What Works: The Future of Local News
From Northeastern University's School of Journalism. Local news, the bedrock of democracy, is in crisis. Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University and veteran Boston Globe editor Ellen Clegg talk to journalists, policymakers and entrepreneurs about what's working to keep local news alive.
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Episode 103: Stacy Feldman
06/25/2025
Episode 103: Stacy Feldman
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 newsroom provided on the recent antisemitic attacks in Boulder. Dan has a Quick Take later on a huge threat to one of the most important cogs in the regional news ecosystem. I’m referring, of course, to public radio and television, which face huge cuts after the Republican-led House voted recently to cancel $1.1 billion in funding over the next two years that it had previously approved. Now the measure moves to the , which has to take a vote on it by mid-July. Regardless of what happens, this is the closest public media has ever come to an extinction-level event. Ellen's Quick Take is on local news coverage of the assassination of a Minnesota legislator and her husband. Minnesota news consumers have a lot of great media options, and these newsrooms bigtime to cover this crisis.
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Episode 102: Rahul Bhargava
05/27/2025
Episode 102: Rahul Bhargava
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 collaborated with groups in Brazil, in Minnesota and at the World Food Program. He helps local communities use data to understand their world, and as a tool for change. There's more to data than just bar charts. Sometimes it involves forks! His book, unlocks all sorts of secrets. Dan and Ellen also talk with , a longtime TV journalist who is now a graduate student at Northeastern. Lisa realized that like many fields, journalism suffers from a gap between academic research and its implementation in workplaces. She is finding ways to bridge that gap, and an Avenger's-style team to lift up the work of a free press. Ellen has a Quick Take on a recent visit to , California, and the to revive a legacy paper, the Santa Barbara News-Press. Dan's Quick Take is about the latest development from the National Trust for Local News. It involves a chain of weekly papers in Colorado — their very first acquisition dating back to 2021. And it’s not good news at all for the journalists who work at those papers and the communities they serve.
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Episode 101: Carlene Hempel and Harrison Zuritsky
05/12/2025
Episode 101: Carlene Hempel and Harrison Zuritsky
Dan and Ellen talk with and . Carlene, a journalism professor at Northeastern, recently led a reporting trip to Flint, Michigan. Harrison and other students produced a stunning internet magazine called that takes a deep dive into the causes and effects of Flint's economic downturn and toxic water crisis. Since 2009, Carlene has been leading students on reporting trips, where they work as part of a traveling press corps. She has taken groups to many countries, including Egypt, Syria, and . Harrison, a second-year student with concentrations in journalism and data science, joined her on the Flint trip. Like so many at Northeastern, Carlene has a background that includes academic achievement as well as wide-ranging professional experience. She has been a professor for 20 years and holds a PhD from Northeastern. She also started her career writing for The Middlesex News in Framingham, now The MetroWest Daily News, and The Boston Globe. She then moved to North Carolina, where she worked for MSNBC and The Raleigh News & Observer. Dan has Quick Take from Maine. The former owner of the Portland Press Herald is going to have three of his weekly papers at the Press Herald’s facility in South Portland, giving a boost to the National Trust for Local News. And he’s also followed through on a plan to open a at one of his weeklies in a unique effort to boost civic engagement. Ellen weighs in on a of local news by our friend of the pod, Professor Joshua Darr at Syracuse University. Darr teamed up with three other researchers to do a meta analysis of surveys on media trust. They made a number of findings, but the headline is that Americans trust local newsrooms more than national news outlets. This is especially true if the local news outlet has the actual name of the community in its title. But there's a downside: that automatic trust also allows pink slime sites to take hold.
