E&P Reports with Mike Blinder

On February 8, 2023, the citizens of Pulaski, TN were shocked to hear that their 167-year-old newspaper was to be shut down. Then owner David Lake, along with publisher Scott Stewart announced in a statement that: "Declining advertising and subscription revenues combined with increasing costs, finally reached a point where maintaining the Pulaski (Tennessee) Citizen as a business has not been possible, and that county will have no newspaper or news platform dedicated solely to covering local news, sports, events, government and people."

Pulaski is a city in the county seat of Giles County, located on the central-southern border of Tennessee, where Wikipedia shows a 2020 population recorded as 8,397. The city lies halfway between Nashville, TN and Huntsville, AL, on the I-65 corridor.

The paper's publisher Scott Stewart, who was born in Pulaski and began as a reporter at the paper in 1995 stated in the closing announcement: "As devastating as this is for those of us who cherish what local news is and means to our community, so many people will never realize what they've lost until it's gone. That may be the saddest part of the whole thing. Personally, I offer my apologies to everyone who does care that the PULASKI CITIZEN is going away. It went down on my watch, and I accept responsibility for my part in its demise."

But, as negative and sad as Stewart's words were, he possibly was unaware of how much the county's citizens actually supported the Citizen. Recently elected Pulaski Mayor J.J. Brindley stated in this interview with E&P that his family "always supported the newspaper" and (that he) relied on the Citizen to ensure pertinent information about the town could be placed. He went on to say: "I believed in the newspaper with everything I have." And that he and other Pulaski residents were "scared" when the news about the closing was published. However, Mayor Brindley continued, "This almost HAD TO HAPPEN for people to see how valuable this paper is and how much they did to serve this community!"

However, within that same week the Citizen was publishing its last issue, word about the closing came to Dave Gould, the owner of Main Street Media, a company he founded in 2013 that publishes 12 local weekly newspapers in 10 Nashville-area counties. Once he got word via a Facebook post shared by one of his reporters, he quickly contacted then-owner David Lake. In a matter of hours, he negotiated a purchase and saved the publication from extinction.

Gould stated, "There was a passion for this newspaper within the community. There was a lot of angst and worry about it closing. So, we felt good about the purchase and have seen overwhelming support from the people of Pulaski."

In this 178th episode of "E&P Reports," we explore a single week in the life of the 167-year-old Pulaski (TN) Citizen — a newspaper announced its closing, the citizen's reactions to the pending loss of their newspaper of record, and the last-minute saving of the publication as a new owner swooped in to purchase it. Chatting with the host and publisher of E&P Magazine, Mike Blinder, were recently-elected Pulaski Mayor J.J. Brindley, Citizen Publisher and Pulaski life-long resident Scott Stewart, and the new owner of the paper, Main Street Media's CEO and Founder Dave Gould.

For two decades, Dr. Richard Haass has been the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan think tank organization that states this mission on its website: "To help people better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries."

Also, his expertise in international affairs and U.S. foreign policy has been tapped by our government, acting as the chair for the multiparty negotiations in Northern Ireland in 2012. From 2001 to 2003, Haass was the director of policy planning for the Department of State, acting as a principal advisor to Colin Powell during the war in Iraq.

However, most of us know Richard Haass from his many appearances on national newscasts and as a consultant to NBC News — providing context to stories centering on international relations and our foreign policy. And within these decades of work, he has managed to find time to author over a dozen books that center on helping us understand the complexities of our place in the world. These include the New York Times bestsellers: "The World: A Brief Introduction" (2020), "A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order" (2017) and "War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars" (2010).

However, this year, Richard Haass took a different turn in his writing, authoring his latest book: "The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens" (2023), a bestseller that centers on his years of experience looking at the world and shifting that focus in taking a hard look at ourselves — the people of the United States — to help us define the meaning of our citizenship and what our obligations are to help maintain our democracy. Within the book, Dr. Haass argues, "We get the government and the country we deserve. Getting the one we need, however, is up to us."

