E&P Reports with Mike Blinder

The Denton Record-Chronicle, the main newspaper for the city of Denton and Denton County Texas, a suburb of the Dallas/ Fort Worth "Metroplex" with a population slightly under 1-million, recently announced that it is being acquired by KERA public media, the regional public broadcasting facility of north Texas. Assisting to make the deal happen is the National Trust for Local News, a non-profit entity that has a focus on developing the financial end of new business models for local news. And who heled put together the Colorado News Conservancy, a public benefit corporation, which along with a large regional news website has now purchased a number of suburban newspapers near Denver, CO ("Denver News Disruptor Colorado Sun Purchases Suburban Weeklies").

In this 158th episode of "E&P Reports" we interview Bill Patterson, Publisher of the Denton (TX) Daily Record-Chronicle, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, CEO and Co-Founder at The National Trust for Local News (NTLN), Senior Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Nico Leone, President & CEO of KERA the public broadcasting outlet in North Texas that just announced the purchase of the Daily Record with the assistance of NTLN. Patterson speaks to how and why he sought out the sale of his 3-generation family-owned media company, while Leone talks about the benefit to public broadcasting expanding into local legacy news and Shapiro explains how deals like this are made and how they may be become much more common in the future.

It has only been a few years since the February 2018 announcement that Nicole Carroll was to succeed Joanne Lipman as editor-in-chief of USA Today. She was by no means an outsider to the operation, being part of their Network of more than 200 local digital properties in 45 states. As an editor and vice president of news at The Arizona Republic, Carroll led a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.

Today, Carroll not only manages this Gannett flagship, but she is also one of the 19 members of the Pulitzer Board, comprising leading journalists, news executives and academics who preside over the judging process.

In this 157th episode of "E&P Reports," E&P Publisher Mike Blinder speaks with Nicole Carroll, president of news and editor-in-chief of USA TODAY, about the past 40 years for this iconic news media brand and its evolution to a multi-platform national information outlet. Their conversation occurred in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ian, a devastating storm for Florida, where Gannett operates 18 daily operations, including in Ft. Myers and Naples. Carroll reported to Blinder that at least three of their journalists' homes were no longer habitable.

She marveled at the tenacity and resilience of their journalists. "Daylight came, and they could not wait to get back out there, helping their community, and that has been their focus," Carroll told Blinder.

Having Gannett's newsrooms across the country and abroad connected through digital communications enables journalists to share information and build on stories. Journalists chat about important public interest topics — in this case, a catastrophic weather event. Through chat conversations, they began planning their approach to coverage approach when the storm was still a far-off tropical depression.

Carroll and Blinder also spoke about the USA TODAY's 40th Anniversary and the brand's evolution. Earlier in her career, she was a Gannett reporter "on loan" — or "loaners" — to USA TODAY. "You would work three- or six-month shifts, and then you'd go back to your home paper," she explained to Blinder.

Content that is factual, informative, and accessible is foundational to the brand. "We always say that we're expert, not elitist," she said. That resonates with readers. USA TODAY continues to have strong single-copy and home-delivery figures, she suggested, plus distribution at partner hotels. This brilliant marketing strategy introduced an untold number of travelers to USA TODAY's colorful front page, predictably placed just outside their hotel room door each morning. The website attracts an impressive audience, as well, including a segment that represents younger news consumers.

"We have, on average, 100 million unique visitors every month to USA TODAY," Carroll reported. "We are leaning into our heritage of innovation. We were innovative 40 years ago. We still are today. So, just this morning, we created out of Hurricane Ian a text chat where people can sign up for texts about the hurricane. Some of them are getting cell service, but they're not getting internet, or they don't have power, and we're giving them constant updates via text to the readers. And we were up to more than 5,000 people in about 24 hours who've signed up for that. So, that's one small daily innovation we're doing to connect readers to the news they need when they need it."

Having seen USA Today mature over decades, Carroll credits the editorial coverage for its longevity and popularity. "Our editors were just in tune with what America was talking about," she reflected.

When Editor & Publisher Magazine (E&P) opened the nomination process for the yearly "25 over 50" salute, one entry from Emily Metzgar, a director at the School of Media & Journalism at Kent State University, stated that Kevin Dilley, the director of Kent State Student Media,

"Has built one of the largest media operations you've never heard about." Emily wrote E&P that "Kevin wrangles a $750,000 budget annual budget, 400+ students each semester, nine distinct media outlets, one business office and 30+ platforms." She also mentioned that Dilley tackled challenges stemming from COVID-19, where he was able to keep the student-run TV station on the air even while being directed to operate remotely.

