E&P Reports with Mike Blinder

Rick Goldsmith's website: New Day Films states that his mission as a filmmaker is to "tell stories that encourage social engagement and active participation in community life and the democratic process, and to stimulate young minds to question the world around them."

And when one watches his latest work: "Stripped for Parts: American Journalism at the Crossroads," a 90-minute documentary that tells the tale of how hedge fund Alden Global Capital's entry into the news publishing industry has dismantled local newspapers "piece by piece," creating a crises within the communities they serve, leaving "news deserts" and "ghost papers" in their wake.

A posted synopsis about the film by Goldsmith, states "Ours is a cautionary tale: What is lost when billionaires with no background nor interest in a civic mission, who are only concerned with profiteering, take over our most influential news organizations? What new models of news gathering, and dissemination show promise for our increasingly digital age? What can the public do to preserve and support vibrant journalism? Stripped for Parts addresses these questions and more. "Democracy dies in darkness" and the stakes could not be higher."

In this episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with twice Emmy nominated, documentarian Rick Goldsmith to learn why he spent more than 2-years creating his latest work: "Stripped for Parts "a film that tells the tale of how newspapers business model is faltering, not just because of the loss of advertising and digital disruption; but also to capitalist greed, as hedge funds and corporate America buy them, sell their assets and leave the communities they serve without their local "voice" and a final check on power.

In late November, the entire news publishing industry was surprised to hear that Canada's government reached a deal with Google for the company to contribute $100 million Canadian annually to the country's news industry to comply with Canada's Online News Act (Bill c-18), requiring tech companies to pay publishers for their content.

Actual verbiage on the government's website pages that describe the bill read, "News outlets play a vital role in maintaining a healthy democracy. News and journalism serve to inform communities, drive civic engagement, and counter the rise of disinformation. Our news industry fosters an informed citizenry by providing them with critical information that helps them fully benefit and participate in a democratic society. The Online News Act aims to ensure that dominant platforms compensate news businesses when their content is made available on their services."

In March 2021, Australia became the first country to use competition law to push Google and then Facebook to pay for news. With Canada's new law in place, other countries like Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and New Zealand are expected to "follow suit." And, of course, the U.S. Congress is currently considering passage of S.673, The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), a bill sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). In California, debates continue on AB-886, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA). This bill would require big tech companies to pay publishers a "journalism usage fee" each time they use local news content and sell advertising alongside it. In turn, the bill requires news publishers to invest 70% of the profits from the usage fee in journalism jobs.

In this episode of "E&P Reports," we chat with Paul Degan, the president and CEO of News Media Canada, and Danielle Coffey, the president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, about "big tech" compensation to North American news publishers, now that Canada's Online News Act goes into law, requiring Google to pay 100 million Canadian dollars a year to the Canadian news media industry, and the current complexity of two similar bills being considered by the California legislature and the U.S. Congress.

Shannon Kinney is the founder and client success officer of Dream Local Digital, a digital marketing agency headquartered in Rockland, Maine. Dream Local Digital works with newspapers, media companies, ad agencies and directly with small to medium-sized businesses on all aspects of their online marketing plans.

Kinney is also a news media digital pioneer who has held start-up positions at some of the industry's most iconic legacy brands, such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, over the past 25 years. She was also on the cusp of helping move traditional classified advertising into the worldwide web. Kinney worked in the late nineties at Cars.com and later as Senior Director of Classifieds of Knight Ridder. She has also helped develop new industry initiatives as a Local Media Association board member.

Today, hundreds of media companies turn to Kinney and her "honey badgers" team for advice, training and product development, helping thousands of businesses acquire essential multimedia solutions.

Recently, Kinney issued a list of "tips" from her "entrepreneurial journey" in a newsletter. She offers valuable advice to anyone who wishes to do business in a disruptive environment. She also points out how some of her frustrating experiences trying to get legacy media companies to adapt will offer hard lessons for anyone who resists change.

