Editor and Publisher Reports

In May of 2020, The Anchorage Daily News (ADN) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their yearlong series entitled “Lawless,” which provided an in-depth look at the criminal justice system's failures across Alaska. The team who created the series was led by ADN special projects editor Kyle Hopkins who had the assistance of ProPublica, the nonprofit entity that assists news publishers nationwide with investigative reporting projects.  As “Lawless” was being picked up by national news sources resulting in a visit by then U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, Hopkins started hearing from TV and movie producers who began showing interest in adapting the stories the ADN was uncovering. It was Tom McCarthy,  the well-known writer and director of the 2016 Emmy Award-winning movie "Spotlight," centered on the Boston Globe's investigation of sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic clergy, who had been thinking of creating a show that went deeper inside the workings of a newspaper newsroom. He eventually brought the ADN into the nat

In the January 2023 issue of Editor & Publisher Magazine, E&P featured an article about Dr. Peter Laufer's book, “Slow News: A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer,” and the subsequent film documentary "Slow News" that speaks to how media companies chasing "clicks" in a digital age has led to the erosion of quality journalism and the public’s trust. However, what this professor of journalism and James N. Wallace Chair of Journalism at the University of Oregon was chasing was a personal dream to save the local cities newspaper — The Eugene (OR) Register-Guard. In a recent article for the local weekly entitled "How to Save the 'Guarded-Register, ' Dr. Laufer writes, "We in Eugene are witnessing the slow murder of our daily newspaper. But maybe, just maybe, what’s rapidly becoming too thin to wrap fish and line the bird cage, can still be saved." He goes on to state, "When what's now the Gannett Company — the corporate monster that owns more U.S. newspapers than any other — bought the R-G, butchery

The numbers are staggering. As the U.S. population grows, the number of local newsroom employees continues to decline, as an average of two newspapers shut down each week. Moreover, research shows that a shortage of local news harms the very fabric of our communities. With less new coverage comes more government corruption and local apathy regarding voting or civic involvement. And today, with large corporations and hedge funds who now own what was once vibrant family-owned local news operations and seek more profit by gutting newsrooms, less and less local reporting is taking place. This has created "ghost newspapers" that generate only a handful of stories each week that serve the common good. Over the past few years, some controversial bills have been introduced into Congress to tap into the large amount of locally available ad revenue that has been gobbled up by "big tech." Historically, that revenue was used to help fund local newsrooms. One of the bills that did not gain complete industry support was th

For just under two decades, residents in Bucks County, Penn., a suburb of Philadelphia, were served by the Bucks County Herald, a weekly publication started by Bridget Wingert and her late husband, Joseph T. Wingert. In 2020, as a global pandemic ravaged its advertising base, the family ownership, now including Bridget's son and Publisher Joseph Wingert, had to face the possibility of ceasing publication, which so many other community news publishers did, leaving voids in local cities across the nation. However, the community support for having a local voice was so strong that in the fall of 2020, the Wingerts donated their ownership to a new charitable entity which formed the Bucks County Herald Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, which through private and business donations along with advertising revenue has produced a sustainable business model that serves over 200,000 readers each week. Recently, the foundation produced a compelling video, viewed by thousands, entitled "Miracle in

On December 5th, 2022, well-known news publishing analyst Ken Doctor, published a 2800-plus word updatevia Nieman Lab on the 2-year progress of his innovative Santa Cruz, CA digital news start-up, Lookout Local.   Within the document, Doctor pulls no punches about his opinion on the state of legacy media and its desire to help bolster a sustainable business model via big tech compensation by writing: "Lookout Local has never been about money itself, but money to the end of the mission — money that can prove out the proposition that a robust replacement for suicidal dailies can, indeed, be built. That’s especially important in the age of Gannett’s trainwreck, Axios Local’s skimming, and the misguided Journalism Competition and Preservation act currently before Congress.” He also claims good progress, with a digital-only local news enterprise reporting that without print costs, 80% of his bottom-line expenses are a staff of 15 full-time people, with 10 working in the newsroom and five on the business side. He

As Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the News Media Alliance, Danielle Coffey leads the advocacy efforts for the NMA's over 2000 news and magazine publishing members worldwide. 2022 was a busy year for Coffey as the U.S. Congress held committee meetings to consider passage of the well-publicized “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act” (JCPA), introduced in the House (H.R. 1735) by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), and in the Senate (S. 673) by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA). If made into law, this legislation, greatly supported by the news publishing industry, would allow news publishers to collectively negotiate with “big tech” platforms like Google and Facebook for fair compensation for using the news content these publishers generate. The NMA has been promoting a number of cogent arguments as to why the JCPA is necessary to help local news publishers maintain sustainable business models. These "talking points" include:   “News publishers pr

Dave Stevens is an athlete, a seven-time Emmy Award-winning sports broadcasting professional, and the only person to ever play college football and minor league baseball without legs. Stevens, a congenital amputee, always had a passion for sports. In high school, he was a three-sport athlete playing football, baseball, and wrestling. Later, he tried out for the Dallas Cowboys, the Cincinnati Reds, and the Minnesota Twins. Stevens even played outfield with former Major League players Barry Bonds and Oddibie McDowell. Stevens entered media as an Assignment Desk Manager at ESPN, then as the Coverage and Content editor. He worked at ESPN for 20 years, covering 11 Super Bowls, 3 World Series, 3 NCAA Final Fours, and various other historic sports events. Today he is a reporter for the Disability Channel, where he interviews some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment history. He co-hosts a Celebrity Amputee Golf tournament and is a professional in residence at the School of Communications at Quinnipiac Un

Serving as a forum for personal and professional networking is a benefit of social media, but its global reach and popularity have resulted in the posting of information — often described as “news” — from less-than-transparent and unverifiable sources. In this environment, the public has difficulty trusting what they read, hear or see, even when it’s the work of professional journalists and media organizations. To make it easier for the public to recognize trustworthy journalism, Reporters Without Borders created the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) in 2019. It has a three-step process to help media outlets distinguish themselves from the myriad of other sources sharing information on the internet and social media. This was the topic for discussion during a recent E&P Reports vodcast hosted by Mike Blinder, publisher of Editor & Publisher. His guests were Beth Potter, Ph.D., U.S. regional manager of the Journalism Trust Initiative; Paul Samyn, editor of the Winnipeg Free Press; and Kevin Rehberg, vic

Rob Tornoe is a journalist/ cartoonist for the award-winning Philadelphia Inquirer, where some of his work (including political spoofs from Al Gore to Peanuts) is syndicated and internationally recognized. Tornoe also writes & illustrates each month for Editor & Publisher about the many aspects of the news publishing industry.  In this 166th episode of “E&P Reports,” internationally recognized journalist/ cartoonist Rob Tornoe reviews some of his 2022 monthly contributions to E&P Magazine, which include his March 2022 interview with The New York Times's David Leonhardt on “The polarization of pandemic reporting.” An April 2022 column looked at editorial cartoonist David Fitzsimmons. May 2022’s look at how the Pulitzer prize category changes left illustrators feeling slighted. An August 2022 in-depth column looked at Twitter’s possible overuse by newsrooms. A well-researched and sourced piece in September 2022 examined how to keep political reporting from becoming polarized. And there's so

Doug Phares is a passionate business consultant who helps executives find ways to get past all the hurdles and challenges that slow us down. From small-scale work like examining product bundling to assisting decision-makers in developing 3-year plans, Phares has seen it all over the course of his career. In his news media career, Phares was most recently the CEO of the Sandusky Newspaper Group (SNG), a media holding company operating in Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. Before that, he was Boone Newspapers's group president and managed Copley properties.  Today, Phares is managing director of Silverwind Enterprises, a Florida-based firm that provides executive-level business services. He's also the board chair of the Professional Association of Résumé Writers and Career Coaches, an organization with 3,000-plus international members comprised of independent business owners and non-profit career centers such as colleges and universities, military bases, workforce development offices and state Departments of Labor

