Transcript: Media Policy and Local Journalism Lessons Learned - and A Look at What Happens Next

Transcript: Media Policy and Local Journalism -
Lessons learned – and a look at what happens

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Transcript of a webinar hosted by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, 1/27/2022
Moderator: Damian Radcliffe, Carolyn S. Chambers Professor of journalism at the University of Oregon and a
Knight News Innovation fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism.
Panelists: Joy Jenkins, Assistant Professor at School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the
University of Tennessee; Elizabeth Hansen, Senior Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital
Journalism, Phil Napoli, James R. Shepley Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Duke University.
Listen to this event on Soundcloud or Watch it on YouTube
Damian Radcliffe (00:00:01):

Hello, and thank you for joining us for the fifth and final webinar in a five part series, examining what role
media policy can and should play in supporting a strong, sustainable, vibrant local media sector in the United
States. My name is Damian Radcliffe and I'm the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor of Journalism at the
University of Oregon and a Knight news innovation fellow at the Tower Center for Digital Journalism, which is
hosting this series of events.
Over the last four months we've heard from a number of expert panels exploring the current media policy
landscape, lessons that can be learned from overseas markets, how grassroots and community media can
have a seat at the table can be effectively supported as well as fresh ideas for funding and structuring local
news. Today in our final discussion, we'll be looking at where media policy goes from here, particularly in light
of a seemingly stalled legislative agenda on the hill, the upcoming midterms and upcoming elections
happening at a state level across the country.

To help us explore this topic our panel today features three industry and academic experts. Joy Jenkins is an
assistant professor at the school journalism and electronic media at the University of Tennessee. She's
actually joining us today from Valencia, Spain, where it's very late at night, although probably about
lunchtime in Spain.
Dr. Jenkins' studies have focused on the influence of market concerns of journalist public service roles, how
perceptions of audience and local impact shape journalistic identity and the role of the potential of
journalistic narratives to spur civic engagement and the many ways in which news organizations can use
digital platforms to facilitate dialogue with audiences.
Before moving to the University of Tennessee, Dr. Jenkins served as the post-doctoral research fellow in
digital news at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, where she studied how
local and regional and news organizations around Europe are adapting to changes facing the news industry.

Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro is a Senior Research Fellow at the Tower Center for Digital journalism. Dr. Hansen
Shapiro's work focuses on the future of journalism in public media and public policies to support local news.
She's a steering committee member of the working group upon sustainability of journalism at the forum on
information and democracy, and is the CEO and a co-founder of the National Trust for Local News, which is
seeking to transform how local news organizations are funded, organized, owned, and operated.
Transcript by Rev.com Page 1 of 18

Transcript: Media Policy and Local Journalism - Lessons learned – and a look at what happens
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Previously, Dr. Hansen Shapiro led the news sustainability research at the Sean Stein Center on media politics
and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. And she was the research director for the membership
puzzles projects, membership guide.

Phil Napoli is the James R. Shepley distinguished Professor of Public policy at Duke University and the director
of the Dewitt Wallace center for media and democracy at the Sanford School of public policy at Duke where
he's also the Senior Associate Dean for faculty and research.
Dr. Napoli's research focuses on media institutions and media regulation and policy. He's provided formal and
informal expert testimony on these topics to government bodies, such as the US Senate, the FCC, the FTC and
congressional research service. Professor Napoli is the author of four books. His most recent of which “Social
Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age” was published by Columbia
University press in 2019.
He's also published over are 50 articles in legal public policy journalism and communication journals, as well
as over 30 invited book chapters in edited collections.
Joy Elizabeth and Phil, thank you so much for joining us today. Just a quick reminder, that there will be
opportunities for interaction throughout. So please don't be shy about posting your comments and questions
in the chat and you in the Q&A function.