In this episode of "E&P Reports," we chat with respected media executive Shannon Kinney about the entrepreneurial advice she offers that is derived from her 25+ year journey, starting as an integral part of legacy media's early adoption of the digital world to today's massively complex multimedia ecosystem.

Recent reports concerning the future of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) have stated, with one September post from NiemanLab saying that both membership and revenues are so low that the organization is set to "end the year $391,000 in the red," according to an audit prepared by an external accountant and dated August 2023. The same article by Sarah Scire featured the sub-head, "If we don't change our thinking, the next incoming president will be the last president."

That new president was sworn in at the October 1, 2023, annual convention in Las Vegas. She is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, journalism professor and associate dean for the Center for Media Design at the Santa Monica College, Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins.

Hopkins also made history on that date as the first black woman ever to be elected to that post.

Hopkins feels confident that the financial issues reported are not insurmountable, stating during this interview with E&P Publisher Mike Blinder, "I can firmly and unequivocally say that I will not be the last president of the SPJ. All of the journalism organizations across the country are facing financial situations. We have the benefit of having a foundation that was created to be in support of the society. That foundation has $12 million in the bank." She continued, "We are on our way to 'righting the ship,' and I can firmly say that will happen before the end of my term."

Diversity within the SPJ and the journalism industry is another goal of Hopkin's. As quoted in the press release announcing her presidency, "I hesitated to join SPJ for several years because I just didn't see anyone who looked like me in leadership positions. It made me feel like I didn't belong in the organization. But I decided to be the change that I wanted to see in SPJ," she said. "Representation matters, and I hope to show through my leadership and diverse board of directors that there is a place for everyone at SPJ."

In this episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with newly sworn-in Society of Professional Journalists President Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins to discuss how she plans to keep the organization prospering during a time of lagging membership and conference attendance, as well as her plans for SPJ's success. We also hear her views on the news media ecosystem as a whole and how we can define what is journalism in a world of disinformation and "fake news."

Martin ("Marty") Baron may be best known in pop culture as a character played by actor Liv Schreiber in the 2015 Academy Award Winning film "Spotlight," which re-told the story of the Globe's 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporting on the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals.

But many in our industry followed Baron closely years later when he moved from the Globe to The Washington Post, succeeding Marcus Brauchli in 2013 as executive editor. Shortly after the move, the Graham family announced they were selling the Post to Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

During the following years, under Baron's leadership, The Post received 10 Pulitzers — four for national reporting, two for explanatory reporting, and single wins for investigative reporting, criticism, feature photography and public service.

Some of the major stories the Post broke included coverage of the US Secret Service's security lapses, revealing Roy Moore's sexual misconduct, plus constant, ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign and subsequent four-year administration, exposing many miss-truths and scandals. It is no wonder that Trump was quoted in 2018 as saying, "I will not allow our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the dying newspaper industry," singling out The Post for writing "bad stories even on my very positive achievements."

His new book, "Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post," opens with Baron telling the tale of his dinner at the White House. Donald Trump invited Baron, two other senior executives, and Bezos, intending to get The Post to tone down their coverage of his presidency and be "more fair to him." Baron describes Trump as "fundamentally a transactional individual, and if he granted us the favor of dinner, he would expect something in return."

But this book is not written as a personal memoir like Ben Bradlees's "A Good Life." "Collision of Power" focuses on his experiences managing The Post's newsroom during an extraordinary time. Washington was under Trump's influence, and the news publishing industry was changing from a legacy media world to one of social media, blogging and other digital disruptions.

In this episode, we go one-on-one with industry veteran Marty Baron, where we discuss his recently released book, "Collision of Power," which offers an inside view of his time as executive editor of The Washington Post under Bezos' ownership and during Trump's presidency. We also hear his thoughts on managing a newsroom in today's challenging news media ecosystem.