Recently Meta (formally Facebook) made it official that it was leaving the news business, as they included most of the staff that worked within their “Meta Journalism Project Accelerator Program" in the 11,000 company positions eliminated in their mid-November 2022 mass layoffs. Since 2019, the U.S.-based Local Media Association (LMA) and associated Local Media Foundation worked in partnership with Meta as a facilitator providing administrative services and publishing case studies about how over $16.8 million in funds were distributed across North America to local publishers. The funds were to assist them in initiatives that included building reader revenue, monetarizing branded content and others. Some within the news publishing industry have criticized big tech companies like Google and Meta’s journalistic philanthropy, stating it was just a means to help them lobby against pending legislation. That legislation — the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA) (H.R. 1735 and S. 673) — would allow

After senior management positions at Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, Dick Tofel helped start and eventually led the well-known, nonprofit investigative journalistic entity ProPublica for 15 years. Today he consultants the industry as the principal of Gallatin Advisory. However, Tofel recently "lit up the Twittersphere" when he posted on his blog, "Second Rough Draft," an unabashed and unvarnished assessment and warning about how philanthropic funds are awarded to journalistic enterprises. He stated how there may be flaws within the process that some organizations and associations employ today — questioning that "Given limited resources, shouldn't more money go to news orgs directly, even if that means making hard choices?” In the November 3, 2022 post entitled "A Few Words of Warning About Funding Intermediaries and Philanthropy’s Leaky Bucket,” Tofel states that he is concerned that organizations like LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers, the Knight Foundationand others “may be getting a

As the news publishing industry continues to fight the big tech giants, Google & Facebook, for what is considered fair compensation for the content journalists create and that the tech companies monetize via clicks and posts, one voice tweets to over 170,000 followers: "Klobuchar's JCPA is shit legislation” and “Protectionism is not a business model. Whining is not a business model. Handouts are not a business model. Lobbying politicians is not a business model. Adding value to communities and their conversations, helping them meet their goals: that is the only model worth pursuing.”   Those tweets and comments belong to the director of the Tow-Knight Center at the Craig Newmark Graduate School at CUNY, Jeff Jarvis, who also posts that “paywalls damage democracy." He states, "When disinformation is free, how can we restrict quality information to the privileged who choose to afford it?”   Jarvis is not a newcomer to our industry, starting in the '70s as a columnist at the San Francisco Examiner, spending

In 2005 John Garrett started Community Impact Newspaper from the game room of his home with his wife and best friend, Jennifer. They began with the creation of the Pflugerville, Texas edition. Today that one paper is part of a growing empire of over 30 monthly printed and 24/7 digital hyperlocal community news platforms that serves four Texas metropolitan areas. In 2016, printing and mailing over 2.5-million papers required John to open a 36,000-square-foot printing facility housing a $10 million press operation that works twenty-four hours a day. Over the years, Community Impact has now received 106 awards for writing and design from the National Newspaper Association. It was also named to Inc. Magazine's top 5000 fastest-growing companies for seven consecutive years. In this 161st edition of “E&P Reports,” we go one-on-one with John Garrett, CEO and founder of Community Impact, a community newspaper publishing company that mails over 2.5-million editions monthly to over 60 Texas communities while employ

Andrew Conte, founding director of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University, has been receiving wide industry acclaim for his latest book “Death of the Daily News,” which tells the story of how residents in one Pennsylvania community have identified and sorted local news and information since their local newspaper stopped publishing after 131 years. The book also addresses how “citizen gatekeepers” run a new local newspaper and an online news outlet, post to social media sites and seek other platforms for sharing information. “The massive changes that have caused so much disruption and pain for our industry also are creating opportunities for the future of local journalism,” Conte stated. “While the book focuses on a motif of ‘death,’ the narrative tells a story of rebirth that should give hope for all of us who care about local news and the democratic institutions it supports.”  “The hardest part was probably getting people to trust me enough to talk about what was going on in a communi

