What Works: The Future of Local News

Dan Kennedy and Ellen Clegg
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From Northeastern University's School of Journalism. Local news, the bedrock of democracy, is in crisis. Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University and veteran Boston Globe editor Ellen Clegg talk to journalists, policymakers and entrepreneurs about what's working to keep local news alive.

  1. 5h ago

    Episode 120: Carlene Hempel and Sydney Woogerd

    Dan and Ellen talk with Professor Carlene Hempel at Northeastern and her student Sydney Woogerd. This spring, Carlene brought a team of student journalists to Asheville, North Carolina, for a week-long intensive reporting trip that focused on the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The result: a digital multimedia investigation called Caught in the Current: Helene Recovery in Asheville and Beyond. Put simply, this is a stunning project, with podcasts, videos, photos and text. There's a great soundtrack. We'll drop a link in the show notes. Carlene has been a journalism professor at Northeastern University for more than 20 years. She specializes in teaching long-form narrative writing as well as creating on-site, pop-up newsrooms domestically and abroad for her courses. Her 2025 reporting class and resulting magazine about the 10-year anniversary of Flint, Michigan's water crisis won two national reporting awards.  Sydney is studying journalism and international affairs at Northeastern University with a focus on multimedia storytelling. She serves as co-photo director for The Avenue Magazine, a student-led fashion publication, where she directs visual strategy and creates editorial content. She has also contributed to The Huntington News and Artistry Magazine as a writer and photographer documenting community stories across Boston. Sydney served as the project's photo editor. Dan has a Quick Take about the recent What Works webinar for local-news publishers, journalists and volunteers. Ellen shares five lessons learned from watching how the projects that were subjects of the book, "What Works in Community News," have evolved.

    41 min

  2. May 24

    Episode 119: Ron Mitchell

    Dan and Ellen talk with Ron Mitchell, publisher and editor of the Bay State Banner. In 2023, Mitchell and Andre Stark, both seasoned television news journalists, purchased the Banner, a newspaper covering the Black community in Boston. The Banner was started in 1965 by Melvin Miller. The print weekly is legendary for covering stories that were ignored by other publications. Stories about the Black and Latino communities in the Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan. Mitchell and Stark are expanding its digital footprint. During his 27 years at WBZ, Mitchell created news coverage focused on racism in elementary school textbooks in 2014, and a series chronicling an 11-year lawsuit that culminated in an $11 million dollar award to a Black firefighter in Brookline. Dan and Ellen also talk with Sanjana Mishra, a Northeastern journalism and criminal justice graduate. She's worked in local news, communications and social media. She took two courses with Dan last semester and somehow lived to tell the tale. She wrote a final paper called "How private equity and corporate ownership are killing local journalism and American democracy," an in-depth examination of how Alden Global Capital and USA Today Co. — known as Gannett until recently — have hollowed out newsrooms in a never-ending quest for higher profits. Ellen has a Quick Take on North Star Stories, a daily radio broadcast on local news carried by AMPERS, a network of 17 community FM stations across Minnesota. It's by community, for community, and it's funded partly by donors and partly by the state. Dan has a Quick Take about the latest on The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which announced earlier this year that it was shutting down in the face of mounting losses. What's happened since is mostly good — but it comes with a sour aftertaste.

    46 min

  3. May 10

    Episode 118: Joe Kriesberg and Laura Colarusso

    Dan talks with Joe Kriesberg, the publisher of CommonWealth Beacon, and Laura Colarusso, the editor. CommonWealth Beacon is a digital nonprofit that's part of the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, better known as MassINC, and Joe is the CEO. CommonWealth Beacon covers politics and public policy at the state level, and has increasingly been branching out into local coverage as well. And it happens to be celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Joe has been with MassINC since 2023 and has overseen the expansion of CommonWealth Beacon's staff and mission. Before that, he was president and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, where he was a leading advocate for affordable housing. He brings decades of nonprofit management experience and an extensive background of working with news organizations. He has raised millions of dollars for mission-driven organizations. Laura is an award-winning editor and reporter who combines digital media expertise with a commitment to old-school reporting. Before coming to CommonWealth Beacon, she was the editor of Nieman Reports, a magazine and website published by Harvard's Nieman Foundation that covers issues related to journalism. She has also worked as the digital managing editor at GBH News and the digital opinion editor at The Boston Globe, and is a frequent contributor to the Washington Monthly. Dan has a Quick Take on the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, published recently by the international organization Reporters Without Borders. It shows that the United States has fallen to 64th, coming in just behind Botswana and just ahead of Panama. Also, an important announcement: Our annual What Works webinar will take place on Thursday, May 21. It's a free, all-day event aimed at enhancing skills in audience development, ethical and effective uses for AI, and how to plan a successful event. You can register at our website, whatworks.news. Just look for the "What Works Webinar 2026" tab at the top of the page. (Ellen is off the air this week but editing behind the scenes.)