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Episode 100: Tom Breen
04/30/2025
Episode 100: Tom Breen
For their 100th podcast, Dan and Ellen talk with , the editor of the Tom joined the staff of the Independent in 2018, and then became managing editor. Last November, he stepped up to succeed founding editor , who launched the Independent in 2005 and is still very involved. He's executive director of the Online Journalism Project, the nonprofit organization he set up to oversee the Independent, the Valley Independent Sentinel in New Haven’s northwest suburbs, and WNHH. He continues to report the news for the Independent and hosts a show on WNHH, and he started another nonprofit, Midbrow, which publishes arts reviews in New Haven and several other cities across the country. Listeners will also hear from , a Northeastern student who wrote an in-depth report on the local news ecosystem in Fall River, Massachusetts, a blue-collar community south of Boston that flipped to Donald Trump in the last election after many decades of being a solidly Democratic city. We recently published Alexa’s at Whatworks.news. Ellen has a Quick Take on two big moves on the local news front. The National Trust for Local News has named a new CEO to replace Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, who resigned earlier this year. The new leader is , who is now president and publisher of the Buffalo News. And in the heartland, the Minnesota Star Tribune has named a new editor to replace Suki Dardarian, who is retiring. The nod goes to , the deputy politics editor of the New York Times and a former AP reporter. Dan's Quick Take a recent court decision ruling that Google has engaged in anti-competitive behavior in the way it controls the technology for digital advertising. This was the result of a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department and a number of states, but it’s also the subject of lawsuits brought by the news business, which argues that Google has destroyed the value of online ads. It’s potentially good news. It’s also complicated, and its effect may be way off in the future.
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Episode 99: John Mooney
04/17/2025
Episode 99: John Mooney
Dan and Ellen talk with , the founder of NJ Spotlight News, a digital nonprofit that's part of , the state's public broadcasting network. Mooney, who covered education for The Star-Ledger in Newark, took a buyout in 2008, put together a business plan, and launched their site in 2010 under the auspices of the nonprofit Community Foundation of New Jersey. While Spotlight was making a mark journalistically, it wasn't breaking even, and its sponsor, the Community Foundation, was getting impatient. After extensive talks, Mooney affiliated with NJ PBS. The name changed to NJ Spotlight News, and the merger means true collaboration between the newsrooms. Both the broadcast and digital sides take part in news meetings. (In a previous , Northeastern University professor and TV journalist Mike Beaudet discussed his initiative aimed at reinventing TV news for a vertical video age.) As Dan wrote in the story of NJ PBS and NJ Spotlight News suggests that public broadcasting can play a role in bolstering coverage of regional and statewide news. It's a question of bringing together two different newsroom cultures. There’s also a angle! Ellen has a Quick Take about the death of , a venture capitalist who helped launch , a nonprofit newsroom in Austin, in 2009. He also was a founder of the t, which supports local digital newsrooms around the country. Thornton, who had struggled with mental health issues, took his own life. He was 59. Dan has a Quick Take about our webinar on “The Ethics of Nonprofit News,” which was held the evening of April 3. Panelists gave great advice about what board members and donors need to know, and the video can be found on the website, .
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Episode 98: Neil Brown
04/04/2025
Episode 98: Neil Brown
Dan and Ellen talk with , a longtime journalist who is the president of the Poynter Institute. For listeners who might not know, the Poynter Institute is a nonprofit based in St. Petersburg, Florida, that is devoted to teaching best practices in journalism. It is named for , the bow-tie-wearing legend who led the St. Petersburg Times to national recognition. The paper is now known as the Poynter is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Dan has a Quick Take on President Trump’s bouncing tariffs. They’re on, they’re off, they’re on, they’re off. But his gyrations are having real consequences. In central New York State, Trump’s threats have killed a daily newspaper — and not just any paper. The , one of the oldest family-owned papers in the country, folded in mid-March, as Trump’s proposed 25% tariff on Canadian newsprint proved to be the last straw. Ellen's Quick Take comes from a tip from , the former executive editor of the New York Times who is a distinguished professor of the practice here at Northeastern. Jeff Morrison, a journalist who is a member of the Iowa Writers' Collaborative, has compiled an incredible of the decline of newspapers in Iowa. A highlight: , a twice-weekly print paper featured in our book, is dropping a print edition and going weekly.