Nick Matthew's my research assistant for this series and a former reporter and editor at the Houston
Chronicle and the daily progress in Charlottesville among other places and now a PhD candidate at the
University of Minnesota will keep an eye on your questions and will help us keep to time.
So hello everybody. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for everybody who is tuning in today.
When we started this series, one of the reasons that we were really keen to hold this series of events was
that it felt that there was a ground swell of support for media policy and potential initiatives to support local
journalism that perhaps we hadn't previously seen here in the US. And now the landscape has started to shift
a little bit. So the local journalism act didn't make it. Then some of those efforts were weaved into build back
better, which looks like that's not going to make it.
So I'm really curious to get a sense of where the land is lying right now. What types of media policy
conversations you are seeing, and what's on the agenda with the media policy makers that you are talking to.
Elizabeth, do you want to kick us off with this? What are the conversations that you are seeing in your
research work?
Elizabeth Hansen (00:04:50):

Yeah, sure. Thank you, Damian. And it's a pleasure to be here and have this really important discussion.
Totally agree that the energy and excitement around the local journalism sustainability act and then build
back better, it was really invigorating. A lot of these policy ideas felt like they were just ideas that we've been
kicking around in some cases forever. And so it was just really gratifying to see all of it get into legislative
language.
And I give a lot of credit to the rebuild local news coalition and Steve Waldman for really pushing that
forward. It really does seem like with build back better this round has closed. And I think everybody involved
in that conversation knew that that was a possibility, that the political window would shut we'd have to sort
of rebuild for the next cycle.

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I'll say where some of the media policy conversations that I'm having have restarted is around platform
transparency and data access for researchers and journalists. And I think some of that is also timely and
important given that we have midterms coming up. And there's just a general concern about the polluted
information around elections.
So I'm hearing less of the sustainability at the federal level and more on the platform data transparency
piece, which is also I think really critical to journalists and newsrooms, but it feels like that federal
conversation has closed. And that said, and we can talk more about this.
There is still a lot of interesting innovation happening out there at state and municipal levels and the
community newspapers that I increasingly work with, many of them are sustained by legal notice, public
notice revenue. And those are obviously long standing and in some cases, continuing conversations in state
houses about how to keep those revenue streams alive. So there are policies happening in policy discussions
happening, even if at the marque federal level, a lot of that has fallen off for now.

Thank you, Elizabeth. That's really helpful to under understand, and I know we will dive into some of the state
level opportunities that we are seeing explore, but it also sounds a little bit as if this rebuilding for the next
cycle that you're talking about, the conversation to some extent has already moved on and is looking at
different areas of focus. Is that a fair summary?

I mean, I think that the stakeholders who are mobilized to have those sustainable conversations are definitely
still having them, but I mean, we're all seeing this choke point at this moment in Congress. My sense is that
the coalitions that were built are still intact. It's just that there's not a clear path to any forward progress

That makes sense. Phil, what's your take? What are the conversations that you are seeing and involved in?
Phil Napoli (00:08:02):

One thing to follow on what Elizabeth was saying about how cyclical this might be, it's interesting that right
now the government accountability office is in the process of researching a report to Congress on this topic.
Is it too little too late, or does this help jumpstart something new? I guess that will remain to be seen,
depends on what the substance of the report is and whether it motivates anybody.
But it's interesting on the federal level, that is something that is ongoing. And I'll be curious to see if that
gains any meaningful traction. The other thing that's interesting to think about on the federal level is how
soon that the Federal Communications Commission could potentially actually be remade a bit in terms of
actually having a full slate of commissioners, a vote is coming on Gigi Sohn's appointment to the commission
and there's been a vacancy at the FCC for a while that has kept it deadlocked.

So could that after so long a change in the composition of the FCC commissioners potentially restart some of
the potential paths of action that have been dormant at the FCC for so long. It just so interesting.
When I think about how I got involved in this work, it was all in the aftermath of the FCCs...

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Gosh, I'm forgetting the name of it now. Future of media report from back in 2011 or whatever that was, and
then their subsequent community information needs research that they commissioned in 2012 and 2013, and
again, it was super frustrating at that point in time because the nature of the recommendations that came
out of a lot of that work were so minimal. Broadcasters should make their public inspection files available
online.
These are the conclusions that came at the end of a 400 page report, was incredibly frustrating. So, I mean,
but it's interesting again, to think about the composition of the commission finally taking a shape that it
hasn't in quite some time. And so whether that goes into the direction of ownership or localism focused
possible regulatory interventions, we'll see.

I'm so glad you may mention those two previous reports, which are almost a decade old now, Phil, because I
was reminded of that through an article, an interview that you gave that I'll post a link to it in the chat, but it
feels like those big pieces of work which provided a very rich body of evidence we haven't really seen an
equivalent on the FCC or at a national level since.
Do you think that if we see a change in makeup along the lines that you've described, that we will start to see
that evidence space being captured or do we already know all of this? And actually all that would just do is
kick the can down the road. Actually the time is we have more than enough data we actually need action.

