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Local News Outlets Could Reap $1.7 Billion in Build Back Better Aid

“The business models of local news have collapsed in many communities, so it has now gone from being just some private companies’ woes to being a crisis for democracy,” said Steven Waldman, the president of Report for America, a service program that places journalists in understaffed newsrooms. Mr. Waldman consulted on the federal provision.

Local News Outlets Could Reap $1.7 Billion in Build Back Better Aid

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The Hedge Fund Takeover of Local News Is Neither Inevitable Nor Unstoppable

With the news that Alden Global Capital, notorious for gobbling up newspapers and laying off reporters, is moving to acquire Lee Enterprises, one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains, it feels like the hedge fund takeover of local news is inevitable. Even without this acquisition, half of the daily newspaper circulation in the United States is already owned by hedge funds. Hedge fund annexation can be stopped, but only if we look at the problem in new ways and accept that it will require government involvement.

The Hedge Fund Takeover of Local News Is Neither Inevitable Nor Unstoppable

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McClatchy to decline future Report for America participation, following hedge-fund critiques
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McClatchy to decline future Report for America participation, following hedge-fund critiques

IN JUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES published an op-ed by Steven Waldman—the president and co-founder of Report for America (RFA), the journalism organization that pairs early-career journalists with news outlets that have identified critical gaps in their own coverage—titled “How to stop hedge funds from wrecking local news.” In the op-ed, Waldman writes that such investors, which own “half of the daily newspaper circulation in America,” have “a track record of cutting the reporting staff of local newsrooms to increase profits”; he also suggests policy proposals, including “improving antitrust enforcement,” to “confront” the damages done to local journalism by hedge funds, “head on.” Waldman has written and spoken critically about the perils of hedge-fund ownership on numerous occasions, even as Report for America has placed journalists in newsrooms owned by hedge funds. Now, it seems that one such news organization may have taken issue with those critiques.

McClatchy to decline future Report for America participation, following hedge-fund critiques

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How Newspaper Closures Open the Door to Corporate Crime

Some may shrug at the inevitable passing of the local newspaper, writing it off as a dinosaur that doesn’t have much to offer in our modern world of blogs, social media sites, and streamed soundbites. But no news is not necessarily good news for society as a whole, says Harvard Business School Professor Jonas Heese. When local newspapers shutter, some businesses evidently treat the lack of press coverage as permission to act badly and end up committing more illegal violations, including pollution, workplace safety infractions, and financial fraud, according to Heese’s research.

How Newspaper Closures Open the Door to Corporate Crime

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First Amendment survey suggests what people really want from journalists is community

People now see most journalists as part of a faceless entity, but they want them to be part of their community. This means being present to understand and cover issues that matter — an exceedingly difficult task when resources are already stretched thin, leaving state legislatures, city councils and local courts often uncovered. But it also means investing in your community of journalists. Journalists already doing this community-based work tend to be most overlooked and under resourced. When a reporter recently tweeted kudos to a major digital outlet for launching a local newsletter to rectify a dearth of “quality local news” in Washington, D.C, the community responded with a firestorm of other options that eventually topped twenty local and hyper-local publications.

First Amendment survey suggests what people really want from journalists is community