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Episode 97: Marta Hill
03/20/2025
Episode 97: Marta Hill
Dan talks with , an extraordinary young journalist who he got to know during her time at Northeastern. Marta is currently a graduate student in the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting program at New York University, where she’s also the editor-in-chief of . In that role, she works with her peers at NYU to produce what she describes as “an accessible, down-to-earth science publication.” Marta is originally from Minneapolis, which makes it almost a tragedy that Ellen, a fellow transplant from the Twin Cities, couldn't be here. (Ellen will be back for our next podcast). At Northeastern, Marta served in various capacities at The Huntington News, our independent student newspaper, including a one-year stint as editor-in-chief. She was also in Dan's media ethics and diversity class in the fall of 2023. Whenever Dan teaches ethics, a week gets devoted to talking about the harassment that journalists face both online and in real life. It’s a problem that’s been getting worse in recent years, and it’s something that young reporters in particular really have to think about before deciding whether to go into journalism full-time. Marta decided she wanted to explore the issue of harassment and student journalism more deeply in the form of an honors project, and Dan was her adviser. She wrote a wide-ranging reported article, and a shorter version of that was recently published by Nieman Reports, part of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. Her article, titled “J-schools Must Better Prepare Students for Handling Harassment,” lays out some concrete steps that journalism educators can take so that their students are not caught off guard when they encounter harassment at their student news outlet or on the job. Dan has a Quick Take on a new nonprofit initiative to bring more and better news to Tulsa, Oklahoma, a thriving metro area with nearly 700,000 people in the city and surrounding county. The area is currently served by the Tulsa World, a daily paper that’s part of the Lee Enterprises chain, which, like most corporate newspaper owners, has a reputation for aggressive cost-cutting. The new nonprofit, the , is built around a venerable Black newspaper, but there’s more to it than that.
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Episode 96: Mike Beaudet
03/06/2025
Episode 96: Mike Beaudet
Dan and Ellen talk with Mike Beaudet, longtime investigative reporter for WCVB-TV and a multimedia professor at Northeastern's school of journalism. Mike has won many awards for his hard-hitting investigations and leads a project aimed at reinventing television news. On March 21 - 22, he'll lead a conference at Northeastern called Mike's students are producing content for everything from Instagram, YouTube to TikTok. Dan has a Quick Take about the National Trust for Local News. Co-founder exited the nonprofit suddenly last month. That came amid reports that the Portland Press Herald and other papers that the Trust owns in the state of Maine might soon announce budget cuts. Now comes more bad news. Colorado Community Media, a group of 24 weekly and monthly papers in the Denver suburbs, is two papers and is losing money. Those papers were the National Trust’s first acquisition. The Trust’s mission was to buy papers that were in danger of falling into the clutches of corporate chain ownership. It’s a worthy goal, but the Trust has obviously hit some significant obstacles. Ellen has a Quick Take on the fact that Harvard University is shutting down , the digital home to stellar longform journalism about public health. At a time when the very facts of science are challenged on social media every day, this is disheartening news.
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Episode 95: Erica Heilman
02/18/2025
Episode 95: Erica Heilman
Dan and Ellen talk with , who produces a podcast called . Heilman's shows air monthly on Vermont Public and other NPR stations, as well as the BBC. Rumble Strip can also be found on all the usual podcast platforms. Her episodes range in length from a few minutes to, well, as long as they need to be! As wrote in a profile in Seven Days Vermont, "She wants to make meandering, kaleidoscopic stories about the stuff of ordinary Vermont life." In 2020, Heilman produced a memorable pandemic miniseries, "." It featured listener-submitted recordings of life in lockdown, and it was the Atlantic's No. 1 podcast of the year. In November 2021 she produced "," the textured story of a Walden teenager who died by suicide. It won a Peabody, the highest award in broadcasting. Dan has a Quick Take about tools for local news organizations dealing with various forms of harassment. The , a leading organization for hyperlocal journalism, has put together some resources. Ellen has an update on , the retiring editor and senior vice president of the . She has been named the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year by the National Press Club.
