What Works

By Dan Kennedy

If we’ve learned anything about news publishing in recent years, it’s that the giant tech platforms are not our friends. Google is embracing artificial intelligence, which means that searching for something will soon provide you with robot-generated answers (right or wrong!), thus reducing the need to click through. Facebook is moving away from news. Twitter/X has deteriorated badly under the chaotic leadership of Elon Musk, although it still has enough clout that President Biden used it to announce he was ending his re-election campaign.

So what should publishers do instead? It’s no secret — they’re already doing it. They are using email newsletters to drive their audience to their journalism. A recent post by Andrew Rockway and Dylan Sanchez for LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers reports that 95% of member publishers are offering newsletters, up from 81% in 2022. “The decline in referral traffic,” they write, “will likely lead to more direct engagement by publishers with their audiences.”

Some observers worry about newsletter overload as our inboxes fill up with email we may never get around to reading. That’s potentially a problem, but I think it’s a more serious problem for larger outlets, many of which send out multiple newsletters throughout the day and risk reaching a point of diminishing returns. By contrast, users will value one daily newsletter from their hyperlocal news project with links to the latest stories.

Newsletters are crucial to the success that Ellen Clegg and I have seen both in the projects we write about in our book, “What Works in Community News,” and on our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News.” Essentially, we’ve seen three newsletter strategies.

• By far the most common approach publishers use is to offer a free newsletter aimed at driving users to their website, which may be free or subscription-based. The Massachusetts-based Bedford Citizen, for instance, sends out a daily newsletter generated by its RSS feed and a weekly human-curated newsletter. The Citizen is a free nonprofit, but once they’ve enticed you with their top-of-the-funnel newsletter, they hope they can lure you into becoming a paying member. Ellen and I interviewed executive director Teri Morrow and editor Wayne Braverman on our podcast last February.
• The Colorado Sun, a statewide nonprofit, offers a series of free and paid newsletters, while the website itself is free. The paid newsletters represent an unusual twist: Some of them feature deeper reporting than you can get from the website on topics such as politics, climate change and outdoor recreation. At $22 a month for a premium membership, users pay no more than they would for a digital subscription to a  daily newspaper. Editor Larry Ryckman talked about that in our most recent podcast.
• In some places, the newsletter is the publication. An example of that is Burlington Buzz, a daily newsletter that covers Burlington, Massachusetts. Founder, publisher and editor Nicci Kadilak recently switched her newsletter platform from Substack to Indiegraf, and her homepage looks a lot like a standard community website — which shows that it’s a mistake to get too caught up on categories when newsletters have websites and websites have newsletters. Ellen and I talked with Nicci last year.

What’s crucial is that news publishers have direct control of the tools that they use to connect with their audience. Gone are the days when we could rely on Facebook and Twitter to reliably deliver readers to us. We have to go find them — and give them a reason to keep coming back.

Correction: Burlington Buzz has moved to Indiegraf, not Ghost.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Dan and Ellen talk to Larry Ryckman, editor and co-founder of The Colorado Sun, the subject of a chapter that Dan wrote for our book, “What Works in Community News.” The Sun was launched by journalists who worked at The Denver Post, which had been cut and cut and cut under the ownership of Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that the Post staff called “vulture capitalists.”

The Sun was founded as a for-profit public benefit corporation. A PBC is a legal designation covering for-profit organizations that serve society in some way. Among other things, a PBC is under no fiduciary obligation to enrich its owners and may instead plow revenues back into the enterprise. And we’ve found that for-profit models are rare in the world of news startups. But that changed last year, when the Sun joined its nonprofit peers. Ryckman explains.

Dan gives a listen to a New York Times podcast with Robert Putnam, the Harvard University political scientist who wrote “Bowling Alone” some years back. In a fascinating 40 minutes, Putnam talks about his work in trying to build social capital. He never once mentions local news, but there are important intersections between his ideas and what our podcast and book are focused on.

Ellen reports on an important transition at Sahan Journal in Minnesota, one of the projects we wrote about in our book. The founding CEO and publisher, Mukhtar Ibrahim, is moving on and a successor has been named. Starting in September, Vanan Murugesan will be leading Sahan. He has experience in the nonprofit sector and also has experience in public media.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Our Reinventing Local TV News project, which is part of Northeastern’s School of Journalism, is getting a lot of attention from the trade publication Editor & Publisher. Professor Mike Beaudet, who heads the project, is the subject of a feature story in E&P and is the guest on this week’s E&P vodcast.