Well, it's funny. I mean, you're echoing one of the conversations I have every once in a while with one of the
funders I work with, which is do we really need to document the harms still? Is there anybody who's not
aware at this point of the nature and the scope and the consequences of this situation?
You'd like to think that the answer to that is, is no. So I'm very interested in the notion of a research agenda
shifting a bit at this point towards trying to identify what are the characteristics of successful solutions, what
are the generalizable lessons that we can take from successful examples that are out there, what is building a
true strategy for reversing some of these trends look like.

Can I just add there, Phil. I think I completely agree with you that within the industry and academics who
study this stuff and funders who fund us studying this stuff, there's a known fact base.
I think what's going to be interesting about the GAO report and also Massachusetts has a state level
commission to study the effect of news deserts is whether that'll be another access for catalyzing public
conversation and public concern about this. Because I oftentimes think that we are talking to ourselves and
the pew survey that said that most Americans don't understand of financial crisis that local news is in.
Something hasn't quite broken through yet.
And a GAO report or even a Massachusetts, a state level commission might not be the right vehicle but I do
wonder if, yes, we're moving to solutions conversation in the industry, but we're also moving to a problem
marketing stage nationally. That's going to be really necessary.

That's a great point. And I hope that in our short conversation that we'll be having today, we will be able to
focus mostly on solutions and how we can try and move forward.

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But I agree also, Elizabeth, you're saying we have a huge issue in terms of bringing the public along on this
journey, that data from a few years ago of was it, I think it was 71% of Americans saying they felt that local
news was doing well financially when we all know that the truth is very different.
I do wonder if the pandemic might have helped to start to shift some of those perceptions because of when
advertising fell through the floor, I've seen a lot of local news outlets being much more willing to make an ask
for direct support and why that matters and why journalism matters in a way that perhaps they felt a little bit
uncomfortable with before.
Joy, I'm curious from your research working more directly with journalists, to what extent are you seeing
journalists having these conversations about the future of their industry and indeed a willingness to share
that with their audiences?
Joy Jenkins (00:14:27):

Yeah, I think there's an absolutely an interest in a willingness there to share that with their audience. And as
you mentioned with the pandemic, I saw with the journalists I talked with in the UK and around Europe and a
few here in the US that they were making those ask and reminding the readers who would come to them in
record numbers in some cases in those early months of the pandemic that remember the service that we
offered you as we go back to needing your support, needing your financial support. So certainly saw that.
And yeah, and what I found in talking with journalists in these different countries is that they do refer to
media policy and conversations about government intervention and other types of things. A lot of those
conversations are frustrations about who is at the table and who's not, and who's involved in those
conversations.

We've seen that in some of the previous panels in this series, some real concerns about who's part of those
conversations and developing solutions. But in particular, they're really keen to talk to researchers and to
share their experiences.
A lot of the outlets I reached out to said that maybe it was the first time they were participating in research
study or doing anything like that. And they were very candid, very transparent, very open to talk about the
challenges of the business model, the challenges of recruiting and retaining young journalists, of getting
young audiences, of their interest in connecting with underserved and marginalized communities. And we're
very open about that and also about the barriers they face in terms of resources to do that type of work.
And so I found that there's a recognition that a lot of these models are broken and they want to contribute to
fixing them, and they want to be involved in innovative efforts and be able to, to do things differently and
reclaim what local news is supposed to be about. And so I think the interest is there, it's just figuring out how
to effectively and productively bring them into these conversations in a way that is going to be helpful to
them in the end.

Well, and I'm curious as part of that as to whether as researchers were doing a good enough job in terms of
both engaging people to find out what's happening at the ground, but also to share some of these policy
discussions and how perhaps we might be able to do that better to help that public discourse.
I'd love to get some thoughts on that from each or any of you on that particular area. Feel free to chip in
whatever order. It's a broad question, but what can we do?