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Episode 94: Matt DeRienzo
02/02/2025
Episode 94: Matt DeRienzo
Dan and Ellen talk with , the new director of . SciLine was founded seven years ago to make it easier for reporters to get in touch with scientists on deadline and to dig into research. And facts. The program is part of the a 150-year-old organization that publishes the widely respected journal . Most recently, Matt has been serving as temporary executive editor of , the digital daily that won a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News in . He joins SciLine at an important time. The Trump Administration has suspended by government agencies that oversee science. Yet many newsrooms aren't equipped to cover this because they have cut back on science coverage, if they do any at all. SciLine helps reporters find expert sources and gives them the tools to interpret cutting-edge research. Matt has a staff of 14 and the organization seems poised for growth. Dab has a Quick Take that hits close to home. By the time this podcast is up, a brand-new digital-only for-profit news outlet called should be publishing. It’s the first time the city of 60,000 has had a dedicated local news outlet in three years, after it was abandoned by Gannett. Ellen's Quick Take involves big changes in Maine. In Bangor, the Daily News, a family-owned paper, is cutting back on staff-written editorials and opening the pages up to new voices. Separately, at the National Trust for Local News, which acquired a slew of Maine papers in 2023, the CEO, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, .
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Episode 93: Alison Bethel
01/24/2025
Episode 93: Alison Bethel
Today we're talking with , chief content officer and editor-in-chief for State Affairs. State Affairs is a digital-first media company that is focused on covering state governments throughout the country. She was vice president of corps excellence at . She was also executive director of the , where she was only the second woman and the first person of color to serve in that capacity in 110 years. Dan has a Quick Take on a harrowing situation in Grand Junction, Colorado. A young Colorado was reportedly chased by a taxi driver who then attempted to choke him. The driver also reportedly yelled “This is Trump’s America now!” Ellen has a Quick Take on an app called that is providing lifesaving information to people in Los Angeles who are threatened by wildfires.
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Episode 92: Bill and Linda Forry
01/10/2025
Episode 92: Bill and Linda Forry
Dan and Ellen talk with and Forry, co-publishers of the award-winning Reporter Newspapers in Boston. Bill serves as editor, and Linda focuses on business development and strategic partnerships. The Reporter Newspapers include the weekly as well as and . The publications and their websites are part of a media business owned and operated by the Forry family since 1973. The Forrys were recently in the news. The Reporter is one of 205 news organizations in the U.S. to win an inaugural grant to expand coverage of Boston’s underserved communities. Dan has a Quick Take on public radio. Put bluntly, public radio is in trouble, and not just NPR, which may be our leading source of reliable free news, but also public radio stations across the country. An important recent essay in argues that the way forward for public radio stations may be to double down on local news. Ellen's Quick Take is on the NiemanLab predictions for the media industry in 2025. Every year, NiemanLab asks a select group of people what they think is coming in the next 12 months. Sam Mintz, the editor of , a digital outlet Ellen helped launch, is one of the
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Episode 91: Jeffrey Schwaner
12/12/2024
Episode 91: Jeffrey Schwaner
Ellen and Dan talk with , executive editor of Cardinal News, a nonprofit digital news outlet covering Southwest Virginia. It also covers something called Southside Virginia, which is an area south of the James River, near Richmond. Since we're taping this in Boston, we'll ask him to explain their coverage area in more detail. Jeff Cardinal News in September after nine years as a storytelling and watchdog coach — including five years as editor — of Gannett’s two Virginia newsrooms, in Staunton and in Petersburg. Dan has a Quick Take that explores a key question: Does a lack of local news correlate with support for Donald Trump? A new by the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School finds that it does, although the writers caution that correlation is not causation. Ellen's Quick Take is on a mysterious website that popped up in Oregon after a 147-year-old paper called the Ashland Tidings folded. Called the it recently published story after story by a reporter named Joe Minihane, who supposedly skiied, hiked and ate his way through Southern Oregon. Except Minihane is based in the UK and doesn't know how his byline got hijacked. The stories are made up, perhaps by AI.