Beaudet, who’s also an investigative reporter with WCVB-TV (Channel 5), tells E&P’s Gretchen Peck and Mike Blinder that the goal is to come up with new ways of storytelling to appeal to younger audiences — a demographic that gets its news almost entirely by smartphone rather than a traditional television screen. Here’s how Beaudet puts it in an interview with Peck:

People are cutting the cord, and the whole idea of having “appointment television” has gone out the window, especially for younger people. That’s the challenge: We can’t rely on this audience to find local TV like you could in years past, as they get older, because they’re not consuming content the same way.

Mike and his collaborator, Professor John Wihbey, presented at our What Works local news conference at Northeastern last March. Given that local television is in relatively good financial health compared to the newspaper business, it’s vitally important that people like Beaudet and Wihbey come up with solutions before the problems of an aging audience become acute.

By Ellen Clegg

Sewell Chan’s illustrious career has taken him across the country and across the pond. He has served as a reporter and editor in Washington, New York, London, Los Angeles — and, most recently, the nation-state of Texas as editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune.

Now, he’s returning home. Chan, who grew up in New York City, will join the Columbia Journalism Review, which is published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, as executive editor in September. In business since 1961, CJR — now primarily digital — has been without a top editor since Kyle Pope left in 2023 to become executive director of strategic initiatives at Covering Climate Now. New York Times media writer Katie Robertson has more here.

The Texas Tribune is featured in our book, “What Works in Community News.” Because co-author Dan Kennedy and I wanted to visit every community we wrote about, I flew to Austin in July 2022 during the tail end of a COVID spike to interview Chan and outgoing CEO Evan Smith at the Tribune’s downtown headquarters.

Although the office had gone hybrid and was sparsely populated, both men were generous with their time, recounting the history of the pioneering digital site and talking passionately about their mission. Among many other cogent observations about our business, Smith also schooled me about the “blessings of the 40 Acres,” a nickname for the University of Texas’ Austin campus. And my interview with Chan was a reunion of sorts: He wrote for The Boston Globe’s City Weekly section, which I edited, when he was a student at Harvard University.

The only child of parents who immigrated from China, Chan grew up in New York City and attended Hunter College High School, a publicly funded school known as a destination for bright and creative students. He began his professional journalism career as a local reporter at The Washington Post in 2000 and moved on to a long stint at The New York Times, where he was a metro reporter, Washington correspondent, deputy op-ed editor and international news editor.

In 2018, he moved west to become a deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, reporting directly to Times executive editor Norman Pearlstine, who was installed after billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the Times that year and began rebuilding the beleaguered newsroom. Chan ultimately became editorial page editor at the Times, where he directed coverage that won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2021 for editorials on the California criminal justice system. Chan and his staff published a noteworthy editorial that apologized for past failures in coverage on race, as part of a larger series.

But Soon-Shiong proved to be a reckless and erratic owner, and Chan ended up leaving to start over in the Lone Star State. When he began his job at the Tribune in October 2021, Chan wanted to focus on disinformation, the role of media, and the state of democracy. That meant getting outside the blue bubble of Austin.

“I really feel that the crisis in our democracy is not going to be fixed from the coasts,” he told me. “We need to help restore America from the inside out, if you will, and from the bottom up.” He wanted to diversify the Tribune’s readership and re-center “the Texas part of the Tribune. We’re not The Austin Tribune, we’re The Texas Tribune.”

He also wanted to venture beyond political coverage, explaining that “there are a lot of issues — from broadband access to health care — that are particular to rural areas. A lot of publications don’t cover them very well.”

He added: “We are not trying to change Texas. We would like, however, to improve the functioning of democracy in Texas, and we do that by shining the light of accountability and by holding power to account.” Chan was able to add bureaus in outlying towns during his three-year tenure — although the Tribune also weathered its first round of layoffs and a union drive.

Before I interviewed Smith and Chan, I had already played tourist in Austin: I waited 90 minutes in line on a 100-degree day to sample the brisket at Franklin Barbecue. (Worth it!) I toured the State Capitol, which has oil portraits of Texas luminaries like Vice President John Nance Garner, David Crockett, U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan and Gov. Ann Richards.

Chan suggested that I continue my sightseeing and offered to play host. So the day after our interview, he picked me up in his car and we headed for the LBJ Presidential Library. It’s an active research center, and a tour guide told us that Lady Bird used to come into her office at the library, which was on exhibit, to work. We also stopped in at the Harry Ransom Center to see one of the few intact copies of the Gutenberg Bible. The lure of movable type runs deep.

