called The Mendocino Voice.
• Santa Cruz, California, where two former employees of Alden’s Santa Cruz Sentinel founded a nonprofit called Santa Cruz Local and where a larger for-profit, Lookout Santa Cruz, is operating as well.

Starting a news project is grindingly hard work, and Ellen and I came away with enormous respect for the news entrepreneurs we interviewed. It would be easier if legacy newspapers had remained in the hands of local interests. But, as Houston argues, the rise of Alden, Gannett and other chain owners has provided a jolt to efforts aimed at reviving community-based journalism.

By Dan Kennedy

I had hoped there would be good news this morning about Eugene Weekly, a free alternative paper in Oregon that abruptly shut down last week and announced that a former employee had embezzled tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, we’re still waiting to see if EW, as it’s called, will be able to raise enough money from its readers to get back on its feet.

The story began to unfold when people encountered a poster inside the bright red boxes that normally hold copies of the paper. The message: “Where’s the Damn Paper? Eugene Weekly is fighting to come back after a massive financial blow.” According to a letter to readers posted online, EW said it had been victimized by someone inside the company. Some $70,000 in printing bills hadn’t been paid. Money that was supposed to have been transferred into employees’ retirement accounts wasn’t. And on and on. The paper stopped print production and laid off its entire 10-employee staff.

EW, founded in 1982, distributes about 30,000 free copies of the paper each week, and is a vital source of news and information. Like most alt-weeklies, it offers a mix of arts and culture, investigative reporting, and entertainment listings. The homepage currently highlights a story about the local performing arts center, which is leasing security scanners for $170,000 a year from a company that is under investigation for letting weapons slip by at schools. Now all of that is in danger. Here’s part of the letter to readers:

Shortly before Christmas, we discovered that EW had been the victim of embezzlement at the hands of someone we once trusted. We are still counting up the damage, but it’s thousands upon thousands. The theft of EW’s funds remained hidden for years and has left our finances in shambles. A team of private forensic accountants is analyzing our books and accounts. We’ve reported the thefts to the Eugene Police Department, which is conducting an investigation.

The Associated Press interviewed Brent Walth, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon, who said EW has had “an outsized impact in filling the widening gaps in news coverage.” Among other things, Walth said the paper runs obituaries of homeless people, a real service at a time when many papers have gotten rid of free obits and instead charge high fees to bereaved families. EW has also played an important role in launching the careers of young journalists, Walth said.

The paper is in the midst of a fundraising campaign, and, according to The New York Times, had received $42,000 in donations as of Monday. Camilla Mortensen, the editor, said the paper needs about $150,000, so it sounds like they’re on their way. If you’d like to help, just click here. My suggestion is that you give directly to the paper rather than to its affiliated nonprofit, which supports public interest reporting. EW itself is for-profit, so your donation will not be tax-deductible. But this is an emergency.

We hope you’ll join us for the launch of our book, “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” The event will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 9, at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith. It’s free, but Booksmith asks that you register in advance. Ellen and Dan visited nine parts of the country to report on independent local and regional news projects, most of them startups, most of them digital. We came away with profound respect for the news entrepreneurs we met and with optimism for what the future holds.

The MV Times, one of two weekly papers on Martha’s Vineyard, has been sold to a local businessman who will maintain it as an independent news outlet. Steve Bernier, a store owner, purchased the paper from Peter and Barbara Oberfest, who had been full-time owners for the past 20 years. Charles Sennott, a Vineyard resident who is the founder of the GroundTruth Project and co-founder of Report for America, will serve as acting publisher.

The other paper, the Vineyard Gazette, is also independent, and at one time was owned by the legendary New York Times journalist Jame Reston and his wife, Times journalist Sally Reston.

We are delighted to report that the first excerpt from “What Works in Community News” has just gone live at Current, a publication for people in public media. Current has published a section from our chapter on NJ Spotlight News, which merged a digital startup covering state policy and politics in New Jersey and the state’s public television outlet, NJ PBS. “What Works in Community News,” published by Beacon Press, goes public on Jan. 9. And thank you to Mike Janssen, Current’s digital editor, for making this happen.

Read the excerpt at Current.

By Dan Kennedy

Last summer came horrifying news from Scranton, Pennsylvania: the notorious hedge fund Alden Global Capital was buying the Scranton Times-Tribune and three sister papers from the Lynett family, the local publishers going back to 1895. The sale was taking place even though those members of the family who actually ran the papers opposed it. They were outvoted by other members of the family who simply wanted to cash out and get on with their lives. Ellen and I talked about it at the time on the “What Works” podcast.