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Episode 90: Scott Brodbeck
11/25/2024
Episode 90: Scott Brodbeck
Dan and Ellen talk with , founder and CEO of . Many of the news entrepreneurs on this podcast lead nonprofits. Local News Now is a for-profit. Scott owns and operates local news websites in three big Northern Virginia suburbs: Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax County. Dan has a Quick Take about a corporate newspaper owner that is making a big bet on growth at a major metropolitan newspaper. In Georgia, Cox Enterprises is making a $150 million bet that it can transform . If Cox is successful, it might serve as a model for other corporate newspaper owners. Ellen has a Quick Take about a piece in the New Yorker by a writer named Nathan Heller. At first glance, it doesn't seem to relate to local news. In fact, the title is pretty wonky: . But Heller has some smart observations about how information travels in a viral age.
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Episode 89: Sonal Shah
11/12/2024
Episode 89: Sonal Shah
Dan and Ellen talk with , the CEO of the Texas Tribune, a pioneering nonprofit newsroom. Shah, a Houston native and first-generation immigrant, took over as CEO in January 2023 after co-founder decided to move on. Shah is part of a major transition at the Tribune, and brings broad experience in government, the private sector, and philanthropy. She is a trained economist who worked on the presidential transition team, she worked in philanthropy for Google, and she was national policy director for Pete Buttigieg's run for president. Dan has a Quick Take about l, a local news chain in New Jersey that is ending print editions and going fully digital. Ellen's Quick Take is on the Minnesota Star Tribune's editorial in the presidential race and an alternative endorsement of Kamala Harris written on a blog by former Strib staffers.
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Episode 88: April Alonso
10/18/2024
Episode 88: April Alonso
Dan and Ellen talk with , co-founder and digital editor of outside of Chicago. Cicero Independiente and won the 2024 Victor McElheny Award for Local Science Journalism, awarded by , for an investigation of air quality called April has an extensive background as a multimedia content creator. She was a multimedia fellow for the , and served as a multimedia content creator for , a bilingual podcast. Dan has a Quick Take about a town north of Vancouver, in British Columbia, that has learned a bitter lesson about 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 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.
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Episode 87: Sophie Culpepper
09/30/2024
Episode 87: Sophie Culpepper
Dan and Ellen talk with , a staff writer at who focuses on covering local news. She co-founded , a digital local news site covering Lexington, a town of 35,000 outside Boston. For two years, she was the nonprofit news outlet's only full-time journalist. She covered public schools, local government, economic development and public safety, among other subjects. Ellen has a Quick Take on , the former editor of who has just started his new job as executive editor of . Ellen interviewed Sewell in Austin for the Texas chapter in "What Works in Community News." Dan discusses the recent bestowed by the Institute Nonprofit News. The Service to Nonprofit News Award went to Andy and Dee Hall, the retired founders of Wisconsin Watch, who were on this podcast last December. won a community champion award. And an INNovator Award for a sold-out event featuring live from the stage went to
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Episode 86: Mark Henderson
09/18/2024
Episode 86: Mark Henderson
Dan and Ellen fall into their third season of What Works with an interview with an old friend of the pod and a pioneer in online media. Mark is a journalist and technologist with decades of experience in news. He is the founder and CEO of , a first-of-its-kind news publisher and distributor focused on Worcester, Massachusetts. Mark worked at the from 1990 to 2014. He spent 19 years in the newsroom, rising to the position of assistant sports editor before being named deputy managing editor for technology in 2005. In 2009, he was named digital director, where he launched the first paywall at a New York Times Company newspaper. He founded the Worcester Sun, a subscription news site that launched in August 2015 and suspended publication in February 2018. Mark was also one of the very first people Dan and Ellen interviewed for their book, Although Mark is not in the book, Dan did write up his conversation for Nieman Lab, which can be found . Dan has a Quick Take on a from the Poynter Institute, a leading journalism education organization based in St. Petersburg, Florida, that offers a clear-eyed assessment of why there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of journalism despite the very real challenges that we still face. Ellen recounts a panel and awards ceremony last week at MIT. The program honored , a nonprofit newsroom in the Chicago area. The staff won for an innovative project that examined toxic air.