    44 min

  4. Apr 8

    Episode 117: Rachel White

    Dan and Ellen talk with Rachel White, CEO of the Associated Press Fund for Journalism. Rachel joined the nonprofit AP Foundation in 2024, after a 10-year run with The Guardian, the one-time print newspaper in the UK that has become a global digital powerhouse. In 2016, White became president of  theguardian.org, a nonprofit organization she founded that raises tax-deductible funds to support The Guardian's journalism. The AP Foundation has a similar mission, but is laser-focused on state and local news outlets all over the US. The AP Fund is expanding. Fifty news organizations have just joined, for a total of 100 newsrooms. News outlets get help with reach and strategy to achieve financial stability. Dan has a Quick Take on Local News Day, which is on April 9 and billed as "a national day of action connecting communities with trusted local news." Ellen's Quick Take is on an opinion column apocalypse in Fargo, North Dakota. The Fargo Forum, a locally owned news outlet, has forced out three long-running columnists. Why? Take a wild guess. Here's one headline on a recent column by journalist Jim Shaw: "Our local leaders oppose free and fair elections." He's now an ex-columnist. A big hat-tip to Alex Ip, a Gen Z publisher and editor at the xylom.com, which explores how communities are influenced and shaped by science. Alex broke this news about Fargo on social media.

    29 min

  5. Mar 22

    Episode 116: Zuri Berry

    Dan and Ellen talk with Zuri Berry, the executive editor of The Banner in Montgomery County, Maryland. He's also a Boston Globe colleague of Ellen's from days of yore. Zuri is one of those journalists who's done a little bit of everything. We're talking reporter, columnist, video producer, digital editor, radio host, audio editor — over more than two decades in this business. And he's got an MBA from the McColl School of Business at Queens University of Charlotte on top of all that, which is a combination you don't always see in a newsroom leader. He was deputy managing editor at the Boston Herald, and managing editor for two NPR member stations. The accolades speak for themselves — he was part of the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning team for breaking news coverage of the 2013 Marathon bombings. At The Banner, he supported last year's Pulitzer-winning series on Baltimore's overdose crisis. Dan has a Quick Take for later on in the podcast about a journalist who's run afoul of ICE and who faces deportation to Colombia. Estefany Rodríguez, a reporter for a Spanish-language newspaper called Nashville Noticias in Tennessee, was arrested by ICE even though her lawyers say she entered the U.S. legally. It may be a case of retaliation, as Rodriguez has reported on ICE activities in the Nashville area.  After the podcast was recorded, Rodríguez was released on $10,000 bond, but she is still fighting to remain in the U.S. Ellen has a Quick Take is about a small newspaper in Wyoming that ditched its police blotter — and almost nobody misses it. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle made the change after taking a course at the Poynter Institute on deepening crime coverage. Dropping the blotter gave the staff more time to do actual reporting.

