Ellen talks with Laura Pappano, an award-winning journalist who has written about education for more than 30 years. Laura has a new book out from Beacon Press. The title is "School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education." By the way, Beacon also published our book, “What Works in Community News.”  Dan and Ellen are recording their segments separately, because Ellen was travelling. So, don't worry, they're not breaking up.

Ellen has a Quick Take on a philanthropic gift from Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, that is designed to cover full tuition for many graduate students in journalism at the City University of New York. That's good news for students wondering whether to take on $50,000 or more in tuition debt to get a master's degree in journalism at a private university. Craigslist destroyed the classified ad market, but Newmark continues to make his mark as a philanthropist. 

 Dan offers two cheers for billionaire newspaper ownership. With the news business dealing with a difficult round of layoffs, a number of media observers have jumped to the conclusion that billionaire owners are not the solution to what ails journalism. Well, of course it isn’t. No one ever said otherwise. But the record shows that civic-minded ownership by wealthy owners has proven to be a workable solution in several cities. 

We talk with Wendi C. Thomas, the editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Thomas founded MLK50 in 2017 as a one-year project designed to focus on the antipoverty work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Dr. King had traveled to Memphis in April of 1968 to support striking sanitation workers who were fighting for safer working conditions and a living wage.

But MLK50 became much more than a one-year project. She and her staff have gone on to produce journalism that has changed the dialogue, and changed lives, in Memphis. Her work has garnered numerous awards. In 2020, she was the winner of the Selden Ring Award for her groundbreaking investigative series, "Profiting from the Poor," an investigation of a nonprofit hospital that sued poor patients over medical debt. The series, co-published with ProPublica, had major impact: the hospital erased $11.9 million in medical debt. MLK50 is one of the projects that we profile in our book, “What Works in Community News.”

Ellen has a Quick Take on the situation at Houston Landing, a highly anticipated and well-funded nonprofit newsroom that launched in 2023. Dan's Quick Take is on The Baltimore Sun, the venerable 186-year-old daily newspaper that at one time was home to the infamously caustic writer H.L. Mencken. Earlier this month, Alden Global Capital sold the Sun to a right-wing television executive who hates newspapers. But not to fear — public interest journalism is alive and well in Baltimore, as Dan will explain.

Dan and Ellen talk with Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, the president of  La Voz Hispana de Connecticut. La Voz started circulating in New Haven in 1993, but fell on hard times. Norma helped take charge of the paper in 1998 when it verged on bankruptcy. Under her direction, the newspaper has grown into the state’s largest-circulation Spanish-language weekly. It reaches more than 125,000 Spanish speakers across Connecticut.

Norma is among the folks highlighted in Dan and Ellen's new book, “What Works in Community News,” which, at long last, will be out by the time you hear this podcast. In addition to her work at La Voz, Norma is the board chair of the Online Journalism Project, the nonprofit umbrella that includes the New Haven Independent, the Valley Independent Sentinel, and WNHH community radio. The Independent and the radio station both work out of La Voz’s offices in downtown New Haven.  

Ellen has a Quick Take on a surprising development in local news on Martha's Vineyard.The ownership of the weekly Martha’s Vineyard Times has changed hands. Longtime publishers and owners Peter and Barbara Oberfest sold the Island news organization to Steve Bernier, a West Tisbury resident and longtime owner of Cronig’s Market.  And the acting publisher is Charles Sennott, a highly decorated journalist and founder and editor of The GroundTruth Project. He also helped launch Report for America.

Dan discusses a hard situation at Eugene Weekly, an alternative weekly in Oregon that’s been around for four decades. EW has shut down and laid off its 10-person staff after learning that the paper was the victim of embezzlement.

Dan and Ellen talk with Andy and Dee Hall, co-founders of Wisconsin Watch. Wisconsin Watch was launched in 2009 as the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. It's nonprofit and nonpartisan, and it has grown a lot over the last 14 years. Andy is retiring on December 31 of this year, and is helping the new CEO, George Stanley, with the transition. 

Dee Hall, co-founder and former managing editor of Wisconsin Watch, is also moving  on, and is now editor-in-chief of Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom with a clear mission: Floodlight investigates "the powerful interests stalling climate action." Floodlight partners with local and national journalists to co-publish collaborative investigations. 

The What Works podcast will resume after the holidays, and Dan fills listeners in on events surrounding the launch of our book, “What Works in Community News,” which is coming out on January 9. We'll be talking about the book that night at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner in Brookline, MA. 

Ellen has a Quick Take on Signal Ohio, a well-funded nonprofit news startup in Ohio. It's expanding into Akron. We've worked with a Northeastern graduate student, Dakotah Kennedy (no relation to Dan), on this podcast. She is now a service journalism reporter for Signal Cleveland. For more reporting on the media meltdown of Akron's Devil Strip, check out Dan's story here and a NiemanLab story here. 

Dan and Ellen talk with Bob Sprague, a pioneer in hyperlocal journalism and the founder of yourArlington. Bob, who has lived in Arlington since 1989, was not only the founder: he was the editor of the website until July 1 of this year, when he retired. The new editor is Judith Pfeffer. 

Bob was an Arlington Town Meeting member in 1994, and was also a journalist. He has been a reporter and an editor at The Boston Globe and Boston Herald, among other publications. He founded the town's website in 1998, but also recognized a need for an independent, nonpartisan source of information. In 2006, he launched yourArlington. 

