Editor and Publisher Reports

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

One of the 2022 inductees for the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Hall of Fame included the publisher/editor of Dallas, Texas-based I Messenger Media: Cheryl Smith. This latest honor was presented at the August 2022 NABJ Annual Convention in Las Vegas, where her numerous awards, years of service to the industry and contributions to black journalism were recognized. Smith has more than 35 years of experience in the news publishing industry. She is the current executive director and publisher of I Messenger Media News Group, the owners of Texas Metro News, Garland Journal and I Messenger newspapers. She is also the region IV president for the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a board member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the immediate past president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Association of Black Journalists (DFW/ABJ). Smith was also recognized in the September issue of E&P Magazine within the 2022 “Class of 25 over 50,” a yearly group of news executives chos

With elections, law enforcement agencies, the courts, elected officials, branches of the government and the very rule of law under sustained and concerted attack by its own citizens and elected leaders, there is no question that the media has an essential role to play in addressing these important issues. E&P’s September 2022 cover story “American Democracy in Crisis” reports on the need for the news media industry to reframe democracy coverage during this perilous & critical moment in U.S. history. Award-winning print and broadcast journalist Mike Barnicle is no stranger to this topic as a regular contributor on MSNBC’s popular Morning Joe, where he discusses the news of the day with prominent guests, scholars, political leaders, and fellow journalists. Barnicle began his career in the 1960’s as a young speech writer for John Tunney, Edmund Muskie, and the late Robert F. Kennedy. He then moved on to become one the nation’s most respected newspaper columnists, penning more than 4,000 pieces, for over

The latest Gallup poll came with a warning flare: “Americans’ confidence in two facets of the news media — newspapers and television news — has fallen to all-time low points.” Since 1973, Washington, D.C.-based Gallup, Inc. has polled Americans about their trust in newspapers and, in 1993, began tracking American sentiments about television/cable news. A mere 16% of Americans “have a great deal/quite a lot of confidence in newspapers,” Gallup’s Research Consultant Megan Brenan summarized the July 2022 findings. Television news fared even worse, with just 11% of the respondents having “some degree of confidence” in the news service cable and network news provides. Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill co-founded NewsGuard in 2018 to help the public discern what is trusted, reliable news on the internet. Crovitz and Brill were guests on E&P Reports’ 152nd vodcast episode to talk about trust in news and misinformation online. “At least when you were reading your first newspaper, you knew you were reading a Hearst

Aequalitas is Latin for “equality.” But it would be hard to find an industry executive equal to Aqualitas Media Group founder and executive director DJ Doran, who spent 23 years as a U.S. Air Force Reserve Pilot before purchasing a hotel and entering the news publishing industry.  Today, Doran owns eight online publications targeted to the LGBTQ+ reader in several U.S. major markets, including his hometown of Chicago.  Doran, who is openly gay, is now planning a run for Chicago mayor in the upcoming 2023 election as a Democrat. In this 151st episode of “E&P Reports,” host Mike Blinder goes one-on-one with LGBTQ+ media publisher DJ Doran on how he kept his major market media enterprises thriving during a global pandemic, his news publishing plans for the future and his recent announcement to run as an openly gay candidate for Mayor of Chicago. Related link: More information about DJ Doran’s mayoral run

On January 28th, 2022, The Dallas Morning News reported on the purchase of a local, suburban metroplex group of weekly newspapers, stating, "Instead of a trip to Hawaii to celebrate 25 years together, Rick and Elizabeth Rogers bought a community newspaper company.” That company is Star Local Media, a community publishing group based in the affluent northeast suburb of Plano, Texas, that prints 14 community newspapers across cities in Denton, Collin, and Dallas counties, with some titles more than 100 years old. Rick Rogers is not unknown to most in the news publishing business, with his most recent job as Chief Revenue Officer at TownNews. His previous life offered 25 years of editorial, publishing and management experience with corporate roles at ACM and Gatehouse Media in Missouri and Texas. Rick and his wife Elizabeth have resided for the past 11 years in Frisco — a market served by Star Local Media with the Frisco Enterprise, making them both quite familiar with the communities they serve. In this 150th