In mid-November, the Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University issued its annual "State of Local News Project" report, which now counts 6,000 newspapers in the United States, which comprises approximately 1,200 dailies and 4,790 weeklies.

This year, the study also reported on 550 digital-only local news outlets, 700 ethnic media organizations and 225 public broadcasting stations producing original local news.

The report's executive summary stated, "There was both good news and bad news for local journalism this past year. The good news raised the possibility that a range of proposals and programs could begin to arrest the steep loss of local news over the past two decades and, perhaps, revive journalism in some places that have lost their news. The headlines on the bad news resoundingly conveyed the message that urgent action is needed in many venues — from boardrooms to the halls of Congress — and by many, including civic-minded organizations and entrepreneurs."

Some of the report's key findings include:

• There are now 204 counties with no local news outlet. Of the 3,143 counties in the U.S., more than half, or 1,766, have either no local news source or only one remaining outlet, typically a weekly newspaper.
• The loss of local newspapers ticked higher in 2023 to an average of 2.5 per week, up from two per week last year. There were more than 130 confirmed newspaper closings or mergers this past year.
• Since 2005, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers. The nation is on pace to lose one-third of all its newspapers by the end of next year. About 6,000 newspapers remain — the vast majority of which are weeklies.
• The country has lost almost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists, or 43,000, during that same time. Most of those journalists were employed by large metro and regional newspapers.
• There are about 550 digital-only local news sites, many of which launched in the past decade, but they are primarily clustered in metro areas. In the past five years, the number of local digital startups has roughly equaled the number that shuttered.
• Based on the demographics and economics of current news desert counties, Medill's modeling estimates that 228 counties are at an elevated risk of becoming news deserts in the next five years. Most of those "Watch List" counties are in high-poverty areas in the South and Midwest, and many serve communities with significant African-American, Hispanic, and Native American populations.

New this year was a "Bright Spots" map that showed the local news startups in the U.S., highlighting 17 outlets they labeled "with promising new business models for the future."

In this episode of "E&P Reports," we un-pack Medill's 2023 "State of Local News" report with co-authors Senior Associate Dean Tim Franklin and Visiting Professor Penelope Muse ("Penny") Abernathy as we investigate their latest findings and methodology, as well as what this data means when it comes to the future of local journalism in the U.S.

On September 11, 2023, Jason Sethre, publisher of the Fillmore County (MN) Journal, posted an op-ed with the headline: "One Moment, Please… Hutchinson News in Kansas or Minnesota?" Within the piece, he reported that subscribers to the Hutchinson (KS) News were greeted one day with a front page showing a group of senior citizens having an outing on a lake in Hutchinson, Minnesota, with a headline of a story showing how the Hutchinson Senior Center keeps seniors busy with an array of activities… in Hutchinson, Minnesota.

With a sartorial slant, Sethre wrote, "Apparently, The Hutchinson News in Hutchinson, Kansas, covers stories about what's happening in Hutchinson, Minnesota — 628 miles away." However, he explained to his readers how once-thriving newspapers, bought by large corporations (in this case, Gannett), have downsized operations so much that there is minimal local reporting, and mistakes such as this made by an out-of-town editor can happen. Sethre wrote, "For the community of Hutchinson, Kansas, it's an absolute disaster with what has happened to their local newspaper. Gannett bought the newspaper from the Harris family in 2016 and ran it into the ground rather quickly. They laid off nearly all the staff that made this once Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper." He added that staff "live in other states and write about what is happening in a community in which they have no connection. The designers working on the publication layout don't live in that area either. The story on the front page of The Hutchinson News that had nothing to do with Hutchinson, Kansas, is the result of a media company that is completely disconnected from the communities they serve. And this is one of the many problems with newspapers owned by corporations. They don't care about the communities they serve. They only care about satisfying shareholders."