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I think it's a great insight and I think part of it is that there haven't traditionally been those clear pathways. I
mean, I guess the rebuild local news coalition was one attempt to get industry stakeholders, but a lot of those
stakeholders are really intermediaries. On the one hand it's tricky because journalists, the value of objectivity,
even as it's come under scrutiny, I think is still really baked deep into the profession. And so advocacy on the
policy front just like advocacy on the sustainability front I think can feel scary and it breaks some editorial or
professional norms. So I think it's a really good question you're asking and I'm not sure that I can actually
point easily to examples of where that's working well currently, but curious for others thoughts on that.

Yeah. Phil, do you want to add anything?

I didn't catch this first part of the question.

Sure. It was more just around, I'm curious as to what role we can be doing as researchers in this space to
support journalists in terms of giving them the evidence base or helping them to air these issues with their
audience but also, the other part of that is to what extent are we bringing in a diversity of voices into our own
research and giving a breadth of journalistic outlets a seat at the table so that our evidence base is informed
by a cross section of the media ecosystem rather than perhaps those who are most prominent or shout the
loudest.

Got you. I mean, I think what I'm seeing more of in terms of those types of collaborations are researchers
helping in ways that we haven't seen when the news industry was helping and they didn't need or give a crap
what we had to offer as researchers truthfully. Less on the evidence advocacy front, because actually one of
the things I think has been interesting about journalists, I hate to sort of make this generalization, but as a
whole journalists, we're very late to embrace at all, which many of them still don't, the idea that some model
that involves greater public support is a path worth pursuing.

Journalists and editors, they've been the slowest to give up on what we're seeing as a real pessimistic future
for at least the business models. But what I've seen a lot of and have noticed that we've had opportunities to
engage in are the research collaborations about how to help cultivate and learn about the audience at the
local level. What are their needs and interests so that the news content can be better orient toward meeting
those needs, right? Being that partner in the exploration of alternative paths forward. An those have proven
useful at least in the experiences I've had with those from the feedback we've gotten.

Well, and I think one of the things that's really interesting is that meeting those needs may look very different
from the way in which local news and information has traditionally been being served. And that's been one of
the ideas that has come up through this series of the importance of different channels of communicating.
So the WhereBy.Us model of newsletters, the WhatsApp groups that we see to meet often with the Asper
communities or communities where English is not a first language...

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And I'm curious to find out a little bit more about what some of those models look like, and indeed whether
policy makers and politicians understand that this is local news, this is local journalism, or whether they are
clinging onto a definition that perhaps is somewhat redundant.
Joy, should we come to you perhaps on that first?

Yeah. I mean, it made me think of a project I've been working on with a colleague, we've been doing a case
study of the neighborhood news service in Milwaukee which is housed at Marquette and has various funding
streams.
But the whole idea is to be absolutely community first, and to serve neighborhoods that have been
underserved or ignored or stereotyped by other news outlets and completely shifting their editorial model.
Not to think about the way that local news has been traditionally been delivered or formatted, but figure out
what do our readers need now, what questions can we answer for them? And just really opening that
dialogue and providing it.
And when you look at the stories they're producing and the initiatives they're engaging with, they may not
look like the local news some may be used to or policy makers or politicians, but it is absolutely created to
serve those communities.

And so being able to broaden that definition and really consider what are these different types of outlets look
like, how can we open that definition and open those boundaries. And I've even seen in the UK and some of
the research there, the bureau local is a really innovative, collaborative approach to doing local journalism.
And they do stage shows where the journalists come on and answer questions from the audience. And they
work with neighborhood activists and academics and data scientists, and just thinking differently about who's
involved in the work of journalism.
And a lot of these are trends that have been going on for a while. And so ensuring that that's all clear to the
people making these decisions and they know how diverse this landscape really is.

What's so interesting to me as I looked at the legislation of the local journalism sustainability act and then
what got pulled into build back better, definitions are always difficult in the context of policy making. And I
actually think they did a pretty good job. I mean, there's language in there like newspaper and publisher, but
the definition of local I think is primary content of a publication is derived from primary sources relating to
news and current events. It serves a regional or a geographic community.
You could start to see how those would be the building blocks of policies that don't need to reference
newspaper or publisher in order to direct support to local media projects. So I think that's progress even if
the overall frame in this round was newspapers.

Right. And the alongside that, there's also a question which we've had alluded to, well very clearly referenced
in the chat from Mildred Perreault. Mildred, I hope I pronounced your surname correctly, but you might
point out there are multiple models here, but also you ask this question of, well, what does success look like?
Phil, you've obviously done a lot of work researching the information needs of communities. How do we
know, how do we measure what success looks like and that they're being met?