Damian Daniels had three encounters with the local police during the last 48 hours of his life. The Army veteran was in his home in August 2020, amid a mental health crisis, when his brother — 800 miles away in Colorado — called the Red Cross for help. The agency, in turn, called 9-1-1, and police officers were dispatched for a welfare check that turned deadly, culminating in an officer shooting Daniels twice, killing him. Tragedies like this — when a person in the throes of a mental health crisis is shot and killed by police officers — aren’t rare. Washington Post reporters Jon Gerberg and Alice Li found 178 similar cases over the course of three years. They wrote about Daniel’s death in “When a call to the police for help turns deadly,” part of the Washington Post’s “Unaccountable” investigative series — a deep dive into how the police serve the communities they’re tasked to protect. Jon Gerberg is a senior video journalist for the Washington Post and a member of the investigative team. He's been with the n

Jennifer Kho loves that Chicago is a “two-newspaper town.” She’s the new executive editor at one of those two newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times. Kho was E&P Publisher Mike Blinder’s guest on this 148th episode of E&P Reports vodcast. Prior to being named executive editor, Kho was the managing editor at HuffPost and, before that, managing editor at The Guardian (US). While at HuffPost, she became the director for strategic innovation and created an innovation team. She was laid off by the digital news outlet and spent approximately 14 months looking for a job and bridging the employment gap by offering consultative services. Kho hadn’t even fully moved from Los Angeles to Chicago when the Chicago Sun-Times’ newsroom faced the monumental and solemn challenge of reporting on the July 4th mass shooting in Highland Park. That day, a single shooter, with the aid of high-capacity weapons, murdered seven people and injured dozens, terrorizing and traumatizing the community.

Delano Massey was covering several executive-level jobs at CNN, including supervising producer of both race and equity and crime and justice reporting, when he joined the team at Axios as managing editor of Local, just as the company launched a dozen new markets. Having spent over three years at AP and attending Maynard Institute's Media Academy at Harvard University, he gained national recognition when he was selected as one of MIPAD’s 2021 “Most Influential People of African Descent.” But over the years, Massey's journalism career took different turns, spending almost a decade as the metro editor at the Lexington Herald-Leader and then leaving to work as a senior digital producer in TV broadcast news. In this 147th episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with Delano Massey, Managing Editor of Axios Local, exploring their mission to continue to provide "smart brevity" reporting not only at a national news level but now expanding into dozens of local markets, with plans to launch more by year's end. We

On their website, JaxTrib.com, the team of Jacksonville, Florida's newest news outlet, posted, "Before it’s too late, we must rethink what news will look like and how it will be delivered in our community. For the Tributary, the future of local journalism is about accountability and accessibility. This nonprofit news hub feeds investigative stories to area partners, filling a gap in coverage of entrenched problems and solutions to strengthen the entire Northeast Florida news ecosystem.” Founded by two newsroom veterans of Gannett’s Jacksonville (FL) Times-Union, Andrew Pantazi, the founding editor and Deirdre Conner, board chairman, worked for over one year to establish the nonprofit entity and find the necessary funding to establish an investigative news outlet that proudly shares their stories with other area media companies. Moreover, Pantazi, who, while working for Gannett, helped organize the Times-Union’s newsroom into the NewsGuild-CWA, now boasts in his recruitment ads that the Tributary operates as a

On June 29th, 2022, the Local News Initiative at The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications of Northwestern University released their latest study, “The State of Local News 2022, Expanding News Deserts, Growing Gaps, Emerging Models.”  The primary author of the report is Penelope Muse Abernathy, who is nationally known for her “news deserts” research and acts as visiting professor at Northwestern and has served as Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina. Abernathy has also held executive positions with The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The study confirms that U.S. newspapers rapidly continue to close at an average rate of more than two a week, with the country losing more than one-fourth since 2005 as of publication date leaving only 6,377 surviving papers with 1,230 reported as dailies and 5,147 as weeklies.  Moreover, the study states that this loss of local journalism has been accompanied by the “malignant spread of misinformation and disinf

