E&P Reports with Mike Blinder

E&P devoted its January 2022 cover story ("At the front lines, on the homefront") to memorializing the January 6th assault on the nation's Capitol and to inform our readers — news publishers — about what it's like to report on domestic extremism; what the perils are to journalists; how to prepare for potentially violent or dangerous conflicts; and why these stories matter nationally and within our local communities.

In this 118th episode of E&P Reports, E&P Publisher Mike Blinder is joined by Roxanne Cooper, executive editor and publisher at Raw Story and two of the journalists who shared their reporting experiences with E&P contributor Gretchen Peck for the cover story — Jordan Green, staff reporter at Raw Story, and Christopher Jones, a former U.S. Marine turned Report for America journalist who now reports for the GroundTruth Project and 100 Days in Appalachia, the 2021 recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for hard news reporting.

As newspapers' online presence matures, many still struggle with monetizing it. Often, an outside perspective is where new ideas are born. They disrupt the norm and reveal new monetization opportunities.

That realization is how Ryan Johnston, a former commercial real estate professional, and Ryan Heafy, a former engineer, envisioned 6AM City. Its 24 editions (currently) in most regions of the U.S., joins Axios Local, Patch, WhereBy.Us and other news disruptors in the local digital newsletter space.

In one sense, 6AM City integrates news and social media in a new way, and in another, it may be a precursor of a local news platform that could reside in the Metaverse.

In this 117th episode of "E&P Reports" Publisher Mike Blinder speaks with 6AM City CEO Ryan Johnston about the growth of this local news "disruptor" that now publishes newsletters 5 days-a-week in 24 U.S. cities.

As live conferences return and industry moguls get a chance to mingle again, there is no question that Borrell Miami on March 6-8th at the Miami Hilton will once again be a "who's who" of C-suite executives from all sectors of media.

This year's event is entitled "The Path to 2032," with a predicted audience of 300 or more, and promotes itself online as the "skip the hype/follow the money" conference with "crisp information that flows from the stage that's chocked full of new data."

E&P is proud to be the media publication sponsor and is offering readers a $200 discount code of "EP200" when they register at: https://borrellmiami.borrellassociates.com. In addition, all who attend will receive a complimentary full-year subscription to Editor & Publisher Magazine.

In this 116th episode of E&P Reports, Publisher Mike Blinder welcomes Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, who offers a preview of what to expect at Borrell Miami 2022.

In this 115th episode of "E&P Reports," Mike Blinder the Publisher of E&P chats with David Chavern, President / CEO of the News Media Alliance and Lee Wolverton, VP News/ Executive Editor at HD Media about the latest developments in the class action lawsuit naming both Google and Facebook as defendants in a federal antitrust lawsuit. Also on the panel is Gretchen Peck E&P's Contributing Editor.

Howard Owens published his first newspaper in fourth grade, which is likely why soon after graduating from Point Loma Nazarene University with a degree in literature, he and a partner became owners of The Beacon, a biweekly newspaper in the City of San Diego. After that, he decided to branch out to other publishing companies as a reporter and editor. In 1995, he and a partner founded East County Online (ECO), the first chain of weekly newspapers with Web sites. ECO featured not only content from six community weeklies but original content, a Web directory of local businesses, reader submissions (now called user-generated content) and a community club (now called virtual community). In 1995, a Wired Magazine poll found that ECO was the 66th most popular news Web site in the world.

After Owen's success in pioneering digital publishing at East County Online and holding senior management positions in digital media at the Ventura County Star and Bakersfield Californian, he was hired by Gatehouse Media as Director of Digital Publishing. In 2008, one of his duties was to launch The Batavian, an experimental online-only newspaper in Batavia, NY. When Gatehouse decided to scrap the project one year later, Owens negotiated a deal with Gatehouse to take over the Website, and the rest is history.

Since 2008, Howard Owens has been living in Batavia, NY, as the Owner and Publisher of The Batavian, a popular, local news operation that serves Genesse County, NY (population 60,000). Even though some industry pundits think Owen's online publishing model, which includes having over 100 ads on his home page alone, is flawed and outdated, The Batavian is highly read. Moreover, it churns out enough profit to allow Owens and his wife Billie to enjoy a comfortable living while employing a local sales and editorial support team.

In this 114th episode of "E&P Reports," Publisher Mike Blinder goes one-on-one with industry veteran and founding board member of Local Independent Online News Publishers (LION), Howard Owens about his 14 years as a local online-only news publisher and his feelings on the future of the industry as a whole.

In this 113th episode of "E&P Reports, Alan Leveritt publisher of the Arkansas Times and ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Brian Hauss join Editor & Publisher's (E&P) publisher, Mike Blinder, and E and P contributing editor Gretchen Peck to talk about a two year battle, that has gained international prominence, between the Times and the state of Arkansas, on the newspapers' refusal to sign a pledge to support Israel in order to continue receiving advertising dollars from the state university. Also, on the program appears award winning film producer Julia Bacha, who has just completed a documentary on the impact of state legislation designed to penalize individuals and companies that choose to boycott Israel due to its human rights record.

