News

The real reason local newspapers are dying

“I used to think the problem with local journalism was that the people running them didn’t understand the internet. And I think genuinely the problem is they don’t understand newspapers. Because they don’t understand the job of journalism, which is to write stories about the community.”

Out of Nowhere: What’s lost and won as newsrooms close their offices for good

Andrea Chamblee, the widow of John McNamara, one of the shooting victims. Chamblee praised the Capital Gazette’s staff for its undaunted coverage in the wake of calamity, and said that such work would be unthinkable now, given recent layoffs and the closure of the newsroom. “They can’t just drive around with a laptop in their car, and go to McDonald’s for the Wi-Fi to upload their story, and take the picture from their iPhone, and be everywhere they want to be and talk to everybody they want to talk to,” she said.

A year under Alden’s grip, how is Tribune faring?

One year ago, the vulture hedge fund Alden Global Capital bought nearly a third of the stock in Tribune Publishing, one of the nation’s most venerable newspaper chains, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sun-Sentinel, the Hartford Courant and others. Since then, the changes in Tribune have been swift and devastating.

For Pueblo

Then a bold, if slightly desperate, idea came to him. In his brushes with the professional journalism crowd, he’d heard about an increasingly popular school of thought: if the press is a public service, it ought to be publicly funded.

Buyouts take a fresh bite of Jacksonville’s daily paper

Big stories and essential reporting don’t protect the Florida Times-Union from a fresh round of staff cuts.

‘The immune system of a democracy’

Dr. Seema Yasmin, who studies the overlap of news deserts and health deserts, told Brian Stelter that those of us who live in news deserts are more likely to face not just a pandemic, but also a misinfodemic that fuels the spread of the disease. Speaking on Reliable Sources on CNN on Nov. 15, 2020, she said the press is “immune system of a democracy.”

About 500 people are taking buyouts at Gannett

In October, Gannett offered a round of voluntary buyouts to all its employees. Poynter has learned that roughly 600 people opted in and roughly 500 buyouts were accepted... “Gannett’s furloughs earlier this year and the recent buyouts undermine our democracy,” said Jon Schleuss, president of The NewsGuild — Communications Workers of America. “It’s a disgrace that any news company thinks it can cut its way to success.”

Newspapers face struggle to remain viable, relevant

“In a smaller community or even a city the size of Shreveport/Bossier, you need enough journalists to cover what’s happening in the city government, what’s happening at the parish level, what’s happening at the state level, especially what’s happening down in Baton Rouge,” NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss said.