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That's a great question and I'm going to be right upfront, I don't think I have an answer, but the type... Well, I
think about this variety of possible answers, right? How we break down sort of quantifying this, so to speak.
On the one hand we could focus on how the nature of the journalistic output in a community evolves over
time, right? We feel pretty good about it at this point that we've developed some reasonable reliable and
agreed upon and robust metrics of the health of local journalism, but at the same time, we've also come to
realize that it's one thing to assess what's being produced and just success.

Do we need to take into account consumption and impact and those things? There's just a few different
levels at which we can target for truly trying to understand success. Do we want to see measurable
connections with changes in political participation especially at this moment, right? Political knowledge.
If we were to see journalistic output change in all the positive ways we hope for it to change in a community,
but see no corresponding changes in political knowledge, let's say, or civic engagement, that would obviously
be frustrating. Because yeah, we operate under some of those assumptions about those relationships, but I
think lot of what over the past few years, we also probably need to take a hard look at some of those.

Right. Absolutely. And as part of that, one of the themes that's also come up as being the fact that certain
communities, particularly communities of color but also rural communities, have historically been
underserved by local news and that we are seeing multiple levels of information deprivation there that go
back a very long way. And the idea being deposited by Jessica Gonzalez last week, by Tracie Powell in
December and others of this is an opportunity to revisit and address those historical issues.
That's been clearly a topic that has exercised the number of our panelists. I'm curious as to whether the
conversations you're having with policy makers, whether that is on their agenda and radar.
Are they looking to build something that is better? Or are we just merely putting our finger in the dyke and
trying to preserve the status quo?

Yeah. I mean, there's always entrenched interests in any policy discussion and any well organized industry
has their approaches and relationships. So of course at a certain level the answer is yes, but I feel like there
has been progress in starting to think about what some of those policy solutions might be like, not necessarily
at the federal level, but at the municipal level.
You had Graciela Mochkofsky on and she talked about the great work that the center for community media
did documenting the massive success of New York City's municipal advertising for ethnic media outlets
initiatives. So it's those demonstrations of what's possible in supporting media for underserved communities
that I think starts to point the way to this.
But I think there's another aspect to this, which is that the substantiating impact and the so what of a healthy
news and information ecosystem and this question of how do you serve underserved communities with
higher quality news and information?

To me, those are actually related questions because if we can't say what good information or a healthy
information ecosystem does and what it's good for, then it's very hard to figure out how you make progress

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on really rebuilding or really making the case that there should be any resources at all directed towards any
of these issues. S
So in my mind, that question of impact and what does success look like really has to go hand in hand with this
task of getting more and better information to underserved communities.

Elizabeth, do you think we have the answer to that question?

No, I don't even think we've begun to make progress on this. I mean, I can talk a little bit about my work at
the Trust, but part of what we're doing is starting to have conversations with impact investors trying to
convince them to bring resources into the space. But impact investors want impact and an impact in news is
not just like, oh, we have news outlets that operate at sustainability. It's like that's table stakes.
The questions that we really need to answer are, so what. I think Phil you were saying this as well. And I don't
think we really have any good... We have intuitions and we have values and we have hopes and dreams, but I
don't think we have plausible mechanisms between healthy news and information and political knowledge or
civic action, at least that I've come across.

Right. Phil, you were going to say something about this in terms of the policy makers, their willingness or not
to embrace the opportunity to do things differently and build back a different system rather than just simply
try to turn back the clock to the way things were.

I was just going to say, and this is just casual observation and I may be wrong. But yeah, I don't know if I've
seen the nuanced conversations and sophisticated thinking about what a reconfigured local news ecosystem
can look like. And that's the thing I would love to see if this GAO report really helps to do.
I don't think policy makers yet are, there are very few of them have that robust and very current
contemporary understanding of the ways, the alternative that are out there. There's nothing.
I mean, I remember years ago, and it should have been a long time ago but it wasn't all that long ago in doing
research on political advertising and going to consulting firms as part of the interviews I was conducting,
these media buying firms and asking the basic question which is why do politicians advertise on broadcast
television when that's such a waste of money that they're reaching people who can't even vote for them?
Why are you putting ads on New York TV stations when you're running for governor of New Jersey? And the
answer I got was, well, they just like to see themselves on TV. The point being, and I don't think that hasn't
changed to some extent, which is there was a few iterations is behind, unfortunately. And I think, I would
hate to say it, but I think that might be the case here still.