Dan has a Quick Take on the latest report on the state of local news by Penelope Muse Abernathy, who’s now at the Medill School at Northwestern University. The report has a lot of bad news, some good news, and some interesting information from The Boston Globe and from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which is one of the news outlets that we profile in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.” Ellen talks about another local startup, The Belmont Voice. The Voice has an impressive roster of advisers from the print and digital world.

Dan and Ellen talk with Priyanjana Bengani, a fellow in computational journalism at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia. Her work focuses on using computational techniques to research issues in digital media.

Her most recent project, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, focused on uncovering networks of “pink slime” local news outlets. There have been several iterations of pink slime sites over the years, such as the North Boston News. (There's no such place as "North Boston," by the way.) They get their name from the pinkish beef paste that is added to hamburger meat.

In Quick Takes, Dan revisits Press Forward, the $500 million philanthropic effort aimed at revitalizing local news. When Press Forward was announced a few months ago, many observers were worried that a national, top-down effort might clash with local needs and local concerns. Fortunately, Press Forward is now getting involved in the grassroots in an attempt to leverage its funding and help a wide range of local and regional news projects.

Ellen delves into a piece in Racket, an alternative news site in Minneapolis. (The What Works podcast with editor and co-owner Em Cassel can be found here.) Racket takes a steely-eyed look at Steve Grove, the new CEO and publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Just before taking the journalism job, Grove settled a lawsuit alleging he withheld public records from the press when he was a state government official.

Ellen and Dan talk with Meg Heckman, a colleague of ours at Northeastern University's school of journalism. Meg is an associate professor and author. She had a long career as a journalist. She spent more than a decade as a reporter and, later, the digital editor at the Concord (NH) Monitor, where she developed a fascination with presidential politics, a passion for local news and an appreciation for cars with four-wheel drive.

Her book, “Political Godmother: Nackey Scripps Loeb and the Newspaper That Shook the Republican Party,” documents the lasting impact of New Hampshire publisher and conservative activist Nackey Loeb. 

In Quick Takes, Ellen calls attention to a piece in ProPublica by journalist Dan Golden about his history working for the local daily in Springfield, Massachusetts. Turns out the good-old-days in newspapering weren't all good. Golden cautions against recreating them.

Dan takes a look back at an example of how diligent local news reporting can have an enormous impact nearly 45 years after the fact. Recently the EPA proposed a ban on trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent that’s been linked to leukemia, birth defects and other health problems. The road to that ban began in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1979, with a super-smart young reporter Dan had the honor of working with. Dan wrote about it here. 

Dan talks with Jason Pramas, executive director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and editor-in-chief of a new project called HorizonMass. (Ellen expects to return for the next episode.) Jason is a co-founder of BINJ, which partners with community publications on investigative stories and civic engagement initiatives, and offers training programs to promising young journalists. 

Now Jason is making a bold bet on the future of news by training a new generation of journalists. He's launching HorizonMass, a statewide digital news publication with a focus on public interest journalism. At HorizonMass, college interns work as reporters, designers, marketers, and editors. They work alongside more experienced professional freelance writers. 

Later on, in Quick Takes, Dan looks at some data about news referrals from social media giants, specifically Facebook and X, or Twitter, or whatever it is this week. Large news organizations had become reliant on both of those platforms while the sort of local news outlets that we track here at What Works were more dependent on Facebook alone. In any case, those days are drawing to a close, and it’s long past time for community journalists to be asking themselves: What’s next?

Dan and Ellen talk with Catherine Tumber, who was a former colleague of Dan's at The Boston Phoenix, a longtime friend, and a source for his 2013 book, "The Wired City." These days she’s an independent scholar and journalist who’s affiliated with the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She’s also a fellow at the MassINC Gateway Cities Innovation Institute and a contributing editor for The Baffler. 

She is the author of "Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World." She holds a PhD and a master's degree from the University of Rochester. She also has a bachelor's in social thought and political economy from UMass-Amherst. 

In our Quick Takes, Ellen is back on the Midwestern beat with good news about a startup weekly paper called the Denison Free Press in Iowa. It's scrappy as hell. Or heck, as they might say in Iowa. Dan has a rave for a new effort to inject $500 million into local news over the next five years. But that rave comes with a caveat. The initiative, known as Press Forward, brings together 22 different foundations in an effort to provide a significant amount of funding for community journalism. But there may be less to that effort than meets the eye.

Ellen and Dan talk with Paul Bass, the founder and former editor of the New Haven Independent. Bass is originally from White Plains, New York, but he arrived in New Haven in the late 1970s to attend Yale, and he has been reporting on all the quirks and glory of his adopted home town ever since.

Bass was the main subject of Dan's 2013 book, "The Wired City," and is one of the news entrepreneurs featured in our forthcoming book, "What Works in Community News."

Bass launched the New Haven Independent in 2005 as an online-only nonprofit. Last fall, Bass announced he was stepping aside as editor, handing the top job over to managing editor Tom Breen.

But he's continuing to play a role at the Independent and its multimedia arms, and he has just launched another venture: The Independent Review Crew, which features arts and culture reviews from all over, including right here in Boston.

Ellen has a Quick Take on the Texas Tribune, the much-admired nonprofit news outlet started by Evan Smith and others in Austin. The Tribune has been a model for other startups, so it rocked the world of local news last month when CEO Sonal Shah announced that 11 staffers had been laid off. Dan reports on another acquisition by Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund that has earned scorn for the way it manages its newspapers. Alden acquired four family-owned newspapers in Pennsylvania. Worse, the family members who actually ran the papers wanted to keep them, but they were outvoted by the rest of the family.