However, all is not lost for the citizens of Hutchinson, Kansas, because 16-year-old high school student Michael Glenn has launched a new online-only news publication — The Hutchinson Tribune, which now covers important meetings, elections, culture and even high school sports for this community of over 40,000. Using Substack for a CMS, the Tribune now offers the news people crave, plus provides a subscription plan for expanded content for as low as $8 a month. In addition, Glenn has recruited several adult reporters to submit content to the venture.

Is there a benefit to visiting this new site for a Hutchinson resident who craves a local journalistic voice?

On the day of this posting, the Gannett-owned Hutchinson News (HutchNews.com) had only six stories posted within one week that reported on a local city issue or included a local Hutchinson source or event. The new Tribune site had 27 articles, two op-eds and seven local sports pieces. Plus, if you click on any local headline on the news site, you hit the Gannett hard paywall, asking for just 23 cents a week to get the two weekly issues of the printed paper, see USA Today's digital crossword and see all the "features" of an undefined "Essential Digital." For an additional $1, you can get six months of site content and the newspaper's digital replica as well.

However, all the stories on HutchTribune.com can be accessed up to the 1st four paragraphs. However, each page has a plea to subscribe and contribute to support the site.

In this episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with 16-year-old Hutchinson, Kansas high school student Michael Glenn, who became frustrated when his local Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, The Hutchinson News, was sold to Gannett and downsized over a few years to a "ghost paper" of two local employees, with most content being generated from out of state. So, in the summer of 2023, Glenn recruited a team of journalists and started the competing Hutchinson Tribune at HutchTribune.com, which now out-reports the HutchNews.com site 36 local stories to six (on the day of this posting).

Friday, October 13th, 2023, was a scary day for the citizens of Meeker, the largest town in Colorado's Rio Blanco County, nestled on the Rockies' western slope, with a population of slightly over 6,500.

It was on this day that Niki Turner and Caitlin Walker, the mother and daughter owners of the area's primary local news source, the Rio Blanco Herald Times, sent out an email with the subject line: "Crisis alert: Save your community paper." Within this ominous message, Niki and Caitlin revealed to their community the harsh realities of local news publishing and their own newspaper's critical financial status. They admitted that the operation only had enough money left to publish two more issues of the weekly newspaper and stated that they would shut down on October 26th.

Unlike most businesses (and newspapers) who would fear revealing such a poor bottom line to their customers, these publishers decided that an honest, open, truthful message was the right thing to do as a warning that Rio Blanco would soon be a "news desert," like so many other small communities throughout the US.

Niki and Caitlin informed the public that the newspaper's reach was at an all-time high, stating that: "Readership numbers continue to grow, with the Herald being read by more than 2,200 people every week. On top of that, 1,600 of you get our weekly email, 3,000 visit the website each week, and we have excellent social media engagement." They went on to say that: "We will be letting our only full-time reporter go. We are cutting the number of papers we print and distribute to the bone. We are cutting every other extraneous expense we can think of, including our own paychecks. As a last resort, we'll try cutting the print edition entirely and go digital-only.

Then came their plea for help, frankly asking that the citizens of Rio Blanco County "help to save your community newspaper."

On October 19th, Niki penned her weekly printed editorial with the headline: "If a town loses its paper, it's less of a town," a quote borrowed from Al Cross, Director emeritus of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. She wrote, "When we became aware of a precarious financial situation last week, we went into emergency mode. As 'keepers of the flame' — stewards of a community newspaper that's one of the oldest businesses in the county — and as journalists who believe strongly in the free press and the need for independent local news, we're not willing to go down without a fight."

By the end of October, the Herald Times had an additional $33,000 in their bank account from over 200 people donating to the cause, which helped keep "the presses rolling."

The October 26th front page displayed a red headline: "This would have been the last edition of the Herald, ever." The 1st paragraph of the article proudly stated: "The Herald is ecstatic to announce 100% funding, 100% from Community Supporters, through the end of 2023. That is a VERY long way from where we were two newspapers ago.

