Dan and Ellen talk with Terrence Williams, president and COO of The Keene Sentinel in Keene, New Hampshire, one of the oldest newspapers in the country. Terry and The Keene Sentinel are the creators of the Radically Rural conference, now in its fifth year, which will be held later in September. The conference looks at issues such as housing, farming, the environment and — most important to us — community journalism. Dan has a Quick Take on The Salt Lake Tribune's new venture, called Mormon Land. Ellen highlights a podcast called Shevotes, which recounts the battle for suffrage and recounts historic efforts at voter suppression. Award-winning journalists Ellen Goodman and Lynn Sherr cohost, and actress Christine Baranski makes a contribution, too.

Dan and Ellen dive into their reporter's notebooks, catching up with NJ Spotlight News, the Lexington Observer, the transition at The Texas Tribune, and the turmoil at the Iowa Graphic-Advocate (both of them). Dan recaps Gannett's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and Ellen has a rave for Emily Rooney's Beat The Press podcast and her interview with legendary WCVB-TV news anchor Natalie Jacobson.

Dan and Ellen talk with Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of the National Trust for Local News. She is also a senior research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School in New York. At the Tow Center, Dr. Hansen Shapiro’s work focuses on the future of local journalism and the policies needed to assure that future. Her research involves audience engagement and revenue strategies, as well as the relationship between news and social platforms. She holds a PhD in organizational behavior from Harvard Business School.

The National Trust for Local News is a nonprofit that is dedicated to "keeping local news in local hands." The Trust works with local news publishers, philanthropists, and socially conscious investors, and as Dan has reported, worked with other collaborators to buy 24 weekly and monthly newspapers in Colorado, perhaps saving them from hedge fund ownership.

Dan has a Quick Take on local media people who are starting to fight back against the abuse they’re receiving from some of the more sociopathic members of their audience. Ellen weighs in on the death of Tim Giago, the founder of the first independently owned Native American newspaper in the United States, and dives back in to the Dumpster fire in the newsroom of the Aspen Times in Colorado. 

Dan and Ellen talk with Tim Coco, president and general manager of Public Media of New England. Coco is known for his work as a journalist and advertising executive. He oversees day-to-day operations at the low-power FM station WHAV, which can be found at 97.9 on the radio dial if you happen to be in the Haverhill area. The station also streams at WHAV.net.

WHAV was launched in 1947 by the Haverhill Gazette newspaper under the auspices of a publisher who was distantly related to the Taylor family, which then owned The Boston Globe. Coco revived the station about 15 years ago and converted it to a nonprofit, low-power FM station in 2014. 

Ellen has a Quick Take on $2 million in grants awarded to seven nonpartisan news outlets in Georgia. All are led by people of color, and all serve diverse audiences. The money, which comes from The Pivot Fund, could be transformational. 

Dan's Quick Take is on The Herald-Tribune. No, not that Herald-Tribune. This is the Herald-Tribune of Sarasota, Florida, which had to apologize after publishing a guest op-ed in praise of the Proud Boys, the far-right group that was part of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. It's a doozy.

Dan and Ellen talk with Steve Waldman, the president and co-founder of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered communities. Steve came up with the concept in 2014 and joined forces with The Ground Truth Project to launch RFA in 2017. In the projects we're reporting on for this podcast and for our book, "What Works: The Future of Local News," we've run across a number of RFA corps members. They usually have a couple of years of experience but are relatively new to the business, although there are a few near retirement age, too.

Steve has a deep background in magazine journalism. He was national editor of U.S. News & World Report, and national correspondent for Newsweek. He went on to co-found a multi-faith religion website, Beliefnet.com, which won a National Magazine Award. He is also founder and coordinator of the Rebuild Local News Coalition, and he's crafted some interesting proposals for how government can help revitalize local journalism while preserving editorial independence. 

Dan has a Quick Take on the happy conclusion to a bizarre situation involving a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Last fall, Josh Renaud reported that a flaw in a database maintained by the state of Missouri allowed for public access to thousands of Social Security numbers. Incredibly, the state’s governor, Mike Parson, denounced Renaud as a “hacker,” and a criminal investigation was begun. It was absolutely outrageous, and now Renaud has been recognized with a national freedom-of-the-press award. And Ellen takes it all back about Ogden Newspapers, which purchased The Aspen Times late last year but has surpressed coverage and prompted a number of staff resignations.

Dan and Ellen talk with John Garrett, who, along with his wife, Jennifer, started the monthly Community Impact Newspaper in 2005 in Texas. They had three full-time employees and covered two towns in Texas, Round Rock and Pflugerville.