Within the book, Haass lists 10 "obligations" we have as citizens that include the need for us to remain civil, value norms, stay open to compromise, put our country first, get involved, promote the common good and others. However, the 1st of these obligations is "Be Informed," stating, "An informed citizen is someone who puts himself or herself in a position to weigh what others say or write and contribute their own perspectives. Ideally, this individual would also know something of the country's history and how it came to be what it is today, as it is impossible to understand the present without an appreciation of the past." Dr. Haass continues, "It is essential to differentiate among facts, misstatements, opinions, predictions and recommendations. Facts are assertions that can be demonstrated to be so, measured, and proved."

In this 177th episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Dr. Richard Haass, the president of the Council of Foreign Relations and author of the current New York Times bestseller: "The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens," where he looks at the things, we as Americans should do to maintain a healthy democracy. In this episode, E&P Publisher Mike

Ryan Dohrn is a motivational speaker, won an Emmy for sales & marketing, has been recognized by Forbes.com with the "Best of the Web" award for his business strategies and is considered one of the top media sales trainers in the world today.

Since 2008, Dohrn's Brain Swell Media consulting company has helped over 200 media companies find new revenue through innovative sales strategies and his unique ad sales training.

Today, Dohrn is also the owner and CEO of Niche Media, an organization that claims its "ethos" is centered around creating events that bring together like-minded media pros to help drive revenue through niche publishing. Hundreds gather at the yearly Niche Media Conference to attend programs focusing on revenue generation, sales training, audience growth, and emerging media trends.

In this 176th episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with multimedia sales guru Ryan Dohrn to gain new ideas he shares on how news publishers can grow top-line revenue in the ever-increasing turbulence in a post-covid market. He offers innovative insights into how any media sales rep can build essential relationships with new advertisers in a very competitive media ecosystem. Dohrn also provides a sneak peek into what will be presented at the April 2023 Niche Media Conference in New Orleans and why any media company today should be "all in" on creating niche media products.

The Medford, Oregon Mail Tribune can trace its roots back to 1909 when the morning Medford Mail and afternoon Tribune merged under the Putnam family, creating what the paper claimed to be "The largest printing and publishing establishment in Southern Oregon."

It was decades later that this venerable brand would begin a journey of "swap and sale," moving from Down jones/ Ottaway ownership to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to Newcastle Investment Corp. (an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group) and later merging into the growing Gatehouse Media Group.

Gatehouse sold the Mail Tribune in 2017 to media businessman Steven Saslow and its sister paper, the Ashland Daily Tidings, for $15 million. Saslow then reportedly secured financing from the right-wing-centered Sinclair broadcast group that same week, according to public records obtained by Jefferson Public Radio. Shortly after the purchase, the paper began working under the ownership name of Rosebud Media in conjunction with the Sinclair-owned TV station in Medford, KTVL. In a very short time, many of the newspaper's newsroom employees were let go, replacing most of the website content with video programming. In 2018, Mail Tribune online viewers were 1st greeted with a "Rosebud Update" video, which included national and local headlines from a studio in Florida and a right-wing oriented video op-ed section entitled Rosewood Commentary.

In August 2021, the Mail Tribune went from printing the newspaper seven days a week to four days per week. Then, on September 30, 2023, Saslow announced that the Mail Tribune would cease publication of a printed edition, stating that "printing and delivery costs for the newspaper were threatening the business." And finally, on Wednesday, January 11, 2023, Saslow made the unexpected announcement that he was shutting down the online operations altogether and letting the entire team go — thus ending the over 100 years of publishing.

While the industry was grappling with the idea of Oregon's fourth largest MDA with a population of over 200,000, losing its newspaper of record, news soon broke that EO Media Group, a fourth-generation family-owned company based in Oregon that publishes 18 titles, was going to launch a new newspaper to serve the Medford area, The Rouge Valley Tribune, with a debut print edition "hitting the streets" today, February 18, 2023.

EO Media Group stated that they will place an editorial staff of 14 in the newsroom. The editorial team will work for long-time Mail Tribune journalist and former editor David Smigelski, who EO Media COO Heidi Wright recently hired. Smigelski reminisced about his 16-plus years at Mail Tribune in his first editorial for the new Rouge Valley Tribune, stating, "We became pawns in a multinational media chess game." He then said, "The Mail Tribune was abruptly closed on January 13, with just two days' notice to employees. Ten days later, I was standing inside the JC Penney building in Medford with Bulletin publisher Heidi Wright, figuring out where to put desks and phones. As we planned, she used words I could understand. "We know newspapers aren't a cash cow, but we're not here to get rich," she said. "We want to do this because it's important." I wanted to hug her, but I thought it might be unprofessional. Crying was probably poor form, as well, but I couldn't stop a little mist from building up. After 16 years, I feel like I'm back home. With newspaper people — family people."

