‘This is the time for pooling resources’

SINCE EARLY APRIL, Kristen Hare—a reporter who typically covers local news innovations for the Poynter Institute—has been compiling a list of newsroom layoffs, cutbacks, closures, and furloughs, reporting most recently that the covid-19 pandemic has closed more than fifty local newsrooms across the United States. The Journalism Crisis Project—a joint venture between the Tow Center and the Columbia Journalism Review—depends on the work of important collaborators like Hare.

For this week’s newsletter, I talked with Hare about the work of reporting on the current financial crisis facing journalism, the importance of collaboration, and the gaps in coverage as the pandemic treads on. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CJR: How did you transition from covering local news innovation to tracking newsroom layoffs?

Kristen Hare: It started with layoffs and a cut to print at the Tampa Bay Times, which is my local newspaper. I am a subscriber, and I also work in partnership with them on an obituary project. I felt that one particularly, because I know the people in that newsroom and how hard they’ve been working to cover the coronavirus. I can just remember thinking—I don’t know how I’m going to do my job in a pandemic. I don’t know how to find solutions when there are nothing but problems.

My boss, Neil Brown, said, “We’re shifting what you’re doing to cover the pandemic and local news and the impact full time.” Basically—this is the story. Give it everything.

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