Most United States municipalities have laws requiring that all public notices must be published by a third-party independent newspaper — a concept that dates to the 1700s. This practice is based on the idea that the people of a democracy have the right to know what is going on with their government and the legal proceedings that occur within their community. There is no question that the newspaper industry, especially on individual state levels, spends a good deal of resources to maintain that precedent, not only because the public notice linage creates necessary revenues that fund our newsrooms. These small, innocuous postings have helped provide, in many cases, another level of transparency within local governments that has uncovered and delivered a final check on graft and possible theft of tax dollars. Over time some states and municipalities have found various reasons to try to stop the practice of placing public notices within newspapers of record. For example, in a March 2022 episode of "E&P Report

The Denton Record-Chronicle, the main newspaper for the city of Denton and Denton County Texas, a suburb of the Dallas/ Fort Worth “Metroplex” with a population slightly under 1-million, recently announced that it is being acquired by KERA public media, the regional public broadcasting facility of north Texas. Assisting to make the deal happen is the National Trust for Local News, a non-profit entity that has a focus on developing the financial end of new business models for local news. And who heled put together the Colorado News Conservancy, a public benefit corporation, which along with a large regional news website has now purchased a number of suburban newspapers near Denver, CO (“Denver News Disruptor Colorado Sun Purchases Suburban Weeklies”). In this 158th episode of “E&P Reports” we interview Bill Patterson, Publisher of the Denton (TX) Daily Record-Chronicle, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, CEO and Co-Founder at The National Trust for Local News (NTLN), Senior Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Dig

It has only been a few years since the February 2018 announcement that Nicole Carroll was to succeed Joanne Lipman as editor-in-chief of USA Today. She was by no means an outsider to the operation, being part of their Network of more than 200 local digital properties in 45 states. As an editor and vice president of news at The Arizona Republic, Carroll led a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. Today, Carroll not only manages this Gannett flagship, but she is also one of the 19 members of the Pulitzer Board, comprising leading journalists, news executives and academics who preside over the judging process. In this 157th episode of “E&P Reports,” E&P Publisher Mike Blinder speaks with Nicole Carroll, president of news and editor-in-chief of USA TODAY, about the past 40 years for this iconic news media brand and its evolution to a multi-platform national information outlet. Their conversation occurred in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ian, a devastating storm for Florida, where

When Editor & Publisher Magazine (E&P) opened the nomination process for the yearly "25 over 50" salute, one entry from Emily Metzgar, a director at the School of Media & Journalism at Kent State University, stated that Kevin Dilley, the director of Kent State Student Media, “Has built one of the largest media operations you’ve never heard about.” Emily wrote E&P that “Kevin wrangles a $750,000 budget annual budget, 400+ students each semester, nine distinct media outlets, one business office and 30+ platforms.” She also mentioned that Dilley tackled challenges stemming from COVID-19, where he was able to keep the student-run TV station on the air even while being directed to operate remotely. There is no question that Kevin Dilley deserved to be recognized as a "25 over 50" in the September edition of E&P Magazine. However, after some investigation into the many successful ongoing programs that Kent State Student Media has developed and the numerous awards their journalism continues to wi

Before joining Fox News, Chris Stirewalt served as political editor for the Washington Examiner. As a top editor and election forecaster for Fox News’ decision desk during the 2020 election, Stirewalt stood firm to defend the network being the first to correctly call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night — the first sign that Donald Trump would lose the 2020 presidential race. What resulted was a backlash from Trump, his supporters and even calls for his being imprisoned as part of an election fraud conspiracy. In his latest book “Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back,” Stirewalt states that some news organizations (like Fox News, MSNBC and others) have developed a philosophy of fanning the anger within their core audience in what he calls “rage revenue” practices that leans towards bias coverage that helps stoke the political division and culture wars within the U.S. In “Broken News,” Stirewalt offers some inside insight into these news operations about how they rewa