Don’t ask me to defend hedge-fund newspaper owners bleeding local papers dry.
But I think Report for America, a prominent nonprofit placing early career reporters through a Peace Corps-like program, is wrong to exclude these publishers.
Report for America’s executive director revealed, at a Feb. 27 roundtable, its new policy to stop placing reporters at hedge fund newspapers.
That won’t kill any papers. But it will cut much of America out of Report for America’s program.
The organization placed 607 reporters in 339 newsrooms since 2018. This year it has 250 corps members in 198 newsrooms, including 11 in the giant Gannett chain and one in the McClatchy chain.
The latter positions may be extended but after that, Report for America won’t place more reporters at such newspapers, Executive Director Kim Kleman confirmed in an interview this week.
“It’s not the fault of the individual reporters or their communities that rely on them as to who owns the local newspaper,” she said. “But there’s not enough money to help everybody. We have to make our picks really carefully.”
I understand why they don’t want to support publishers that gut newsrooms and siphon off profits. The private nonprofit can do what it wants.
But I hope Kleman and the organization reconsider, for several reasons.
Like it or not, these chains serve the majority of the United States. They publish the primary newspapers in thousands of cities, counties and regions, so excluding them deprives most of the nation of the benefits of Report for America.
“You’ve got a tremendous number of the large dailies, the state dailies you’ve cut out. Despite their diminished stature they are still reaching … the largest audience,” said Penelope Muse Abernathy, who led “news desert” research at Northwestern University’s Medill School.
Their newsrooms also continue to produce important work.
The Chicago Tribune is owned by Alden Global Capital, an investment firm seen as the most parsimonious chain owner.
Even so, the Tribune last month began publishing a blockbuster, yearlong investigation that benefits everyone in Illinois. It revealed that gaps in state law and slowpoke regulators allowed health care workers accused of abusing patients to keep providing care.
It’s difficult to see cuts at McClatchy, owned by Chatham Asset Management, including last month’s decision to cut The Olympian to just three print days a week.
But under Chatham, McClatchy papers still do some exemplary reporting. Its Olympia reporter revealed Washington lawmakers’ appalling “legislative privilege” secrecy ploy, and McClatchy papers in Miami and Kansas City won Pulitzer Prizes in 2022.
Gannett papers with just a few reporters are barely able to cover their communities nowadays. But its Austin daily was a Pulitzer finalist for Uvalde shooting coverage.
Another reason I disagree with Report for America’s decision is because its program incentivizes publishers, even hedge funds, to add more reporters and increase community engagement.
It requires publishers to help cover the cost of corps members and seek local support for their journalism. If that’s not enough to prevent enriching remote owners, tighten the requirements.
The decision also surfaces ideological divides within “save journalism” circles, where a cadre of nonprofits is positioning itself to benefit from more than $500 million that big philanthropies have committed to local news.
Those philanthropies are rightly wary of seeing their dollars end up in Wall Street pockets.
Announcing that you exclude hedge funds might improve chances of getting their journalism grants.
But I urge all these parties to be more agnostic about the business models, especially if the goal is to replenish America’s news deserts and help the 70 million Americans with little to no remaining local news coverage.
More than half of America’s dailies, and a quarter of its weeklies, are owned by 10 large chains. The largest are owned by or indebted to Wall Street types. More than 90% of local news outlets are also for-profit.
There are 500 to 600 digital news startups, many nonprofit. I’m rooting for their success. But they come and go — more than half will fail within five years, and most are in cities that already have multiple news outlets, according Medill researchers.
Perhaps my biggest concern is that staking out ideological camps will erode public support for local news.
It could lessen chances of winning federal support, which is ultimately what’s needed to preserve a critical mass of newsroom jobs, stop the industry’s death spiral and help it become self-sustaining again.
Opponents of this legislation are exploiting ideological differences to attack proposals like the California Journalism Preservation Act and the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in Congress. They also amplified these divides to weaken save-journalism policies in Canada and Australia.
It’s also hard to do a litmus test. The lines are blurry.
Many for-profit newspapers, including this one, are incorporating philanthropic support for their reporting. Philadelphia’s daily is a for-profit owned by a nonprofit started by a telecom tycoon. Boston’s daily is a for-profit owned by an investment manager.
“Hedge fund” is used as shorthand for investment firms that bought newspaper chains and cut costs. That’s increased the number of “ghost newspapers” without enough staff to provide adequate coverage.
Kleman said Gannett, America’s largest publisher, would be excluded. Gannett is indebted to financiers after mergers that bulked up the chain and thinned out newsrooms. But it’s now publicly traded, owned by shareholders.
Alden is prickly about being called a “hedge fund.” A spokesperson insists that it’s now an “investment firm.”
Kleman seemed open to suggestions and graciously heard me out.
Perhaps by focusing more on community needs, what service reporters will provide and whether there’s enough of a newsroom to support them, Report for America can find a way to continue broadly supporting local news without hedging its principles.
This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.