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Episode 85: Dan and Ellen
08/06/2024
Episode 85: Dan and Ellen
Today we're talking to ... ourselves. There's lots happening in the local news space, and we want to hit some highlights. We also have a programming note: This will be our final podcast this summer. We're going to make like the French and take August off. Before signing off, we discuss the state of play for (who knew email is the killer app); (we're still free and we still do it for love, not money); and advertising (some newspapers are if you'd like your digital feed served with no advertising.) Ellen has a remembrance of , a legendary Boston advertising mogul and backer of local news who once tried to buy The Boston Globe. She also finds a refreshing stream of news about , , and government on the home pages of hyperlocal outlets in swing states.
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Episode 84: Larry Ryckman
07/18/2024
Episode 84: Larry Ryckman
Dan and Ellen talk to . Ryckman is editor of , the subject of a chapter that Dan wrote for our book, The Sun was founded by journalists who worked at , 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 l, when The Sun joined its nonprofit peers. Ryckman explains. Dan gives a listen to a New York Times with , the Harvard University political scientist who wrote 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 this podcast is 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, , is moving on and a successor has been named. Starting in September, will be leading Sahan. He has experience in the nonprofit sector and also has experience in public media.
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Episode 83: Peter Bhatia
06/27/2024
Episode 83: Peter Bhatia
Today Dan and Ellen talk to . Bhatia is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who is now chief executive officer of the , 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 , from 2017-2023, and served as a regional editor for Gannett, supervising newsrooms in Michigan and Ohio. His resume 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 . There's much to talk about. In Quick Takes, Dan talks about an important press-freedom case in Mississippi. The former governor, Phil Bryant, is suing 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 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.
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Episode 82: Johanna Dunaway
06/11/2024
Episode 82: Johanna Dunaway
Dan and Ellen talk with , a professor of political science at Syracuse University. She is also research director of the university's in Washington D.C. Dan got to know Johanna when they were both at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2016. Dan wrote part of his book about a new breed of wealthy newspaper owners, Johanna wrote a that examined how mobile technology was actually contributing to the digital divide between rich and poor. She recently received a $200,000 grant from the Carnegie Fellows Program to further her work on local news. Among other things, she plans on building out an expansive database that lists local news outlets throughout the United States. She also plans to examine whether the nationalizing of news contributes to the toxic quality of public discourse. Dan has a Quick Take on what has been a bad year so far for public broadcasting operations, with cuts being imposed from Washington, D.C., to Denver and elsewhere. In Boston, where “What Works” is based. GBH News, the local news arm of the public media powerhouse GBH, has imposed some devastating cuts. But they’ve also brought in that could lead to a brighter future. Ellen looks at a new use of print by the all-digital , the nonprofit news outlet based in Austin.
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Episode 81: Joshua Macht and Ronnie Ramos
05/23/2024
Episode 81: Joshua Macht and Ronnie Ramos
Dan and Ellen talk to and . Both are leading an expansion by the MassLive Media Group, which operates . Macht, the president, previously led the digital transformation of the . Ramos is the vice president of content and executive editor of MassLive. Ramos comes to Massachusetts after leading newsrooms in Miami, Indiana, Memphis, and Chicago. In Quick Takes, Dan discusses an Google made last week that could prove to be pretty harmful to local news publishers. Essentially Google is going to merge its search engine with Gemini, its artificial-intelligence tool, which is similar to ChatGPT. Soon, anything you search for on Google will give you not just links but an AI-generated answer. Most people aren’t going to bother with those links, thus depriving news outlets of much-needed traffic. Ellen reviews the findings from a recent Pew Research Center poll that studied . It's perhaps no surprise to see that the US adults surveyed increasingly turn to websites and social media for their news.