Yeah. Well, it sounds, Joy as if this is an opportunity for researchers to actually be able to map not just what
success could look like, but also what this model could look like.
Is that a conversation that you have seen starting to take place in the US or indeed in Europe, where of
course there's historically been a much greater willingness for market intervention?

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Sorry, can you repeat.

Yeah. I was just saying that I think one of the things that Elizabeth and Phil's comments throw up for me is the
fact that I think this is an opportunity for researchers to help to reimagine what the local news landscape
could look like. And to be slightly more visionary rather than telling us the story of here's where we are today,
let's look at how we could move to a more inclusive and sustainable future.
Is that a conversation that you are seeing both journalists having but also researchers having in the US and
Europe? I think the European perspective I mentioned just because I think there's a much greater willingness
in Europe for market intervention than we have historically seen here in the US. Although I do feel as if the
sands are starting to shift a little bit in the States.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of opportunities to look at solutions and to look at what
success looks like and to really explore some new types of approaches and innovative types of models. I've
been doing some research on collaboration and models of collaboration that specifically engage with local
outlets. And of course, building on work by Sara Stonbely and Heather Bryant and others, who've been
looking in this space and there's lots of different.
We look specifically at the European context, but some models that are emerging there that really take on a
range of different type of business model approaches. So some that are more nonprofit driven and rely on
journalists to volunteer to engage in investigative work in a collaborative way. Some that are still very
focused on the commercial model, but thinking differently about the players involved.
We looked at a project in Italy that involved a big legacy publisher and a couple of data journalism startups
that work together to do their work. And then also just the classic news agency and thinking about how those
can be effective.
And so thinking about expansion and collaboration and cooperation, and what are some ways that some of
these interventions and policies and nonprofits and grants can help support thinking bigger and broader
about how journalist and analysts can work together to maximize the resources.

And a lot of that feels like it's very new to industry. I mean, concepts of collaboration in a very competitive
historically landscape still quite hard for a lot of newsrooms to do. It was really interesting last week hearing
Sue Cross talking about the emergence of nonprofit models and a greater willingness to accept that.
And indeed my own research has shown a lot of journalists saying they feel that the commercial model for
local journalists is dead in the states. And I'm really curious, I'm seen some nodding. I mean, this might be a
very short answer to a slightly longer question but as to whether is that right, is the commercial model dead,
do you think?
Elizabeth let's come to you first and then we'll come to Phil and Joy. I'm just curious for your perspectives on
that.

Yeah. I mean, I think the commercial model actually covers a bunch of different dimensions of the way that
capital and profit making work together. I would say I think the corporate ownership model is on its last legs.

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I think we've seen a really high degree of consolidation. I think we can get a little bit further frighteningly on
that dimension. But the small and midsize publishers that I work with at the Trust, many of them ran
successful commercial businesses want to exit, but it's pretty clear or that there could be a sustainable future
but there's not necessarily going to be a profit making future.
So the question is how do you transition the capital structure and the governance and ownership so that
sustainability is possible. And to the extent that you do get net returns, they can go back into the business,
but you're not setting up any small or large owners to expect huge returns because it's just clear that that era
is coming to an end.

The digital economics are just very different than the print product economics. So I think the commercial
models, very small scale commercial models maybe possible in digital or maybe highly networked but I think
the commercial model's going to be edge cases. And I think what we're seeing is a de-capitalization of the
space on the ownership and governance side. And that's obviously what we're trying to work with at the
Trust. But I think it's going to be a matter of time whether it's us or others in this space who finally make that
structural shift, but that's what we're in the midst of, from my perspective.

Phil, do you agree with that, that this is-

Yeah. I was going to layer onto that. Yeah, we think about all the different components of what we might call
the commercial model and in addition, I think to the corporate component of that being done, I think the ad
support model dimension of this is, is pretty much done. I think we can imagine, and we're seeing this with
different types of membership models and things like that. I think there's still some version of a future in
which I consumer payment plays a role. I think that's actually important that the product not be devalued to
the point.
But is there some version of that going forward that's also capable of addressing some of the inequities that
are inherent in that model, right? And I think that's one of the interesting things about membership models
and things like that, that one's newspaper subscription never came on any sliding scale, right? Based on your
ability to pay. And so the way just that innovation can be a valuable way for that aspect of the commercial
model to stay viable going forward.