In this episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Rio Blanco Herald Times Owner/Editor Niki Turner, who made the difficult choice of offering complete transparency about the newspaper's dire financial situation to the western Colorado citizens they serve. Turner truthfully revealed in an email that the company would cease operation within two weeks unless the community offered their support, which resulted in $33,000 in contributions that saved the weekly publication, which has been printed since 1885, from extinction.

Ryan Dohrn is an Emmy award-winning, globally recognized media revenue consultant who has worked with hundreds of media companies, trained over 30,000 ad sales reps, and, through his proven sales training methods, has helped create over half a billion dollars in new sales and event sponsorship.

Holding a Psychology of Leadership Certification from Cornell University, Dohrn's resume includes time in promotions and sales at The NY Times Company, Disney, Cumulus, Citadel Comm, Vance Publishing, Morris Publishing, and PennWell.

His latest best-selling book, "Selling Forward," offers proven sales advice and methods to reinvent a company's approach when "selling to emotionally drained, inbox-dazed, virtual meeting-bored, sales-resistant customers in a post-pandemic fatigued business world."

Dhorn is also the president/founder of Brain Swell Media, a boutique revenue strategy, sales training, and coaching firm. Plus, he is the owner/CEO of Niche Media, an organization that hosts events focused on helping publishers generate more multimedia revenue.

E&P's publisher, Mike Blinder, is no novice when it comes to media ad sales as well, having spent 20+ years as a sales consultant, trainer and revenue generator for media companies worldwide. Blinder has helped generate over $100 million in new, local multimedia ad revenue through his own proven sales methods.

In this episode of "E&P Reports," sales consultant, coach, and trainer Ryan Dohrn talks one-on-one with E&P's Mike Blinder, offering actionable, real-world advice on maximizing ad sales in 2024. Topics covered in this fast-paced, idea-driven interview include better prospecting for new business, how to find and retain quality sales talent and the best qualities and methods of leadership in today's competitive, ever-changing local media sales ecosystem.

Morgantown, North Carolina, the county seat of Burke County, is now a two-paper town. The nonprofit The Paper proudly reports local news online and in a weekly, Saturday-home-delivery, 30-plus-page full-color print product.

Founder and Publisher Allen VanNoppen is no stranger to news media, having spent his first years out of college as a reporter for the then family-owned local newspaper of record, The Morgantown News Herald, and later at the nearby Greensboro (NC) News & Record. Continuing to write a weekly syndicated column, he left his full-time work as a journalist in 1985 to enter the business world, eventually opening a local marketing agency his children now run. However, as he watched the News Herald be bought and sold over the years, finally being corporately downsized by Lee Enterprises, in August of 2022, he started Morganton Media Group, LLC (MMG) with a dba of The Paper.

The Paper's website states they're a "blend of a registered LLC with nonprofit 501(c)3 fiscal sponsors." And "will be owned by the community through tiered memberships" and "be led by an expert local Board of Directors." So far, they have hired as their Editor-in-Chief Bill Poteat, a former editor & political reporter for The News Herald, along with others — bringing the newsroom count to eight.

In a recent press release announcing three new hires, The Paper claimed to be "Burke County's only home-delivered, all-local print and digital newspaper." It also claimed, "The Paper was launched on Feb. 4, 2023, to fill a growing local news desert similar to those seen nationally. Sensational community response, including steady increases in advertising and circulation, coupled with charitable contributions, enabled the addition to the reporting staff."

In this episode of "E&P Reports," we take you to Morgantown, North Carolina, the county seat for Burke County, where Lee Enterprises' News Herald has been publishing for over 120 years. However, it is now a two-newspaper town, as The Paper, a local nonprofit, is in its 36th week of publishing both print and online. Appearing in the broadcast is Allen VanNoppen, The Paper's founder and publisher, who speaks to why he decided to start a competing local printed product, how the business is going more than eight months in and what advice he gives to others who may want to start a local, nonprofit, digital and print news operation.