Chan’s leadership comes at an important moment for CJR. At a time when news outlets compete with any number of platforms and pretenders slinging disinformation, the journal is an essential voice that can remind the public of the role of the fourth estate in sustaining a democratic way of life that sometimes feels all too fragile.

By Dan Kennedy

Every reporter knows that the proper relationship between journalism and government is arm’s-length, even adversarial. Our job is to hold elected officials to account, not ask them for handouts.

So why were 10 publishers, journalists, academics, and advocates on Beacon Hill (in person and virtually) on Wednesday asking for the creation of a state commission that could propose ways of helping news organizations? The answer: The local news crisis has become so acute that it’s time to consider some unconventional approaches.

Read the rest at CommonWealth Beacon.

Well, this was fun. Ellen and Dan recently spoke with Charlotte Henry, the U.K.-based host of “The Addition,” a podcast about tech, media and politics. Charlotte turns out to be a sharp interviewer with a sense of humor, so we hope you’ll give it a listen. Here’s part one, and here’s part two. Of course, you can also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

On the new “What Works” podcast, Ellen and Dan talk with Peter Bhatia.  Bhatia is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who is now chief executive officer of the Houston Landing, a nonprofit, non-partisan, no-paywall local news site that launched in spring of 2023. He has also been editor and vice president at the Detroit Free Press, from 2017-2023, and served as a regional editor for Gannett, supervising newsrooms in Michigan and Ohio.

His résumé includes helping lead newsrooms that won 10 Pulitzer Prizes. He is the first journalist of South Asian heritage to lead a major daily newspaper in the U.S. He has also been involved in some recent controversies, and, as you’ll hear, he doesn’t shy away from talking about them.

In Quick Takes, Dan talks about an important press-freedom case in Mississippi. The former governor, Phil Bryant, is suing Mississippi Today over its Pulitzer Prize-winning series on a state welfare scandal that got national attention and even managed to touch former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. Bryant says he needs access to Today’s internal documents in order to prove his libel case, and a state judge has agreed. Mississippi Today has decided to take the case to the state Supreme Court. It’s a risk, because it will set a precedent in the Magnolia State — for better or worse.

Ellen highlights an interview with Alicia Bell, the director of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy. Bell talked to Editor & Publisher about her upcoming report on what it will take to build a thriving local news ecosystem for BIPOC communities across the country. Her estimate: it will take somewhere between $380 million to $7.1 billion annually to truly fund BIPOC journalism across the U.S. That’s a big number, but Borealis is a pioneer in this space, and it’s important research as national efforts like Press Forward roll out.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

By Dan Kennedy

As I noted previously, the Massachusetts legislature is taking another crack at forming a local news commission after its first attempt disappeared into the ether several years ago. On Wednesday, I was one of 10 academics, publishers and advocates who testified in favor of such a commission before the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses. If you want to catch up on what happened, two reporters were there as well.

Chris Lisinsky of State House News Service writes:

Tax credits for local publishers, grant funding for news organizations, and state-covered wages for recently graduated reporters who cover underserved communities are all on the table as Massachusetts lawmakers consider how best to support the ailing local journalism industry.

And here’s how Aidan Ryan of The Boston Globe begins his story:

The crisis facing local news is ravaging civic life everywhere — even in Massachusetts — a parade of journalists told legislators on Wednesday, as they called on state government to take steps, including considering tax breaks, to support struggling local newsrooms.

Our Northeastern colleagues in the School of Journalism, the College of Social Sciences and Humanities and Khoury College of Computer Science are making a major announcement about a polling initiative to help local newsrooms during the upcoming election season. Please see the information below.

Empowering local journalism through enhanced capacity for local and state-level surveys

In partnership with Knight Foundation and the Knight Election Hub, Northeastern University is offering to boost polling capacity for newsrooms during election season. At no cost to newsrooms, our social science and data team at Northeastern University, building on a multi-year runway of state-level polling with support from the National Science Foundation, is offering to conduct two waves of surveys during the 2024 election season. Survey questions and directions will be co-created in partnership between the academic and news teams. 

To be eligible, please sign up here through the Knight Election Hub: https://www.knightelectionhub.org/ 

And feel free to email us if you are interested and want to learn more: j.wihbey@northeastern.edu

More details:

Northeastern University has developed the capacity for conducting low-cost, large-scale surveys, based on our experiences with our COVID States Project/Chip50 (see https://www.chip50.org/about-us.) Our project has, since April 2020, surveyed around 25,000 Americans, across all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, approximately every 6-8 weeks. With the support of the NSF, NIH, and a handful of foundations, we have conducted 1400+ state-level surveys since April, 2020, producing 100+ public facing reports and a wide set of “data dashboards.” 