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Episode 80 | Anne Eisenmenger
05/10/2024
Episode 80 | Anne Eisenmenger
Today Dan and Ellen talk to , who is president of Beaver Dam Partners and publisher of several weekly newspapers in southeast Massachusetts, including and . Anne has a laser focus on developing and operating hyperlocal for-profit newspapers. Anne lives in Wareham, and she founded her community news company there in 2010 with the launch of Wareham Week. And, yes, it's an actual print newspaper, with a for-profit business model, and it's packed with ads. Dan dives into one of the best newspaper stories in the country, which is right here in our backyard, or at least in the western sector of our backyard. It involves the , a daily based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, that was once regarded as one of the best small papers in the country. Then it fell into the hands of Alden Global Capital, so we all know what happened next. This story, though, has a happy ending, at least so far, and I’ll talk about it in our Quick Takes. Ellen talked recently with , a reporter doing a story on the loss of small-town newspapers across Nebraska. He focused on a couple who sold their paper, in a town of 1,000, but had to come back after retirement when the new owner quit in the middle of the night.
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Episode 79 | Mike Blinder
04/26/2024
Episode 79 | Mike Blinder
Dan and Ellen talk to , the publisher of Magazine, which is now much, much more than a magazine. It's a cutting-edge multimedia source of information on innovation in our industry. Mike hosts E&P's weekly Vodcast series, "E&P Reports." And much more. He’s been a guest on this podcast previously, and today’s he’s back to talk about a new venture. Blinder has a new vertical on public media, called . It's newsy and filled with insider information. It aggregates the latest on stories like conflict ignited by Uri Berliner at NPR, and features reporting on trends like the collaboration of universities and public radio stations. There’s already an excellent publication in this space called , and Public Pulse is a welcome addition to that. Ellen has a Quick Take on a big award going to . The nonprofit Memphis news outlet, which we profile in our book, will receive the from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. We discuss other up for awards, as well. Dan gives a shoutout to a New Hampshire news project previously featured on the podcast. recently revealed some pretty disturbing details about a state representative — and it came only after a four-year quest to obtain public records. It demonstrates why journalists need to be persistent.
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Episode 78 | Josh Stearns
04/11/2024
Episode 78 | Josh Stearns
Dan talks with the senior director of the Public Square Program at . The Democracy Fund is an independent foundation that works for something very basic and increasingly important: to ensure that our political system is able to withstand new challenges. Josh leads the foundation's work rebuilding local news. The Democracy Fund supports media leaders, defends press freedom, and holds social media platforms accountable. (Ellen was somewhere on the Zakim Bridge in Boston for the duration of this show, but she'll return next episode!) In our Quick Takes, Dan poaches in Ellen's territory and reports on a development in Iowa, the Hawkeye State. When two local weekly newspapers near Iowa City recently got into trouble, their owner found an unusual buyer: The Daily Iowan, the independent nonprofit student newspaper. Now there are plans to supplement local coverage with contributions from student journalists. It’s not something Dan would like to see everywhere — after all, we want to make sure there are jobs for student journalists after they graduate. But at least in this case, it sounds like the Iowa solution is going to be good for the weekly papers, good for the students and good for the communities they serve.
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Episode 77 | Kyle Munson
03/28/2024
Episode 77 | Kyle Munson
Dan and Ellen talk with , president of the . The foundation was launched in August 2020, during the heart of the pandemic. It was a challenging time for newspapers. As Dan and Ellen wrote in their book, the saw a real collapse in local advertising. , the editor, was worried about survival. The foundation is set up as a nonprofit, so it can receive tax-free donations and philanthropic grants. In turn, it has doled out grants to small papers in western Iowa, including the , , and the Times Pilot. These grants were critical because the crisis in local news has hit rural areas hard. Dan has a Quick Take on The Associated Press, which is the principal source of international and national news for local newspapers around the country — and in many cases for state coverage as well. Two major newspaper chains have announced that they are going to use the AP , which will result in less money for the AP — and either higher fees, less coverage or both for their remaining clients. Ellen looks at , a woman-led team of local journalists in Detroit. They formed a network called the Collaborative Detroit Newsrooms network to produce and share news for underserved populations. They've won a major international award from the Association of Media Information and Communication. Executive editor Candice Fortman traveled to Barcelona to pick up the juried prize.