In this 175th episode of "E&P Reports," we explore how EO Media Group is replacing the now shut-down Medford, Oregon Mail Tribune with its new start-up publication: "The Rouge Valley Tribune." We speak with EO Media Group's COO Heidi Wright and EO Media Group Board Member and Director of Audience Development Susan Forester Rana about why and how the company is committing to launch a new print publication during such tumultuous times. Also joining in the dialogue is David Smigelski, former editor of the Mail Tribune, now in his first week of print publishing as editor of the new The Rouge Valley Tribune.

In May of 2020, The Anchorage Daily News (ADN) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their yearlong series entitled "Lawless," which provided an in-depth look at the criminal justice system's failures across Alaska.

The team who created the series was led by ADN special projects editor Kyle Hopkins who had the assistance of ProPublica, the nonprofit entity that assists news publishers nationwide with investigative reporting projects.

As "Lawless" was being picked up by national news sources resulting in a visit by then U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, Hopkins started hearing from TV and movie producers who began showing interest in adapting the stories the ADN was uncovering. It was Tom McCarthy, the well-known writer and director of the 2016 Emmy Award-winning movie "Spotlight," centered on the Boston Globe's investigation of sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic clergy, who had been thinking of creating a show that went deeper inside the workings of a newspaper newsroom. He eventually brought the ADN into the national spotlight by making the current popular ABC TV series "Alaska Daily."

McCarthy came to Alaska, met with Hopkins and spent time exploring the workings of the Daily News. Due to industry cost-cutting, the ADN moved from its huge stoic downtown building to its current strip mall location. Hopkins eventually was made an executive producer for "Alaska Daily," traveling to the Vancouver studios and working with the actors and writers to help them understand the current world of local journalism.

In a recent interview with Alaska Public Media, Hopkins described the TV show as "a fictional workplace drama that shares a lot in common with the Anchorage Daily News. And it's meant to kind of be about how local news is made. I mean, you know how it is. The stories that we cover are, there are times where you think, "Boy, you couldn't make this up." And so, I don't know that this fiction is stranger than truth; it's just different in this case."

In this 174th episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Alaska Daily News, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and executive producer of the ABC TV series "Alaska Daily," Kyle Hopkins. E&P Publisher Mike Blinder speaks with Hopkins not only about his role in making the show, but how his original reporting on the failures of the criminal justice system across Alaska inspired the stories the actors are telling

In the January 2023 issue of Editor & Publisher Magazine, E&P featured an article about Dr. Peter Laufer's book, "Slow News: A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer," and the subsequent film documentary "Slow News" that speaks to how media companies chasing "clicks" in a digital age has led to the erosion of quality journalism and the public's trust.

However, what this professor of journalism and James N. Wallace Chair of Journalism at the University of Oregon was chasing was a personal dream to save the local cities newspaper — The Eugene (OR) Register-Guard.

In a recent article for the local weekly entitled "How to Save the 'Guarded-Register, ' Dr. Laufer writes, "We in Eugene are witnessing the slow murder of our daily newspaper. But maybe, just maybe, what's rapidly becoming too thin to wrap fish and line the bird cage, can still be saved." He goes on to state, "When what's now the Gannett Company — the corporate monster that owns more U.S. newspapers than any other — bought the R-G, butchery began: de facto pink slips to venerable reporters and editors and photographers in the form of buyouts, and local news coverage replaced with outdated reporting from elsewhere via Gannett's USA TODAY network."

Dr. Laufer also recently published an op-ed for Inside Higher Ed entitled "A Plan to Save the Daily Paper." He told the story of how he approached Gannett to explore the idea of having his students take over the newspaper writing. Within the piece, he reports that he began the process by calling CEO Mike Reed and was connected to Amalie Nash, the Gannett senior vice president of local news and audience development, who performed a "gracious" entrée to Gannett's senior vice president for corporate development, Jay Fogarty.

