What Works: The Future of Local News

Dan and Ellen talk with Anne Galloway, the founder and editor-at-large of VTDigger in Vermont. Like many journalists, she was laid off in 2009 from her job as Sunday editor of the Rutland Herald and Times Argus. VTDigger, which is a nonprofit, started with a $16,000 budget with no employees. As she put it in a recent letter to readers, it has grown beyond her wildest dreams. It's the largest newsroom in Vermont. It has dozens of employees and more than 550,000 monthly readers. Galloway not only built the organization, she also wrote notable investigative pieces. Among other issues, she broke open a fraudulent scheme that involve developers at Jay Peak. Dan visited Galloway and wrote about the newsroom in his book, "The Return of the Moguls."

Ellen has a quick take on a study about the state of U.S. democracy from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The study says it's critical to fight disinformation, and advocates rebuilding trusted local news sources. Dan reports on a promising merger between public radio station KERA and the Denton Record-Chronicle, a daily newspaper that covers the suburbs north of Dallas. This move was facilitated by the National Trust for Local News, which raises money and connects legacy newspaper owners with possible buyers in order to keep them from either shutting down or falling into the hands of corporate chain owners. Our podcast with Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of the trust, can be found here.

Dan and Ellen talk with David Greising, the president and chief executive of the Better Government Association, a century-old civic nonprofit organization that is also home to a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom as part of a new collaboration with the Illinois Solution Partnership.

The new partnership is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. The BGA separates its investigations team and policy team, in order to wall off its journalism from its advocacy work. In May of 2022, Madison Hopkins of the BGA and Cecilia Reyes of the Chicago Tribune won the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting for an investigation of the city's history of failed building and fire-safety code enforcement, which proved lethal many times over.

Dan has a Quick Take on a new development at the Provincetown Independent. Co-founder and editor Ed Miller was a guest on the What Works podcast earlier this year. The Indie is trying something really interesting: A direct public offering, or DPO.

Ellen has a Quick Take on the INNY's -- the Institute of Nonprofit News Awards. A reporter named Sally Kestin won for best investigative journalism in a small newsroom. We're talking really small: She works for the Asheville Watchdog, a nonprofit news outlet in North Carolina with only one paid employee. The rest are retired journalists, many of them quite well-known. Kestin won the 2013 Pulitzer for Public Service at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Dan and Ellen talk with Hermione Malone, vice president of strategy and startups for the American Journalism Project. The AJP describes itself as a nonprofit venture philanthropy organization that focuses on supporting the future of local news. The AJP makes grants to nonprofit news organizations, partners with communities to launch new organizations, and coaches leaders as they grow and sustain their newsrooms.

Hermione oversees local philanthropy partnerships. In that role, she helps nonprofit news startups get started, and nurtures coalitions of community stakeholders and local philanthropies. Her career has included work in diversity and inclusion and in community outreach. As executive director of Go.Be, a New Orleans-based nonprofit, she coached businesses owned by people of color and women, helping them figure out how to grow.

Dan has a Quick Take on new research by Josh Stearns, senior director of the Public Square Program at the Democracy Fund. Josh has fresh evidence that shows that local news is vital for democracy. Ellen's Quick Take is on Permian Proud, a pink-slime site put up by Chevron that provides a gusher of one-sided PR spin.

Finally, don't miss the Masterman Lecture at Suffolk University on September 29. Dan is on the panel, discussing "The Decline of Local News and the Rise of Polarization."

Dan and Ellen talk with Ethan Zuckerman, associate professor of public policy, communication and information at UMass-Amherst. He's also founder of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure, which is studying how to build alternatives to the commercial internet. And Ethan co-founded a local news initiative with global reach, a blogging community called Global Voices.

An alum of the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard and the MIT Media Lab, he is the author of two books. The latest is titled "Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them." It's a powerful look at the rise of mistrust in institutions, especially media, and how that mistrust is provoking a crisis for representative democracy.

Dan has a Quick Take on Brian McGrory's announcement that he will step down as editor of The Boston Globe to become director of the journalism program at Boston University. Ellen checks out The Daily Catch, a hyperlocal news outlook covering Red Hook, New York.

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.