Episode 111: Jennifer Peter
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan and Ellen talk with who was named editor-in-chief of in September of 2025. The Marshall Project is a national nonprofit that covers issues related to criminal justice. She's only the third editor in 10 years, replacing Susan Chira, a former New York Times editor. Peter started her career as a reporter, working for 12 years at newspapers in Idaho, Connecticut and Virginia before joining The Associated Press in Boston. From the AP, she moved to The Globe, where she rose quickly through the ranks. She was regional editor, politics editor, and city editor. As metro editor, she...
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Episode 110: Chris Fitzsimon
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan and Ellen talk with Chris Fitzsimon, publisher and CEO of , the nation's largest nonprofit news organization covering state government. Chris is also the host of a new podcast called . Recent topics on his pod include the impact of Medicaid cuts, ICE detention, and redistricting. Fitzsimon knows his way around state politics. From 2004 to 2017, he directed a team of seven journalists at the , which he founded. He also hosted a weekly radio show and wrote a syndicated column on North Carolina politics and government. From 1991 to 1994, he was the spokesperson, speechwriter and...
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Episode 109: Todd Landfried
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan and Ellen talk with , co-founder and CEO of . As consumers cut the cord on cable TV, he hopes to develop a sustainable model for local news production. We know from our research here at What Works that local television news is still . His mission: to reinvent local news for the streaming era. Ellen is back and fully bionic after a short hiatus for knee replacement surgery. Dan has a Quick Take about a finding in a recent by that gets into how to think about raising money. LION, as most of our listeners know, stands for Local Independent Online News. Anyway, its latest...
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Episode 108: Krichko and Keller
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan talks with , the founder of , a beautifully crafted premium print publication devoted to grassroots storytelling across the globe. Kade describes himself as a world wanderer with a knack for misadventure. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, ESPN, VICE, and Outside, among other publications. He admits to loving a good story, and writes, "If the tale has a pulse, I'm listening." Kade is a Northeastern University graduate, and a part-time lecturer in the School of Journalism. He created and taught a course in Sports, Media and Digital Storytelling. Dan also checks in with...
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Episode 107: Rick Goldsmith
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan is flying solo this week because Ellen is recovering from knee-replacement surgery. But fear not — she’s behind the scenes making sure this episode gets recorded properly, and she edited what you are listening to. She’ll be back on the air soon. Our guest is , a veteran filmmaker who has taken a close look at the state of corporate journalism in America. His “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink” tells the story of , the secretive hedge fund that has bought up many of our greatest newspapers and stripped them of their real estate and slashed their newsrooms. He...
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Episode 106: Tracy Baim
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan and Ellen talk with , a Chicago-based journalist who directed the recently published LGBTQ+ , which tracks LGBTQ news outlets across the country. The LGBTQ+ Media Mapping Project was created in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, the Local Media Foundation, News Is Out and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. The project surfaced 107 LGBTQ media outlets in total, 80 of which responded to the survey. According to the accompanying report: “While they may have few similarities, there are several common denominators: Most are in need of additional resources to...
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Episode 105: Bill Marx
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan and Ellen are back from summer break and talk with , the editor-in-chief of the . For four decades, he has written about arts and culture for print, broadcast and online outlets. He has regularly reviewed theater for the public station WBUR and the Boston Globe. He is a founder of , a new organization that aims to foster thoughtful, well-crafted book criticism in community news media across the country. Bill created and edited WBUR Online Arts, a cultural webzine that in 2004 won an Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism. Until recently, he taught a class on writing arts...
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Episode 104: Katherine Rowlands
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan and Ellen talk with , who runs Bay City News Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit that publishes journalism for the Greater San Francisco Bay Area at and . And by the way, this is the last podcast until September. Bay City News Foundation acquired The Mendocino Voice and took it nonprofit a little more than a year ago. Dan reported on the Voice for our book, and was visiting in March of 2020 when ... well, you know what happened then. Rowlands also is owner and publisher of , a regional news wire supplying original journalism for the whole media ecosystem in her area, from TV...
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Episode 103: Stacy Feldman
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan and Ellen talk with , founder and publisher of Boulder Reporting Lab. The Lab is a nonprofit newsroom covering Boulder, Colorado. She launched the Lab in late 2021 to fill critical gaps in news coverage in a state where newspapers have been gobbled up by Alden Global Capital, a secretive hedge fund. Alden is known for gutting papers, not growing them. Stacy was co-founder and executive editor of , a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit newsroom focused on the climate crisis. She developed her plans for the Boulder Reporting Lab during a fellowship at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her...
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Episode 102: Rahul Bhargava
What Works: The Future of Local News
Dan and Ellen talk with , a colleague at Northeastern University. Rahul is a professor who crosses boundaries: the boundaries of storytelling and data, the boundaries of deep dives into collaborative research and interactive museum exhibits and plays. He holds a master's degree in media arts and science from MIT, and a bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. But he also minored in multimedia production. He brings the power of big data research to the masses, through newsroom workshops, interactive museum exhibits, and more. Rahul has...
info_outlineDan and Ellen talk with April Alonso, co-founder and digital editor of Cicero Independiente outside of Chicago.
Cicero Independiente and MuckRock won the 2024 Victor McElheny Award for Local Science Journalism, awarded by MIT's Knight Science Journalism Program, for an investigation of air quality called "The Air We Breathe."
April has an extensive background as a multimedia content creator. She was a multimedia fellow for the Chicago Reporter, and served as a multimedia content creator for La Verdad, a bilingual podcast.
Dan has a Quick Take about a town north of Vancouver, in British Columbia, that has learned a bitter lesson about Canada’s law forcing Facebook’s parent company, Meta, to pay for news. The law has led to a rise in disinformation with fewer effective ways to combat it. Meta’s greed is at the heart of this, of course. But so, too, is the failure of government officials to realize that their proposed solution to help local news outlets would backfire in an ugly way.
Ellen's Quick Take is on a new philanthropic fund created by the Minnesota Star Tribune. It's called the Local News Fund, and it is soliciting donations supporting statewide journalism that will be matched by a $500,000 grant from a Minnesota foundation.