In 2018, news media analyst Ken Doctor penned a column that, in part, read: "Alden Global Capital is making so much money wrecking local journalism, it might not want to stop any time soon."

Now, fewer than five months since the ink dried on Alden Global Capital's acquisition of the Tribune titles, it's making a formal play for Lee Enterprises, a digital marketing services company and publisher of local newspapers across 26 U.S. states. The initial offer was for $24/share. The news sent Lee Enterprises stock upward. As E&P's Publisher Mike Blinder assembled a panel of news media experts on November 23rd to discuss the bid, LEE stock was at $24.10/share.

On this 112th episode of E&P Reports, Host Mike Blinder speaks with Gordon Borrell, founder and principal of Borrell Associates; Rick Edmonds, media business analyst for Poynter Institute; Steven Waldman, president and co-founder of Report for America; and Gretchen A. Peck, contributing editor at E&P, about the hedge fund company's intentions. They talk about the offer, the timing, the oncoming culture clash if the deal goes through, the possibility of pleading an anti-trust case, and so much more.

For the past 30 years, Jim Doyle has been helping salespeople make more money as one of the top sales trainers for the broadcast industry. His latest book, Selling with a Servant Heart, outlines ten lessons that ultimately lead to greater joy in sales while also increasing income.

Doyle describes the concept by saying: "When you commit to serving customers as a 'Servant Heart Seller,' you'll find more success, greater customer loyalty, and far less churn. And you'll have a lot more fun, too." He goes on to add: "Lots of good sellers would describe themselves as 'Customer Focused.' But think about a level that is even above that. 'Servant Heart Sellers' would better be described as 'Customer Obsessed.' Obsessed that the products they sell and their work personally provide the absolute best outcomes for the client. They are outcome-focused, not just customer-focused."

In this 111th episode of "E&P Reports," Publisher Mike Blinder goes one-on-one with Jim Doyle to learn more about the concept of "Servant Heart Selling" and how any salesperson, sales manager or media company as a whole can benefit from adopting this approach to advertising sales.

More information about Jim Doyle and "Selling with a Servant Heart: Ten Lessons on the Path to Joy and Increased Income" can be found at https://servantsellingbook.com.

Pre-order "Selling with a Servant Heart" on Amazon:

On this 110th episode of "E&P Reports," Publisher and Host Mike Blinder sat down with the National Newspapers Association's (NNA) chair, Brett Wesner, and E&P contributing editor Gretchen Peck to talk about the urgency for advocacy for the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA). On Friday afternoon, November 5th, word had come that at least part of the LJSA — payroll tax credits for newsrooms — remained in the Build Back Better Reconciliation bill being bandied about in Congress. It's legislation that the NAA, America's Newspapers, Report for America and other industry associations have tenaciously lobbied for in Washington, DC, and perhaps to everyone's surprise, got traction and even a little bipartisan for it.

Community newspapers serve an obvious role that most people inherently understand. Their local newspaper — whether they read it in print or online — is the very best source of local information about what's happening in the community around them and why it should matter to them. A local newspaper fulfills other roles that may be less overt but are nonetheless integral to the health and prosperity of the community.

"If we don't exist, no one's there, because you're not going to get major metros covering small towns anymore," Brett Wesner warned. Wesner is both the chair of the NNA and the CEO of Wesner Publications, a community newspaper publisher based in Cordell, Oklahoma.

"When you don't have a newspaper, the bond rates increase," Wesner continued. "If there is nobody guarding the chicken house, the fox has free rein. We do play an important role in the business of communities and also in terms of creating community. I mean, in these small towns, if you don't have a binding element of some kind, you really lose that sense that we're all in this together."

The LJSA's future remained uncertain as E&P Reports wrapped on Friday afternoon. Nothing's a done deal until it reaches the President's signing desk. While the associations and their lobbyists continue to implore Congress to adopt the LJSA, local newspapers around the country might use the coming week to rally their newsrooms and their readers, reminding them, we're all in this together.

"journalism bug" writing for "The Daily Campus," so upon graduation, he took an entry-level job as a sports reporter at a small newspaper outside of Dallas. It wasn't long before he jumped from newspapers to broadcast, landing an internship at the Dallas all-sports radio station.

Darsky leaped from radio to TV, beginning his 25-years as a broadcast TV news producer running the prompter and ripping scripts at KXAS-TV in Dallas to

producing and management jobs in Savannah, Tucson, Houston and Charlotte. Finally, he wound up in New York City as Executive Producer of the nation's #1 TV morning show.

Today, you'll find Adam Darsky as the new Director of Content for the much-talked-about local news disruptor, TapInto. TapInto is a network of over 90 hyper-local franchised, online-only news websites most in New Jersey, one of the nation's most populated and media-saturated corridors.

In this 109th episode of "E&P Reports," Publisher Mike Blinder goes one-on-one with Darsky to learn about his leap from broadcast TV to hyper-local, pureplay news and what he thinks about the future of online-only news publishing.