    33 min

  6. Mar 10

    Episode 115: Barbara "Bob" Allen

    On this episode, Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy talk with Barbara "Bob" Allen, an LA-based journalist, trainer and consultant who founded CollegeJournalism.org in 2025. The site provides resources and news for journalism educators and student media advisers across the country. Allen is also the editor of the Student Press Report, a brand-new national news desk covering the state of the college press. The debut piece — "Cash-starved and censored, America's student press is in crisis" — lays out the financial and free-press challenges facing campus newsrooms. Allen also writes the weekly College Journalism Newsletter. Allen brings decades of experience mentoring student journalists. She was adviser to the student newspaper at Oklahoma State University and most recently served as director of college programming at the Poynter Institute in Florida. She holds a master's degree from the University of Missouri, home to both a campus paper — The Maneater — and the Columbia Missourian, a lab newspaper covering the city of Columbia. Allen has also led an ambitious project to map every college newspaper in the country, in collaboration with the University of Vermont's Center for Community News. That effort found more than 1,100 college newspapers, with 766 located in or adjacent to counties with little or no local news access. Dan's Quick Take stays close to home. The Huntington News, Northeastern's independent student newspaper, just celebrated its 100th anniversary. Ellen's Quick Take is about a three-bedroom, three-bath condo in Provincetown. The Local Journalism Project, a nonprofit that partners with the Provincetown Independent, raised money from more than 100 donors to buy the condo to house reporters. Ed Miller, editor and co-founder of the Indie, told Mike Blinder of Editor & Publisher that housing was a major barrier to attracting staff to his well-regarded newspaper on the Outer Cape.

    31 min

  7. Feb 25

    Episode 114: Dale Anglin

    Dan and Ellen talk with Dale Anglin, the inaugural executive director of Press Forward, a philanthropic effort that is dedicated to funding local news initiatives nationwide. Before she was named as the leader of Press Forward, Anglin served as a vice president for grantmaking at the Cleveland Foundation. She also led the foundation's journalism strategy. Then and now, she focuses on local news and information as a way to restore a sense of community. Dan has a Quick Take on The Baltimore Banner, one of the most prominent nonprofit digital startups. It looks like readers of The Washington Post who live in the DC area may not be deprived of local news and sports after all despite the recent deep cuts ordered by its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. The Banner is expanding, and it's part of executive editor Audrey Cooper's mission to build civic engagement through community journalism.  Ellen's Quick Take is on a bill in New York state that attempts to put some guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence in newsrooms. Among other things, it would require disclosures, and mandate supervision and fact-checking by actual human editors. It received a hearty endorsement from journalism industry unions. But there's a lot of catching up to do to reign in the robots.

    36 min

  8. Feb 5

    Episode 113: Charlie Sennott and Alexis Algazy

    Dan and Ellen talk with Charlie Sennott, a former foreign correspondent at The Boston Globe who left in 2008 to become a serial entrepreneur. He co-founded Global Post and The Ground Truth Project. Ground Truth, a nonprofit, was a partner to GBH News, FRONTLINE, PRX The World, and the PBS NewsHour. It focused on partnerships to amplify international and national news projects. Now, Charlie has turned his attention to local news. He teamed up with Steve Waldman to launch Report for America as an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Dan and Ellen talked with Waldman on an earlier podcast. Sennott's newest creation is GroundTruth Media Partners, LLC based in Woods Hole, where he leads a small staff and publishes and writes the GroundTruth newsletter on Substack. The non-profit that was called "The GroundTruth Project" has recently rebranded to call itself Report Local with Report for America and Report for the World as its flagship initiatives. Report Local and the University of Missouri School of Journalism did groundbreaking work on water issues in the Mississippi River Basin.  In his most recent post on Substack, Sennott writes about this new branding. He also writes about how he officially stepped aside from the program, but remains incredibly proud of the movement it has created. As his own act of community service, Sennott is also serving as the publisher and editor of the Martha's Vineyard Times on Martha's Vineyard where he and his wife, Julie, who has an extended family on the Island, now live year round.  Dan and Ellen are also joined by Alexis Algazy, a Northeastern student who has done a compelling story about why politicians need to engage in storytelling on social media.   Dan has a Quick Take about public support for local news. Politico recently published an in-depth story on what's gone wrong with a program in California that was supposed to provide $250 million to help fund local news over a five-year period, with the money to come from the state and from Google. The deal seems to be coming apart. And yet there are reasons to be optimistic — as you will hear. Ellen has a Quick Take on the role of video in recording the violent acts of ICE agents in Minneapolis, and the protests all over that city. Video by bystanders has played an important role in exposing what's happening on the ground. But video and social media in general also pose a challenge for reporters covering the story for the Minnesota Star Tribune. Editor Kathleen Hennessey spoke about it in a brief interview with Semafor.

    51 min
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From Northeastern University's School of Journalism. Local news, the bedrock of democracy, is in crisis. Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University and veteran Boston Globe editor Ellen Clegg talk to journalists, policymakers and entrepreneurs about what's working to keep local news alive.

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