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Episode 76 | Emily Rooney
03/07/2024
Episode 76 | Emily Rooney
Dan and Ellen talk with , the longtime host of the award-winning show on WGBH-TV, "Beat The Press." Dan was a panelist on which had a 22-year run but was canceled in 2021 by GBH. The show, which is much missed by many former viewers, had a brief second life as a podcast. Emily has got serious television news cred. She arrived at WGBH from the Fox Network in New York, where she oversaw political coverage, including the 1996 presidential primaries, national conventions, and presidential election. Before that, she was executive producer of ABC’s "World News Tonight" with Peter Jennings. She also worked at WCVB-TV in Boston for 15 years, from 1979–'93, as news director and as assistant news director. There's a revival of interest in responsible media criticism. Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr recently wrote an op-ed calling for the restoration of a at The New York Times, The Globe and other news outlets. Dan has an update on one of our favorite topics — pink slime. Wired magazine has a wild story out of rural Iowa involving a Linux server in Germany, a Polish website and a Chinese operation called “the Propaganda Department of the Party Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.” Ellen recounts a legal saga in Southeastern Minnesota involving the sale of a newspaper group and allegations of intellectual property theft. It's all about a single used computer and its role in creating a media startup.
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Episode 75 | Teri Morrow and Wayne Braverman
02/22/2024
Episode 75 | Teri Morrow and Wayne Braverman
Dan and Ellen talk with Teri Morrow and Wayne Braverman of in the Boston suburb of Bedford, Massachusetts. Wayne is a longtime journalist who is now serving as the managing editor of the Citizen. Teri, the executive director, has lived in Bedford since 1996, and has been active in local government. Dan wrote the chapter on this homegrown, grass-roots news site in "What Works in Community News." In the book, he tells the story about how the free digital site grew out of co-founder desire to find a home for information on a church plant sale. Dan has a Quick Take on an unlikely good news story. The media industry is in the midst of another painful downturn, with news organizations from The Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times to CNN cutting their newsrooms and with The Messenger, a high-profile national startup that never seemed to make sense, shutting down after less than a year. But there's one news organization that’s hiring journalists and that says it’s succeeding at the very tough job of selling ads. You won’t believe who he's , so stay tuned. Ellen talks about the robots that may come to steal our jobs. Or at least help us compile real estate listings and police blotters. It's all part of an undertaken by that venerable journalistic organization, the Associated Press.
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Episode 74 | Laura Pappano
02/08/2024
Episode 74 | Laura Pappano
Ellen talks with , an award-winning journalist who has written about education for more than 30 years. Laura has a new book out from Beacon Press. The title is "School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education." By the way, Beacon also published our book, Dan and Ellen are recording their segments separately, because Ellen was travelling. So, don't worry, they're not breaking up. Ellen has a Quick Take on a from Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, that is designed to cover full tuition for many graduate students in journalism at the City University of New York. That's good news for students wondering whether to take on $50,000 or more in tuition debt to get a master's degree in journalism at a private university. Craigslist destroyed the classified ad market, but Newmark continues to make his mark as a philanthropist. Dan offers two cheers for billionaire newspaper ownership. With the news business dealing with a difficult round of layoffs, a number of media observers have jumped to the conclusion that are not the solution to what ails journalism. Well, of course it isn’t. No one ever said otherwise. But the record shows that civic-minded ownership by wealthy owners has proven to be a workable solution in several cities.
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