There is no question that Kevin Dilley deserved to be recognized as a "25 over 50" in the September edition of E&P Magazine. However, after some investigation into the many successful ongoing programs that Kent State Student Media has developed and the numerous awards their journalism continues to win, E&P decided to go one step further and introduce you to the leader of this large campus-based media operation.

In this 156th episode of E&P Reports, meet Kevin Dilley, the director of Kent State University Media, where we explore the work the 400+ students produce for 10 distinct media outlets and 30+ media platforms. Plus, E&P Publisher Mike Blinder and contributing journalist Victoria Holmes ask Dilley how he feels about the future of News Publishing as being one of the educators that helps today's students become tomorrow's industry leaders.

Before joining Fox News, Chris Stirewalt served as political editor for the Washington Examiner. As a top editor and election forecaster for Fox News' decision desk during the 2020 election, Stirewalt stood firm to defend the network being the first to correctly call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night — the first sign that Donald Trump would lose the 2020 presidential race. What resulted was a backlash from Trump, his supporters and even calls for his being imprisoned as part of an election fraud conspiracy.

In his latest book "Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back," Stirewalt states that some news organizations (like Fox News, MSNBC and others) have developed a philosophy of fanning the anger within their core audience in what he calls "rage revenue" practices that leans towards bias coverage that helps stoke the political division and culture wars within the U.S. In "Broken News," Stirewalt offers some inside insight into these news operations about how they reward this form of coverage because it is easier and more profitable than investigative journalism.

But all is not lost because not only does "Broken News" point out the problems within the news industry, but it also offers the reader a solution to become better news consumers for the sake of the future of our democracy.

In this 155th episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Chris Stirewalt, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), contributing editor for The Dispatch and author of his new book, "Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back," where he writes about his time as the top political editor and election forecaster for the Fox News channel and how he became famous (and subsequently vilified) for being the first to correctly call the 2020 election results for the state of Arizona in favor of Biden. Stirewalt offers some inside intelligence and perspective on how the biased reporting of news media outlets like MSNBC and Fox News channel are helping divide our country and advises on how we, the news consumer, can help find some common ground.

One of the 2022 inductees for the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Hall of Fame included the publisher/editor of Dallas, Texas-based I Messenger Media: Cheryl Smith. This latest honor was presented at the August 2022 NABJ Annual Convention in Las Vegas, where her numerous awards, years of service to the industry and contributions to black journalism were recognized.

Smith has more than 35 years of experience in the news publishing industry. She is the current executive director and publisher of I Messenger Media News Group, the owners of Texas Metro News, Garland Journal and I Messenger newspapers. She is also the region IV president for the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a board member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the immediate past president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Association of Black Journalists (DFW/ABJ).

Smith was also recognized in the September issue of E&P Magazine within the 2022 "Class of 25 over 50," a yearly group of news executives chosen based on an industry-wide nomination process. Her name was submitted by Eva D. Colman, NABJ region III director of the NABJ, where she cited that "Cheryl has dedicated her entire career to the betterment of our industry, those who serve in it, want to become a part of it and consume all that we bring to it." Colman said, "Watching Cheryl tirelessly pursue diversity and fairness at all costs has been inspirational to myself and others, not only in Dallas-Fort Worth, however globally as well. Leaders throughout the African diaspora seek her guidance in messaging, advocacy, human rights initiatives and so much more."

In this 154th episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Cheryl Smith, owner/ publisher of I Messenger Media News Group & 2022 inductee in the National Association of Black Journalists' (NABJ) Hall of Fame, where we discuss her career not only as a successful news publishing executive, but also her views on the industry as a whole, where it is heading, and how we can achieve more diversity, equity and inclusion to better represent the communities we serve.

With elections, law enforcement agencies, the courts, elected officials, branches of the government and the very rule of law under sustained and concerted attack by its own citizens and elected leaders, there is no question that the media has an essential role to play in addressing these important issues. E&P's September 2022 cover story "American Democracy in Crisis" reports on the need for the news media industry to reframe democracy coverage during this perilous & critical moment in U.S. history.

Award-winning print and broadcast journalist Mike Barnicle is no stranger to this topic as a regular contributor on MSNBC's popular Morning Joe, where he discusses the news of the day with prominent guests, scholars, political leaders, and fellow journalists.