Juana Summers knew she wanted to be a reporter since high school in Kansas City, where she started writing for her school newspaper. After graduating in 2009 from the University of Missouri with a degree in Convergence Journalism, she has quickly established a remarkable career with reporting positions covering politics for CNN, AP, Mashable and National Public Radio (NPR). Summers will join All Things Considered Starting on June 27th, filling the hosting position left vacant by Audie Cornish and will be joining the show at a time when questions about NPR’s diversity in its internal structure and within its audience have been making industry headlines.   In a recent NPR interview, Summers, who is Black, said she "hopes to further expand All Things Considered's reach to new and diverse audiences. She aims to reach more people whose experiences are not typically represented in the media and empower them to tell their stories on air. She also said she hopes to do more in digital spaces to reach younger audience

While most news publishing outlets are downsizing, the Hearst Connecticut Media Group (HCMG) continues to grow its operations with a recent expansion statewide and in Greater Hartford, the backyard of the now hedge fund-owned Harford Courant. In March 2022, HCMG announced hiring 13 new staff members, including 11 journalists who will focus their reporting on statewide topics, and local news and enterprise in the state capital area. They will publish that content online within the one-year-old CTInsider.com website and eight daily newspapers and community weekly publications. As E&P reported one year ago, CTInsider.com began a major expansion for HCMG to become a statewide news powerhouse. Today it seems that they are well on their way to achieving their goal of having 100,000+ paid print and digital subscribers across their entire network. Furthermore, HCMG has also seen consecutive monthly growth in digital subscriptions since early 2019.  In this 143rd episode of "E&P Reports," we revisit with Mike

In the summer of 2019, the Boston Globe surprised the industry by launching an initiative just 53 miles down the I-95 corridor in neighboring Providence, Rhode Island. When most local news operations were aggressively downsizing, the Globe had already shown an appetite for expansion by hiring more journalists and launching new verticals covering marijuana, health, life sciences and even the Catholic Church.   However, this expansion placed them in the backyard of one of the nation's most respected news outlets: The Providence Journal, which in its heyday had multiple bureaus with hundreds of journalists and a lengthy list of Pulitzers and Peabodys for their famous investigative reporting. Today, due to subscriber and advertising revenue declines and Gannett corporate downsizing, there are less than thirty full-time reporters at the ProJo.   Perhaps that is one of the reasons that The Boston Globe is increasing its commitment to their Providence bureau that contributes daily to their online vertical dedicated

Children of celebrities often have difficulty finding their path. There are countless stories of their wrong choices. However, Peter Funt, son of Allen Funt, creator of Candid Camera, one of TV's longest-running and most popular shows, was able to walk the fine line between honoring his father’s achievements and forging his own – and very successfully. Peter became a member of the Candid Camera family at an early age. He portrayed a shoeshine boy at the age of 3 and offered shines to businessmen on the streets of New York. Peter was instructed to ask for $10 per shoe he shined, an outrageous charge at the time, to elicit those “candid” and amusing reactions that were the show’s premise. During a recent “E&P Reports” Vodcast episode Funt was asked about his life, his love of newspapers, his views on news media’s current and future status, which have often been the topics of his many op-ed pieces and the books he has published. “Many people mistakenly assume the Funt homelife was one practical joke after an

Francesca Chambers is the new White House Correspondent for USA Today. However, she is not new to reporting on D.C. politics, having covered presidents, vice presidents and politicians, including former Presidents Obama and Trump, former Vice President Pence, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senators Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Lindsey Graham. Before this new position at USA Today, Chambers covered politics and the White House for McClatchy, DailyMail.com and the Daily Mail. In this 1140th episode of "E&P Reports," publisher Mike Blinder interviews Chambers about what's it like to be part of the White House press pool and what advice she can offer other aspiring journalists who may have a passion for politics on how to advance and grow within the industry. Follow Francesca Chambers on Twitter Read Francesca Chambers latest reporting for USA Today= Learn more about the White House Correspondents’ Association   

Jon Marshall teaches media history and reporting as an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications. In his new book “Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis,” he examines the adversarial relationship between presidents and journalists amid periods of national crisis. Some administrations he explores within the pages of “Clash” include how in 1798, John Adams used a newly enacted Alien and Sedition Act to muzzle his press critics. Or, how in 1917, Woodrow Wilson, who had similar ideas to cease the probing of his administration by white house reporters, used legislation outlawing expressions of disloyalty to prosecute and jail journalists. And it was in the late ‘60s that Richard Nixon was the first to attempt to delegitimize journalists by being the first to brand them as “elites” and describing them as “the media,” to change the public perception of the press as something that was wrong with America, not unlike crime or