We are now running a pilot project involving 10 newsrooms in 10 states (including all swing states). We are currently planning on conducting two surveys during the summer/fall of 2024, as supported by the National Science Foundation. The objective would be to partner with those newsrooms to establish: (1) what are broad policy questions relevant to the election that all/most of the newsrooms would be interested in; (2) what are policy questions relevant to the election distinctive to their state. We would meet with representatives of partner newsrooms before each of the two survey waves, working with them to translate their questions regarding public opinion into survey questions, which we would then field with our two existing surveys; and produce one long report regarding the policy issue of general interest (where we would have state-specific numbers, but also numbers for every state + DC); plus short reports summarizing findings.

We are also looking to continue this work after the 2024 election, and so an ongoing set of newsroom partnerships is an aspiration. 

The survey team is led by computational/data scientists and journalism faculty at Northeastern University. Lead faculty are: David Lazer, d.lazer@northeastern.edu ; and John Wihbey, j.wihbey@northeastern.edu.

If you have any questions about the Knight Election Hub, please reach out to elections24@knightfoundation.org.

By Dan Kennedy

There’s big news in the world of hyperlocal journalism this week: Kate Maxwell, the co-founder and publisher of The Mendocino Voice in Northern California, is moving on. The Voice, which is nominally a for-profit, is becoming part of the nonprofit Bay City News Foundation, which, according to an announcement on Tuesday, “will allow both organizations to expand the geographic reach and depth of their public service reporting.”

In a message to readers, Maxwell writes that “as part of this new chapter, I’ve chosen to move on from my role as publisher.” No word as to what she’ll do next. She adds:

Thanks to your support, we’ve published nearly 5,000 articles, reached millions of readers, created living wage jobs for experienced local reporters, held government officials accountable, received national funding and awards, and shared important Mendocino stories with readers around the state and country. Most importantly, we’ve been able to provide the diverse communities in Mendocino with news that’s been useful to you, our friends and neighbors.

Although the Voice will continue as a standalone free website, it will do so without either of the co-founders. The site’s first editor, Adrian Fernandez Baumann, left several years ago. Here’s part of an FAQ explaining what the change will mean for readers:

This partnership will give The Mendocino Voice the stability to maintain its news operation and support its journalists. It’ll create a regional network all along the coast as well as the inland areas and give reporters the opportunity to grow. It’s a promise of long-term sustainability. Joining with Bay City News Foundation means that we’ll have the capacity for deeper coverage of environmental issues, plus more resources for bringing you that news, including more photographers, data journalists and round-the-clock editors.

The Mendo Voice was the first project I visited in my reporting for “What Works in Community News.” I was on the ground during the first week of March in 2020, and we all know what happened that week. I covered an event the Voice hosted at a local brewpub on Super Tuesday, which I reported on for GBH News. Two days later, I was on hand as Maxwell and Baumann reported on a news conference to announce the first measures being taken in response to what was then called the “novel coronavirus.” The nationwide shutdown loomed.

The reason I wanted to include The Mendo Voice in the book that Ellen and I were writing was that Maxwell and Baumann were planning to convert the project they had founded in 2016 to a cooperative form of ownership. “We are going to be owned by our readers and our staff,” Maxwell told the Super Tuesday gathering. “We think that’s the best way to be sustainable and locally owned.”

After years of following a nascent news co-op in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which ultimately failed to launch, I was intrigued. Unfortunately, the co-op that Maxwell and Baumann envisioned did not come to pass, either. COVID-19 wreaked havoc with their plans, though the Voice continued to publish and provide “useful news for all of Mendocino.”  Baumann took a personal leave that ended up becoming permanent. And Maxwell was unable to move ahead with the community meetings she had envisioned to make the co-op a reality. “I think we basically had a year’s worth of events that we were planning,” she told me in 2022.

By then, the Voice was essentially operating as a hybrid — a for-profit that had a relationship with a nonprofit organization that allowed for tax-deductible donations to support the Voice’s reporting. Eventually, she said, the site was likely to move toward a more traditional nonprofit model.

The co-op idea is an interesting one, but to this day I’m not aware of a successful example at the local level. The Defector has made it work, but that’s a national project. In Akron, Ohio, The Devil Strip, an arts-focused magazine and website, tried for a while but then collapsed in an ugly fashion.

Maxwell and Baumann, two young journalists who launched The Mendocino Voice after leaving jobs at Mendo County newspapers being destroyed by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, built something of lasting value. Best wishes to both of them.