Laufer states that Fogarty wrote a note to him saying that "the Register-Guard is a paper we plan to own and operate long-term." However, in a subsequent phone conversation about the idea of offering the paper to the University, Laufer writes that Fogarty said, "I'm all for it when the paper stops making money. Glad we're talking. But at this point, it does make some money."

In this 173rd episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Peter Laufer, Ph.D., an award-winning journalist, professor of journalism, James N. Wallace Chair of Journalism at the University of Oregon and author of "Slow News: A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer." We ask Laufer about his recent campaign to get Gannett to donate the city's paper of record, The Eugene Register-Guard, to the school and his views on the media industry today.

The numbers are staggering. As the U.S. population grows, the number of local newsroom employees continues to decline, as an average of two newspapers shut down each week. Moreover, research shows that a shortage of local news harms the very fabric of our communities. With less new coverage comes more government corruption and local apathy regarding voting or civic involvement.

And today, with large corporations and hedge funds who now own what was once vibrant family-owned local news operations and seek more profit by gutting newsrooms, less and less local reporting is taking place. This has created "ghost newspapers" that generate only a handful of stories each week that serve the common good.

Over the past few years, some controversial bills have been introduced into Congress to tap into the large amount of locally available ad revenue that has been gobbled up by "big tech." Historically, that revenue was used to help fund local newsrooms. One of the bills that did not gain complete industry support was the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act" (JCPA), which, if passed, would give news publishers the ability to collectively negotiate with "big tech" platforms for content compensation. Other bills, like the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA), were floated to offer tax credits to help fund news operations.

Some have said that the challenge facing our industry's advocacy has been our lack of ability to work with one common "voice," with different media associations working separately with other priorities and agendas.

Today with the core mission of helping to advance public policies to counter the collapse of local news, revitalize community journalism and strengthen democracy, the Rebuild Local News Coalition (RLN) was started by Steven Waldman, who initially incubated the GroundTruth Project and Report for America. A recent RLN press release that announced the organization's gaining non-profit status lists members that include the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Local Media Consortium (LMC), the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN), the National Association of Hispanic Publishers and the Local Independent Online News Association (LION). The News Guild-CWA, one of the largest news labor unions in the country, is also part of the coalition.

When asked why large, established industry lobbying and advocacy organizations like the News/Media Alliance (NMA), National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and America's Newspapers were notably absent from the list, Waldman responded that the coalition wished to maintain a more local focus when it came to member news media organizations. And even though these groups were not listed members of the RLN, they have and will coordinate with them when it is warranted.

The RLN has reportedly raised close to $1-million dollars in philanthropic donations from Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Microsoft Corporation.

In this 172nd episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Steven Waldman, co-founder of Report for America and chair of the Rebuild Local News Coalition, an alliance of local news organizations that has recently become an independent nonprofit planning to advance a range of public policies addressing the accelerating crisis in local news threatening so many communities. E&P Publisher Mike Blinder asks Waldman why the new coalition is necessary and what its priorities are, what initiatives they are championing and how they can help move public policies along on a state and national level, including payroll tax credits, proposals to target government advertising spending toward local news instead of social media and reducing the influence of hedge funds on local newspapers.

For just under two decades, residents in Bucks County, Penn., a suburb of Philadelphia, were served by the Bucks County Herald, a weekly publication started by Bridget Wingert and her late husband, Joseph T. Wingert.

In 2020, as a global pandemic ravaged its advertising base, the family ownership, now including Bridget's son and Publisher Joseph Wingert, had to face the possibility of ceasing publication, which so many other community news publishers did, leaving voids in local cities across the nation.

However, the community support for having a local voice was so strong that in the fall of 2020, the Wingerts donated their ownership to a new charitable entity which formed the Bucks County Herald Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, which through private and business donations along with advertising revenue has produced a sustainable business model that serves over 200,000 readers each week.

Recently, the foundation produced a compelling video, viewed by thousands, entitled "Miracle in Bucks County," which even features a testimonial from CNN and SiriusXM host Michael Smerconish.

In this 171st episode of E&P Reports, we reveal the story of the re-birth of suburban Philly weekly, The Bucks County Herald, which rose from the ashes of the global pandemic through a transformation from a family-owned to a non-profit foundation-run local news enterprise. E&P Publisher Mike Blinder question Bridget Wingert, founding editor, and her son Joe Winegert, publisher, on how they formed the new entity, what the community support is like and is this business model one that others can easily replicate.