Community Impact expanded into Arizona and Tennessee, and by 2018, Forbes reported, the Garretts had 220 employees and annual revenue of $27 million. They have an online presence, of course, but they also believe in print: their newspapers are distributed by mail every month. They even opened their own printing plant to handle their newspaper and other jobs. They have a sign out front that says: "Print Ain't Dead." But as we prepared for this podcast, John told us they've just made some tough decisions. They sold their Phoenix operations and closed their small Nashville outlet. They've decided to focus on Texas, where their business is doing well, and they have fresh plans for the future there. 

Dan and Ellen devote the entire Quick Takes segment of the podcast to the Muzzle Awards, a Fourth of July roundup of outrages against freedom of speech and of the press in the six New England states. The awards were conceived of by Dan's friend and occasional collaborator Harvey Silverglate, the noted Boston civil liberties lawyer. For many years, they were published by the late, lamented Boston Phoenix. They've been hosted by GBH News since 2013, and this year marks the 25th anniversary.

Dan and Ellen talk with Mike Deehan, a savvy Boston journalist who is part of the new Axios Boston newsletter. Mike's colleague at Axios Boston, Steph Solis, was scheduled to join the discussion but was out reporting on reaction to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Deehan and Solis have been reporting on Massachusetts news and politics for a number of years. Mike was formerly digital content editor for State House News Service, editor of Massterlist, and worked for the Dorchester Reporter. Steph worked for Masslive, and was an immigration reporter for the USA Today Network. The Axios Boston debut was newsy and a perfect smart-phone scroll, whether the MBTA is running or not.

Dan has a Quick Take on the soaring cost of newsprint. Print is still important to the bottom line at most newspapers, and this turns out to be one more blow to local news. Ellen looks at a new rural news network being set up through the Institute of Nonprofit News. 

Ellen and Dan talk with Hanna Raskin, founder and editor of The Food Section, a Substack newsletter devoted to covering restaurants and trends in food across the South. Before starting her Substack last year, Hanna was food editor and critic for eight years at the family-owned Charleston Post & Courier in South Carolina.

Hanna also covered food for alternative weeklies, including the Mountain XPress in Asheville, North Carolina, and Seattle Weekly. 

Dan offers a Quick Take on The Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit news project that finally made its long-awaited debut. He wishes them all good luck but has some issues with their business model, which includes a hard paywall.

Ellen's Quick Take is on a Pew Research Center study on trends in digital circulation at locally focused publications. The bottom line: digital is trending up, print circulation continues to tank, and readers are spending less time on site. 

Dan and Ellen talk with their colleague at Northeastern University, Dr. Meredith Clark. Dr. Clark is an associate professor in the School of Journalism & the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern. Before arriving at Northeastern, she was a faculty fellow at Data & Society, an independent nonprofit research organization based in New York that examines some of the questions being raised by the massive increase in the use of data in all aspects of society.

Dr. Clark's research is on the intersections of race, media, and power, and she's studied everything from newsroom hiring and reporting practices to social media communities. Her media diet is wide-ranging and eclectic. Our interview touches on many cultural icons, including poet Audre Lorde and Captain Olivia Benson, the fictional "Law & Order SVU" crime solver.

In Quick Takes, Dan discusses Gannett's recent move to dismantle some of the chain's regional editorial pages and Ellen tips the hat to two of the 2022 recipients of the prestigious Freedom of the Press Award, Wendi C. Thomas, founding editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, and Mukhtar Ibrahim, founding publisher and CEO of Sahan Journal.

Both Steve and Linda had long and productive careers at The Boston Globe. Steve worked for 15 years as a staff writer and columnist, writing about cities and towns north of Boston. He was also editor of the Jewish Advocate.

Linda worked at the Globe for 36 years. During her extensive career, she did a little bit of everything, from  investigative reporting to feature writing to spot news.

Dan shares a Quick Take on the Uvalde Leader-News, a twice-weekly paper that not only had the difficult task of covering the school shootings that claimed the lives of 21 people but that was also a victim of those shootings. Here's a link to Rachel Monroe's riveting New Yorker story on Uvalde and its aftermath, as well as the emotional remarks by US Senator Amy Klobuchar and others at a memorial in Washington for victims of gun violence. 

Ellen discusses the ethical dilemma posed by the Online News Association's new "3M Truth in Science Award." (Teresa Carr broke the story in Undark and NiemanLab.) Ellen reached out to longtime science journalist Judy Foreman to get her perspective.