What Works: The Future of Local News

Dan and Ellen talk with Jeff Jacoby , longtime columnist for The Boston Globe Opinion Pages . Jeff also writes the weekly "Arguable" newsletter. Jeff holds degrees from George Washington University and from Boston University Law School, and before entering journalism, he briefly practiced law. He was also an assistant to Dr. John Silber , the prickly president of Boston University.  Prompted by a...

Dan and Ellen talk with David Cicilline , who represents the First District of Rhode Island in Congress.  Cicilline, who is a Democrat, is part of a bipartisan group of US representatives and senators sponsoring the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.   Co-sponsors include Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota; Republican Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana; Republican congressm...

Dan and Ellen talk with David Dahl , editor of The Maine Monitor.   David was most recently a deputy managing editor at The Boston Globe. Among his jobs at The Globe: directing hyperlocal Your Town coverage.  The pull of Maine was strong, however. He and his wife, Kathy, have a home in Friendship, Maine. When he decided that he was ready to turn the page, he looked Down East. Dan has a Quick Take...

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 n...

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 po...

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 sustai...

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 Berkma...

Dan and Ellen talk with Terrence Williams , president and COO of The Keene Sentine l 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 —...

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 Natali...

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 engag...

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 Have...

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...

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 o...

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...

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...

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 rais...

Dan and Ellen talk with  Steve Rosenberg , editor of the Jewish Journal in Massachusetts, and Linda Matchan , who was named associate editor in February.  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 G...

Dan and Ellen talk with Professor Otis Sanford ,  who is something of a journalistic legend in Memphis. As a general assignment reporter at The Commercial Appeal in 1977, Sanford covered the death of Elvis Presley . He also covered courts, county government and politics before being promoted into management. After stints at the Pittsburgh Press and Detroit Free Press, Sanford returned to The Comme...

Kara Meyberg Guzman is CEO and co-founder of Santa Cruz Local in California. Before the Local, she was managing editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel. She left her job at the Sentinel, which is owned by Alden Global Capital's Media News Group, in 2018, citing differences with the company's management. Kara connected with another former Sentinel reporter, Stephen Baxter , and the two of them hatched a...

In this Encore Edition of What Works, freelance investigative journalist Julie Reynolds talks about her singular pursuit of the truth about Alden Global Capital, the secretive New York hedge fund that has gobbled up newspapers across the country, stripping assets and firing reporters. Reynolds connects the dots from Alden to Cerberus Capital Management , the "shadow bank" that backed Alden's recen...

Jonathan Dotan is founding director of The Starling Lab for Data Integrity at Stanford University. The lab focuses on tools to help historians, legal experts and journalists protect images, text and other data from bad actors who want to manipulate that data to create deep fakes or expunge it altogether.  He has founded and led a number of digital startups, he worked at the Motion Picture Associat...

Kristen Hare is a journalist, media watcher and faculty member at Poynter Institute in Florida. Kristen not only documents trends in our beleaguered industry, but she also teaches local journalists the critical skills they need to cover their communities effectively. Before joining Poynter's faculty, she spent eight years covering local news for Poynter's website. In addition to all of this, she a...

Mike Shapiro is the founder and CEO of TAPinto, a network of more than 85 online local news sites in New Jersey, New York and Florida. Shapiro launched TAPInto in 2008. Back then it was called TheAlternativePress.com and the goal was to build a network of hyperlocal news sites covering New Jersey towns. His core idea is relatively simple. Would-be editors and publishers are actually franchisees. T...

Ed Miller is co-founder and editor of the weekly Provincetown Independent . Founded in October 2019, the weekly competes with Gannett's Provincetown Banner . The Independent covers Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet and Eastham and Miller explains why he believes that a print-centric strategy is essential on the tip of the Cape.  The Independent is a hybrid organization — a for-profit public benefit c...

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 an...