On December 5th, 2022, well-known news publishing analyst Ken Doctor, published a 2800-plus word updatevia Nieman Lab on the 2-year progress of his innovative Santa Cruz, CA digital news start-up, Lookout Local.

Within the document, Doctor pulls no punches about his opinion on the state of legacy media and its desire to help bolster a sustainable business model via big tech compensation by writing: "Lookout Local has never been about money itself, but money to the end of the mission — money that can prove out the proposition that a robust replacement for suicidal dailies can, indeed, be built. That's especially important in the age of Gannett's trainwreck, Axios Local's skimming, and the misguided Journalism Competition and Preservation act currently before Congress."

He also claims good progress, with a digital-only local news enterprise reporting that without print costs, 80% of his bottom-line expenses are a staff of 15 full-time people, with 10 working in the newsroom and five on the business side. He also states proudly, "We're old-fashioned, working in a real office, with face-to-face communication throughout the week." The lengthy article also offers industry advice crafted as 11 important "takeaways" as lessons learned over the past 2-years. They include being patient and aggressive, planning but being improvisational, making good friends, leaning on them, and including students in your newsroom.

In this 170th episode of E&P reports, we check in again with media analyst Ken Doctor on how the last 2-years have gone in his quest to build a perfect, sustainable model in local journalism he calls Lookout Local. We also ask him about his opinions on the future of legacy media and why he was so publicly against the recently failed, Local Journalism Sustainability Act (JCPA). Also appearing is Ashley Harmon (Holmes), Lookout Local's new director of sales & marketing.

As Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the News Media Alliance, Danielle Coffey leads the advocacy efforts for the NMA's over 2000 news and magazine publishing members worldwide.

2022 was a busy year for Coffey as the U.S. Congress held committee meetings to consider passage of the well-publicized "Journalism Competition and Preservation Act" (JCPA), introduced in the House (H.R. 1735) by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), and in the Senate (S. 673) by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA). If made into law, this legislation, greatly supported by the news publishing industry, would allow news publishers to collectively negotiate with "big tech" platforms like Google and Facebook for fair compensation for using the news content these publishers generate.

The NMA has been promoting a number of cogent arguments as to why the JCPA is necessary to help local news publishers maintain sustainable business models. These "talking points" include:

• "News publishers provide must-have content for the platforms to capture viewers. Between 16% and 40% of Google search results are news content. Publishers deserve fair compensation for the value they offer. By not paying them fairly for their content, Big Tech has driven many local outlets out of business."

• "For every dollar made in digital advertising, the platforms take as much as 70% of the revenue, leaving publishers with a scant 30%. Meanwhile, publishers are paying an additional "ad-tech tax" to the platforms, leaving even less for publishers. As a result of diminished revenues, thousands of journalists have been laid off, and local newspapers have shuttered."

In mid-December of 2022, it looked like the JCPA might pass into law as an attachment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a necessary bill designed to keep the military funded. However, the legislation was "erased" from the NDAA at the last minute.

Then as a final attempt to help the JCPA become law before the end of the 177th Congress, legislators attempted to attach it to the controversial $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill. However, last-minute lobbying from consumer, trade and civil society advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); Free Press Action; the Center for Democracy & Technology; and Local Independent Online News Publishers (LION) deluged Congressional leaders with last-minute media that argued against the bill, stating that the JCPA included nothing to guarantee that the monies ultimately paid to news publishers (through negotiation or arbitration) would be used to pay or hire journalists. Their messaging also suggested that the JCPA would favor large media conglomerates, which might "dominate negotiations," disenfranchising smaller, independent outlets.

In this 169th episode of E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Danielle Coffey, Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the News Media Alliance (NMA), to gain her perspective on what really happened in 2022 to the nearly passed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act" (JCPA). She'll also address why this controversial legislation, designed to allow news publishers to collectively negotiate with "big tech" platforms like Google and Facebook for fair compensation for their use of the news content they monetize, failed to become the law of the land. Coffey also reviews the next steps the NMA will take to keep this legislation alive and the possible future of other content pending compensation models like publisher tax credits and several pending antitrust suits currently being filed by local media companies.