Barnicle began his career in the 1960's as a young speech writer for John Tunney, Edmund Muskie, and the late Robert F. Kennedy. He then moved on to become one the nation's most respected newspaper columnists, penning more than 4,000 pieces, for over 25-years for the Boston Herald, New York Daily News, and The Boston Globe. Today, his work is seen regularly on the pages of Newsweek, The Baily Beast, The Huffington Post, ESPN, Esquire and other publications.

In this 153rd episode of "E&P Reports" Publisher Mike Blinder goes one-on-one with well-known TV commentator and journalist Mike Barnicle, where they discuss the state of the news media industry, and the challenges journalists are facing in reporting on the culture wars and political polarization that is affecting our society.

The latest Gallup poll came with a warning flare: "Americans' confidence in two facets of the news media — newspapers and television news — has fallen to all-time low points."

Since 1973, Washington, D.C.-based Gallup, Inc. has polled Americans about their trust in newspapers and, in 1993, began tracking American sentiments about television/cable news.

A mere 16% of Americans "have a great deal/quite a lot of confidence in newspapers," Gallup's Research Consultant Megan Brenan summarized the July 2022 findings. Television news fared even worse, with just 11% of the respondents having "some degree of confidence" in the news service cable and network news provides.

Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill co-founded NewsGuard in 2018 to help the public discern what is trusted, reliable news on the internet.

Crovitz and Brill were guests on E&P Reports' 152nd vodcast episode to talk about trust in news and misinformation online.

"At least when you were reading your first newspaper, you knew you were reading a Hearst newspaper. You sort of knew what you were getting," Crovitz said.

"If you think about where we are today, the metaphor I like to use is: Imagine right now, if you walk into a library, books are neatly arranged on shelves, the magazines are arranged on shelves according to topic. You can pick up the book. You can read the book jacket. You know who the author is. You know who the publisher is. … Now, imagine instead you walked into the library, and there are just a trillion pieces of paper flying around in the air, and you grab one out of the air and start reading it. You don't know who wrote it; you don't know who's financing it. You don't know what their backgrounds are. There's no librarian. You're on your own," he explained.

Using a transparent and weighted set of nine criteria, NewsGuard rates news sites on a scale of 100. It assigns symbols from red to green based on the scoring and provides users with a "Nutrition Label" that explains the site's score.

On July 22, 2022, NewsGuard circulated a press release about its "downgrade" of MSNBC's and Fox News' websites, which read in part: "For the first time since NewsGuard launched in 2018, both the Fox News and MSNBC sites are rated red, meaning they have earned an overall score of less than 60 out of 100. Their readers are urged to proceed with caution when they encounter content from these websites. … In both cases, NewsGuard analysts have now found that the most opinionated programming on the cable outlets, often based on clearly false claims, is now so extensively published and heavily promoted on the websites that a significant portion of the websites' content fails to adhere to basic journalistic practices."

Aequalitas is Latin for "equality." But it would be hard to find an industry executive equal to Aqualitas Media Group founder and executive director DJ Doran, who spent 23 years as a U.S. Air Force Reserve Pilot before purchasing a hotel and entering the news publishing industry. Today, Doran owns eight online publications targeted to the LGBTQ+ reader in several U.S. major markets, including his hometown of Chicago. Doran, who is openly gay, is now planning a run for Chicago mayor in the upcoming 2023 election as a Democrat.

In this 151st episode of "E&P Reports," host Mike Blinder goes one-on-one with LGBTQ+ media publisher DJ Doran on how he kept his major market media enterprises thriving during a global pandemic, his news publishing plans for the future and his recent announcement to run as an openly gay candidate for Mayor of Chicago.

Related link: More information about DJ Doran's mayoral run

On January 28th, 2022, The Dallas Morning News reported on the purchase of a local, suburban metroplex group of weekly newspapers, stating, "Instead of a trip to Hawaii to celebrate 25 years together, Rick and Elizabeth Rogers bought a community newspaper company." That company is Star Local Media, a community publishing group based in the affluent northeast suburb of Plano, Texas, that prints 14 community newspapers across cities in Denton, Collin, and Dallas counties, with some titles more than 100 years old.

Rick Rogers is not unknown to most in the news publishing business, with his most recent job as Chief Revenue Officer at TownNews. His previous life offered 25 years of editorial, publishing and management experience with corporate roles at ACM and Gatehouse Media in Missouri and Texas.

Rick and his wife Elizabeth have resided for the past 11 years in Frisco — a market served by Star Local Media with the Frisco Enterprise, making them both quite familiar with the communities they serve.

