What Works: The Future of Local News

This week, co-hosts Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy run down a number of news stories, including a major deal in New Jersey: The nonprofit Corporation for New Jersey Local Media (CNJLM) acquired 14 weekly newspapers serving some 50 municipalities. The papers are owned by the New Jersey Hills Media Group.

The deal is similar to one announced last year when Colorado Community Media sold its 24 weekly and monthly newspapers in a complex deal involving several nonprofit organizations. The difference is that management of the Colorado papers was turned over to The Colorado Sun, a digital start-up that was awarded an ownership share and could eventually become the majority owner. In New Jersey, the sellers, Liz and Steve Parker, will remain in charge.

Ellen unpacks the story behind a glaring omission in the award-winning documentary film, "Storm Lake," and Dan and Ellen both try to grapple with the blockchain and how Web3 might affect local newsrooms.

Em Cassel is editor and co-owner of The Racket, a reader-funded website covering politics, music, arts and culture in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. (She was also a student in Dan's digital journalism course at Northeastern University.)

Em made a name for herself as food editor, managing editor, and editor-in-chief of City Pages in the Twin Cities. She was the first woman editor in the 41-year history of that publication. City Pages, which was bought by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2015, was shut down in late 2020. The company said it wasn't economically viable, citing the pandemic. Em provides some inside scoop about that, and talks about the founding of The Racket, which proudly claims on its website that it has "no bosses, some biases."

Dan has a Quick Take on the Montclair Local, a nonprofit weekly newspaper launched several years ago in New Jersey. And Ellen reports on an effort to shut down an entire town that was uncovered by the Tennessee Lookout, part of the rapidly expanding nonprofit network called States Newsroom. The Lookout's scoop was highlighted in the newsletter of The Emancipator, a re-imagined update on the nation's first abolitionist newspaper for the digital age that is being launched soon.

Jody Brannon, director of the Center for Journalism & Liberty at the Open Markets Institute, started her career in print in her native Seattle. Never one to shy from a challenge (she's an avid skiier and beamed in from the snowy mountains of Idaho), she transitioned to digital relatively early on in the revolution. She has had leadership or consulting roles at washingtonpost.com, usatoday.com, msn.com, as well as the tech universe.

She served on the board of the Online News Association for 10 years and holds a PhD in mass communication from the University of Maryland. The Center for Journalism & Liberty is part of the Open Markets Institute, which has a pretty bold mission statement: To shine a light on monopoly power and its dangers to democracy. They also say they work to engage in grassroots coalitions, such as Freedom from Facebook and 4Competition.

Dan's Quick Take is on an arcane subject — the future of legal ads. Those notices from city and county government may seem pretty dull, but newspapers have depended on them as a vital source of revenue since the invention of the printing press. Now they're under attack.

Ellen weighs in on a mass exodus at the venerable Texas Observer magazine, once a progressive voice to be reckoned with and home to the late great columnist Molly Ivins.

Chris Krewson is the executive director of Local Independent Online News Publishers, better known as LION Publishers. The national nonprofit aims at supporting local journalism entrepreneurs and has some 400 members. LION tapped Chris as its leader in 2019, and he brings significant digital experience to the job. In fact, he's had many prior lives. He was the top editor at Billy Penn, a mobile-first local start-up in Philadelphia launched by the legendary Jim Brady that's now part of public radio station WHYY. He's also the former top digital editor for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Dan has a Quick Take on a Poynter Online essay by Kathleen McElroy, director of the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. Ellen discusses the new Harvey World Herald online site, which fills a need in a news desert just outside of Chicago. And Chris clears up a crewcut pop culture mystery for Ellen.

Pam Johnston, general manager for news with GBH, has a deep background in local television in Boston at WLVI, and earlier at local stations in Raleigh, North Carolina and Portland, Maine. At GBH, which is a public media company, she has a broad portfolio. She is responsible for news operations across all platforms, including radio, television and digital. She also supervises two NPR programs, GBH's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Pam joined GBH in 2012 as director of audience development for Frontline, the investigative series, where she is credited with diversifying the audience and connecting it with long-form documentaries, virtual reality experiences and podcasts. Dan has a Quick Take on a multimillion-dollar glitch in ad tech by Gannett, and Ellen reports on a union survey of Tribune Publishing workers that reveals big gaps in pay equity.

Lex Weaver is editor-in-chief of The Scope at Northeastern University. The Scope is a digital magazine focused on telling stories of justice, hope and resilience in Greater Boston, with an emphasis on communities of color. Their mission: practicing journalism as an act of service. They work to amplify the voices of those overlooked by traditional media.

Dan looks at The Boston Globe as it turns 150, and Ellen reports on a California bill aimed at funding local public interest journalism.

Ken Doctor, a former Knight Ridder executive and longtime media analyst, recently rejoined the ranks of working journalists. He's the founder and CEO of Lookout Local, a digital local news site in Santa Cruz, California. Ken hopes that Lookout Local can provide a model of what works in the local news ecosystem. He says he wants to change the conversation.

Babz Rawls Ivy is host and co-producer of LoveBabz LoveTALK on WNHH LP radio in New Haven. But that doesn't begin to describe her. So let's add a few more words: Force of nature. Wise presence. Storyteller. WNHH is a low-power FM community station launched seven years ago by the New Haven Independent, a pioneering online nonprofit news site. Paul Bass, founder and editor of the Independent, wanted to bring powerful local voices onto the airwaves. Babz Rawls Ivy brings truth-telling to a whole new level. Dan shares the latest on Gannett's downgrading of local coverage, and Ellen asks whether retired journalists are the new seed capital for startup digital sites.

Lincoln Millstein played a critical role in launching The Boston Globe's free digital site, boston.com. Boston.com began as a portal, and carried Globe journalism but also curated other news sites and community blogs. It had a separate staff, and the office was in downtown Boston, not in the old Dorchester plant. Lincoln went on to be executive vice president at New York Times Digital, then moved on to the Hearst Corporation, where he held a number of different roles.

When Lincoln retired as senior assistant to CEO Steven Swartz of Hearst in 2018, he wondered what was next. He found the answer by returning to his roots as a local reporter, recalling the days when he started out in the Middletown bureau of the Hartford Courant in the mid-1970s.

He and his wife, Irene Driscoll, also a longtime journalist, had upgraded their summer place in Maine in anticipation of spending more time there in retirement. Then the pandemic hit, and they moved in. He started picking up lots of local scoops on how the pandemic was affecting businesses. Not to mention the occasional deer collision. That's how The Quietside Journal got its start.

Dan has a Quick Take on the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, which recently won a big public-records victory over the city of Worcester, which has been stonewalling them for years, and Ellen looks at newsroom layoffs and transparency.