Well, and it's really interesting when you look at membership models in some other parts of the world, in say
developing economies, there is both that sliding scale or often a willingness to pay so you can contribute as
much or as little as you like, and it's not a gated community where capital is the access point to these
different tiers. And I would like to see us thinking a little bit different about some of those things.
And it goes back to some of the notions that Simon Galperin talked a little bit about in terms of thinking
about news and information as a public utility that utilities often have low income tariffs and other methods
of access. And we are not really seeing that conversation in this space, but there are transferable lessons.
Elizabeth, you had that great phrase about making sustainability possible and we said early on we should
focus on solutions. So what are some of the things that we have seen? Phil's given a few examples there, but
what are some of the potential interventions or other opportunities to help engender sustainability that we
are seeing?

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Joy, could you give us some examples of some of the things that you've seen in your work, and then we'll
hear about Elizabeth and the Trust and come back to Phil?

Yeah. I mean, just building on the last point, this reader payment model and reader payment emphasis
definitely really prominent and seeing a lot of conversations about that. Some enthusiasm and excitement
around it, at least with some of the journalists I've talked to, that is giving them a chance to reconnect and be
transparent and explain to their readers why they are serving a public good and how they're serving them
and just helping them understand better, why investing local journalism is really important.
But there's also these kind of divisions emerging where I heard journalists and managers saying things like,
well, we have the loyal readers and we have the fly by readers. And the fly by readers are coming via
platforms and they're not going to be the ones we're really going to focus on investing in because they're
never going to be willing to pay or subscribe.

So of course that raises questions over who are you losing, who's not having access and who are we
prioritizing in terms of those audiences.
But I've also seen some talk about having lower rates for younger readers for example, or for students. And
of course a lot of outlets lifted pay walls during those early months of the pandemic. So this recognition that
it's a one and done strategy that it has to evolve and really consider how to serve the broadest possible
audience. But yeah, a lot of interesting conversations and questions is that pivot to paid really takes hold.

I certainly see with my students, many of them benefit from student subscription prices to big publications,
but then the moment they graduate, and this has been a conversation that has been kicking around
journalism Twitter over the last couple of days, but the moment they graduate to not a high paying job,
they're expected to be paying full whack. There's no graduated increase in subscription prices and so forth.
So there's definitely scope for innovation and flexibility to be built into that.
Elizabeth, what are some of the things that you are seeing working through your work at the Trust and what
are some of the things that you are advocating for to help create a more sustainable future?

Yeah. So just building on what Joy said, I mean, I think we have a pretty good evidence base now for what
sustainability at the business model can look like and what practices are around reader revenue, around
membership, around subscriptions, what works for a mix. And a lot of those models now are kind of hybrid,
philanthropically supported and advertising and reader revenue. It's like and events like and, and, and. So I'd
say at that business model level there's a lot of success there that can be built on.
Where the Trust is intervening is really at that ownership capital structure and governance level, because
ultimately you want to have a group of owners either in a nonprofit or in a public benefit corporation that
have the proper expectations for what the business model can produce over what time period and what
resources are required. And so I think that's the next frontier of creating a new sustainable structure. And the
American journalism project does this through creating new nonprofits.
There's many different tools in the toolbox, but I think it's that realignment of ownership and mission and
governance with business model that's really going to get us to the next stage of sustainability.

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Thank you. And Phil, you've commented a lot on media ownership in the past. I don't know if you want to say
a little bit more about that, and then we should, of course also talk about some of the historic forms of
support that we have also always seen for journalism, which tends to perhaps sometimes be overlooked.

I don't have much comment on the media ownership issue other than I just so remember so vividly whether
this was 10 or 15 years ago attitudes within the FCC, which were, Hey, consolidation, it's a necessary means
to an end now for journalism survival, right?
And then suddenly it was we don't have the luxury of caring about whether we're seeing more consolidation
and combined with that, of course, the idea that the digital space reflect, providing this safety outlet anyway,
right? In terms of the low barriers to entry that are there. And I think we can look back now and really realize
that all of those assumptions were flawed.