In this 150th episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with a longtime industry veteran and recent CRO of TownNews. Rick Rogers' journey from serving media companies as a vendor to becoming owner/ publisher of the Dallas suburban weekly newspaper group, Star Local Media, is highlighted. He talks frankly about why he chose to invest in local media, how he and his wife/ partner Elizabeth are facing the challenges of news publishing in today's challenging marketplace and how his 1st quarter P & L fared.

Damian Daniels had three encounters with the local police during the last 48 hours of his life. The Army veteran was in his home in August 2020, amid a mental health crisis, when his brother — 800 miles away in Colorado — called the Red Cross for help. The agency, in turn, called 9-1-1, and police officers were dispatched for a welfare check that turned deadly, culminating in an officer shooting Daniels twice, killing him.

Tragedies like this — when a person in the throes of a mental health crisis is shot and killed by police officers — aren't rare. Washington Post reporters Jon Gerberg and Alice Li found 178 similar cases over the course of three years. They wrote about Daniel's death in "When a call to the police for help turns deadly," part of the Washington Post's "Unaccountable" investigative series — a deep dive into how the police serve the communities they're tasked to protect.

Jon Gerberg is a senior video journalist for the Washington Post and a member of the investigative team. He's been with the news organization since 2017, and before that, he reported for The New York Times, the Associated Press, TIME, and worked as a foreign affairs producer for "PBS NewsHour."

As the database editor for the investigations unit at the Washington Post, Steven Rich knows data and how integral it is to investigative stories. Rich and Gerberg were E&P Publisher Mike Blinder's guests on E&P Reports 149th episode. They were joined by E&P contributor Gretchen A. Peck for a conversation about data and the "Unaccountable" series.

"I got the job here at The Post through an internship," Rich recalled during the vodcast. "I turned that internship into a second internship and into a job. At the time, there was not as much data capacity at The Post. They sort of needed me, and I was focused largely on large investigative projects."

Though the term "data journalism" may be relatively recent on the news-evolution timeline, the practice is hardly novel. "Data journalism has kind of been under the surface for a very long time," Rich said, citing Ida B. Wells as an example, who in effect collected data about lynchings in the south.

Rich sees data as a way to offer larger context to otherwise anecdotal stories. "My job is to take your anecdotes and to tell you how often they happen," he said.

For roughly seven years, The Post's data team has been building a publicly available database of police shootings across the country, populating it, mining it, and gleaning patterns and revelations to inform their reporting.

For example, they track the number and location of police-involved shootings, whether the victim was armed, and where it took place — for instance, in a private home versus in a public setting. They also seek insight into why the police are on the scene at all — if a call to 9-1-1 was the only option for help.

The investigative team knew that Damian Daniel's death was not unique. They knew of other high-profile incidents when the police were called to help people in mental crisis, only to kill them during the course of that interaction. They cited Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York and Walter Wallace, Jr. in Philadelphia.

"But we wanted to know how often this is actually happening, and that's where we turn to colleagues like Steven, who have actually been compiling this database," he added.

With the help of a team of journalism students from American University, The Post's investigative team could look at approximately 1,000 police shooting cases and drill down to those for which mental health was a suspected or known factor.

They found 178 such occurrences, representing victims of all ages, races and genders.

There were some things the data didn't reveal, which required the investigative team to find answers in other ways. For example, the database doesn't currently track officers' disciplinary records or suspensions, whether they were involved in prior similar incidents, or whether they've been violent outside of the job.

"My approach to data journalism is and has always been as a way to take a great story and make it excellent," Rich said.

"The most important part of data journalism is the journalism itself. … It's one thing to collect data, but you have to actually extract the meaning out of it," Rich suggested.

The "Fatal Force" database continues to inform the investigative team's reporting. "It's kind of a gift that keeps on giving, from a storytelling and reporting perspective," Gerberg told Blinder and Peck.

"Data really is the fundamental spine of our reporting because why are we telling these stories if they do not tell us something about the world in which we live? I would just add that if you kind of take the inverse of that, if you only have the data and are never taking stories out of that, what does it mean in the first place? I think a crucial part of our job is to take that data and identify those trends, but also work to really illuminate and understand what kind of consequences these trends are having in the lives of everyday people," Gerberg concluded.

The team's reporting of this story inspired change in Bexar County, Texas. "Bexar County had a mental-health response unit within its own police department," Gerberg explained. "The problem was, Mr. Daniels was actually in the jurisdiction of the Bear County Sheriff's, rather than the [San Antonio Police Department] — so, a different jurisdiction. But since Mr. Daniel's killing, the judge there has implemented a secondary program to increase mental health options for the rest of the county, as well."