How a state commission could help ease the local news crisis

NOTE FROM JENN: What’s going on Grafton? No, really. Does anyone know what’s going on?

By Dan Kennedy, CommonWealth Beacon
June 27, 2024

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.

I was among those who testified before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses. It was my second time around. Starting in 2018, I helped then-Rep. Lori Ehrlich, a Democrat from Marblehead, draft legislation to create a 23-member commission. Our bill was signed into law by Gov. Charlie Baker in January 2021 just as he was about to leave office.

That first commission, unfortunately, failed to launch. The proposal for a new commission calls for a less-unwieldly nine members, and it couldn’t come at a more propitious time.

Both nationally and in Massachusetts, the local news crisis has only worsened since Rep. Ehrlich and I started brainstorming. According to a widely cited report by the Medill School at Northwestern University, about 2,900 newspapers have closed since 2005. Most of those were weeklies that cover the quotidian details of civic life — local government, neighborhood issues, and news that contributes a sense of community such as weddings, school sports, and obituaries.

In Massachusetts, Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, embarked on a spree two years ago of closing weekly newspapers and merging many of those that remained. Worse, they removed virtually all local news from their papers and websites, replacing it with regional stories from distant locales.

Numerous academic studies suggest that a lack of reliable news and information leads to social ills such as lower voter turnout, fewer people running for political office, and a higher degree of partisan polarization.

There’s even a finding that Ellen Clegg, my co-author and podcast partner, and I like to call the “corruption tax.” That is, communities without news coverage have to pay a higher interest rate when they borrow money to build, say, a new middle school or fire station because the lenders know that no one will be watching how their money is being spent.

Fortunately, folks in a number of communities have responded to these losses by launching independent local news projects, many of them digital nonprofits but also some print newspapers and for-profits. As a result, in a select few places, local coverage is better than it’s been in many years.

But these projects tend to be located in affluent suburbs, while coverage in urban communities of color and in the exurbs and rural areas remains sparse. (For a database of independent local news organizations in Massachusetts compiled by the School of Journalism at Northeastern University, click here.)

During Wednesday’s hearing, several of those testifying said that what’s needed are concrete steps to help bolster local news. “We don’t need a commission solely to study the problem further,” said Lara Salahi, a distinguished professor of journalism at Endicott College. “What we urgently need is action.”

So what might a news commission actually accomplish? I can think of a few ideas. The most modest would be simply to shine a light on independent news organizations that are already doing good work in the hopes of inspiring people in other cities and towns. I don’t want to name any for fear of leaving some out, but currently there are a variety of community journalism outlets with different business and distribution models that could be adapted elsewhere.

Beyond that, some government assistance could be considered. The key is to ensure that such assistance is indirect and can’t be used to reward some news outlets and punish others. One promising idea is to enact tax credits for news publishers who hire and retain journalists. (The term “tax credit” is something of a misnomer since it would also benefit nonprofits and for-profits that are losing money.) Such credits are currently being implemented in New York State and Illinois, and they can be structured in such a way that out-of-state chain owners are excluded.

Another possibility is advertising that could be targeted at news outlets serving underrepresented communities. Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, the president of the Spanish-language newspaper La Voz Hispana de Connecticut in New Haven, told me several years ago that COVID-related advertising kept her for-profit weekly newspaper afloat during the early days of the pandemic. It shouldn’t take a worldwide health emergency for public officials to understand the importance of such initiatives.

Beyond that, ideas for government assistance tend to be more direct and, thus, potentially problematic in terms of ensuring independent journalism. In several places, though, creative steps have been taken to provide direct funding while maintaining a wall of separation.

In New Jersey, an independent board known as the Civic Information Consortium has disbursed several million dollars in state money to help projects such as an online Creole radio program that serves the Haitian community and an oral history of efforts to clean up drinking water in Newark. In California, a $25 million appropriation is paying the salaries of recent graduates of the UC Berkeley graduate journalism program to work at news organizations covering underserved communities for three years. California is also considering an ambitious proposal to tax the giant tech platforms and use the money to provide up to $500 million in assistance for local news outlets, a measure that has drawn both praise and criticism.

Two and three generations ago, just about every city and town in Massachusetts was served by an independent local newspaper — in some cases by more than one. We shouldn’t be nostalgic about those days. Some of those papers provided solid coverage; many didn’t. All of them, though, were rooted in their communities, responsive to the needs of residents and local businesses, and dedicated to keeping an eye on local government.

The local news crisis, driven by technological change and worsened by corporate and hedge-fund ownership, didn’t develop overnight, and we’re not going to solve it overnight. But we can find ways to foster the rise of a new generation of community media organizations and to provide some assistance to those legacy outlets that are still doing good work. A state commission that could propose some solutions is not the sole answer. But it would be one answer, and it’s well worth trying.

Dan Kennedy is a professor of journalism at Northeastern University and the author, with Ellen Clegg, of What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate. Follow their updates and podcast at whatworks.news. Kennedy is also a member of CommonWealth Beacon’s editorial advisory board.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.