What happened next was predictable and depressing. Washington Post media columnist Erik Wemple traveled to the Scranton area recently and filed a long, sad report about what he found (free link). The lowlights:

• The news staff, already down to 40, a steep decline from 90 in the late 1990s, was immediately cut by another 10, with employees offered voluntary buyouts if they would just go away.
• Newsrooms in Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton and Pottsfield were put up for sale. The Scranton Times’ headquarters was abandoned in late November, with journalists being told that most of them would be expected to work at home.
• Some customer service calls were outsourced to the Philippines.

Almost immediately, Wemple writes, editorials about local and state issues were replaced with generic national content, which is exactly the opposite approach that researchers Joshua Darr, Matthew Hitt and Johanna Dunaway found is helpful in reducing political polarization. As Darr told Ellen in 2021:

It’s important for people to be able to express their opinions on national politics, and there are myriad ways to do that. But I don’t think there’s necessarily a good reason for local newspapers to devote some of their precious op-ed page space to things that aren’t local. I think they should be maximizing their comparative advantage in the marketplace by giving people things that they can’t get anywhere else.

There’s no question that the Pennsylvania papers were facing real challenges. As Wemple reports, paid circulation and advertising were both in a tailspin, and the Lynett family understandably was tired of subsidizing losses. But it didn’t have to end like this. Perhaps the best solution would have been for a local nonprofit institution to purchase the papers, as is the case at another Pennsylvania paper — The Philadelphia Inquirer, a for-profit entity owned by the nonprofit Lenfest Institute.

Steven Waldman, the president of Rebuild Local News, has proposed tax incentives and other measures to prevent newspapers from falling into the hands of cost-slashing chains. Unfortunately, such steps would not have come in time to save the Lynett papers.

Sadly, based on Wemple’s story, it doesn’t sound like much of an effort was made to find a buyer that would have operated the papers for the benefit of the public rather than for Alden’s wealthy investors. I just hope that some of the journalists who have lost their jobs will fight back by starting their own venture, as is happening in community after community across the country.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Dan and Ellen talk with Andy and Dee Hall, co-founders of Wisconsin Watch. Wisconsin Watch was launched in 2009 as the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. It’s nonprofit and nonpartisan, and it has grown a lot over the last 14 years. Andy is retiring on Dec. 31 of this year and is helping the new CEO, George Stanley, with the transition.

Dee Hall, co-founder and former managing editor of Wisconsin Watch, is also moving  on, and is now editor-in-chief of Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom with a clear mission: Floodlight investigates “the powerful interests stalling climate action.” Floodlight partners with local and national journalists to co-publish collaborative investigations.

The podcast will resume after the holidays, and Dan fills listeners in on events surrounding the launch of our book, “What Works in Community News,” which is coming out on Jan. 9. We’ll be talking about the book that night at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Ellen has a Quick Take on Signal Ohio, a well-funded nonprofit news startup in Ohio that’s now expanding into Akron. We’ve worked with a Northeastern graduate student, Dakotah Kennedy (no relation to Dan), on this podcast who’s now a service journalism reporter for Signal Cleveland.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Signal Ohio, a large, well-funded nonprofit news startup, is expanding into Akron. From the announcement:

Signal Ohio, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit news startups, launched Signal Akron today, its second newsroom in Ohio. The growing range of freely accessible journalism at SignalAkron.org will include accountability reporting and community resources. Stories already published include a deeper look at police accountability, the effects of the city’s efforts to set neighborhood boundaries, a column by local artists in Akron, and a guide to getting relief on utility bills.

“As we launch and continue to build Signal Akron, I’m excited to see our reporters include neighborhood voices and perspectives in their work. Our content will be driven by the community and the Akronites working in our Documenters program,” said Susan Kirkman Zake, editor-in-chief of Signal Akron.

Signal Ohio describes itself as “a network of independent, community-led, nonprofit newsrooms backed by a coalition of Ohio organizations, community leaders, and the American Journalism Project. With more than $15 million raised Signal is one of the largest local nonprofit news startups in the country with a growing network of newsrooms across Ohio.”

Akron, by the way, was home to The Devil Strip, a local arts and culture website that was at one time among the very few examples of a cooperatively owned local news organization. In 2021, The Devil Strip imploded in rather spectacular fashion, as Laura Hazard Owen reported at Nieman Lab. The legacy daily, the Akron Beacon Journal, is part of the Gannett chain.

Great to see Serge Schmemann’s recent New York Times opinion piece about local news (free link) pop up in today’s print edition. Schmemann interviewed Ellen and Dan and cites our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.”