Well, and it's interesting that it feels almost as if the opposite is true now that certainly we've seen through
this series, a lot of conversations about, well, how do we let a thousand flowers bloom rather than just to
have a smaller, an increasingly smaller number of entities controlling our news agenda and access to news.
What are some of the ideas that you see working Phil, that you would like to see amplified or perhaps
enhanced?

I'm not the best and just so you guys know, it looks like my connection's getting funky so if I'm suddenly gone,
that's what's going on. I'm not as on the ground as these other guys are, as far as what local initiatives are
working and not working. But I mean, one of the things I'd of course point to on the policy front is what we
saw happen in New Jersey, right? Where we actually saw and again, it didn't proceed in the ideal way, but
where we actually saw public funds from the auction of Broadcast Spectrum go to supporting local journalism
collaboratives. Love to see more of that happen.

Yeah. Elizabeth, could you say a little bit more about that? You're much closer to some of the conversations
that are happening at a state level.

Yeah. So the structure that we set up in Colorado, the Colorado News Conservancy was designed to acquire
and transform small and midsize papers that would otherwise get rolled up into bigger conglomerates or just
shut for lack of new owners and new financing. So I feel like this is our innovation in governance and capital
to try to restructure the field.
And I think what we're learning is what I think collaboratives are learning in other places that, that resource
sharing and bringing together journalists and newsrooms under a common entity really does work. I would
say the advantage of something like a conservancy structure, whether a nonprofit or public benefit
corporation is that you get that shared decision making and governance and ownership.

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I think some of what we've seen in collaboratives that are based on the coalition of the willing is that it really
depends on which partners are at the table, how nice folks are going to play with each other, how resources
get divided.

So I would say where it's working in collaboratives, it's where people really have a strong frame and some
leadership and a willingness and ability to work together. We're doing the organizational piece of that, which
is that there's governance in ownership in addition to just a coalition of different partners. So I think that has
a lot of positive potential. I would also say with my public media researcher hat on, I think there are a lot of
public stations that are doing some really interesting coalitional resource sharing collaboration, both amongst
each other in networks, but then also increasingly with other types of newsrooms in their area.
So WFAE and Charlotte for example, is a big piece of the solutions journalism collaborative there. And I think
there's other examples around the country of public media stations taking on a leadership role. So I think
that's another promising nascent in some ways but growing solution.
And I think we're going to have to see more of that because as the overall amount of resources shrinks, but
the need for local reporting capacity grows some of that's going to have to get done through these networks
and collaborations.

Right. And of course those, those types of collaboratives that you and Joy have also talked about, a lot of that
is rooted in sharing resources for reporting and for news and information, but we shouldn't forget that has
potential also on the business side, on the financial side as well, in terms of, we've seen sadly a lot of failed
local ad consortiums, but there are other examples like the local media consortium and others where you can
have collective ad buys across multiple outlets, which potentially I think has a lot of possibilities for smaller
players who would be unable to access funding from large national advertisers. But when they're part of a
cooperative or that collaborative model, it opens up different financial possibilities for them.
Joy, could you just briefly touch on, you mentioned some of the work you've doing on collaborative research
on collaborative work. What are some of the hardest things that newsrooms or news organizations are
finding in terms of collaboration and how can they overcome them?

I mean, of course the biggest one is just minimizing that competitive spirit to or figuring out how to get
everybody on the same page and under the same mission.
I think that at least the collaboratives I've looked at there was a strong desire to be involved, to learn, to
share resources in particular, a big emphasis on data journalism and contributing to data sets and learning
how to use it and to have the training and act access to a network of people to ask questions about that.
And then yeah, I mean, the biggest challenges are to ensure that everybody has a voice in what's happening,
that it's not all top down decision making in terms of what's being investigated and how it's going to be done,
that everybody has a seat at the table, a willingness to be able to publish and have shared deadlines and
recognize that releasing all the stories on a particular topic at a given time is going to have a big impact and
can lead to conversations and figuring out just what types of organizational models and structures are going
to work best, whether to keep it looser or to have a more stringent structure.

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And then one of the bureau local that I mentioned before is focused on grants and donations. And so figuring
out how to make that a sustainable, because that has been incredibly successful, massive network of
journalists involved, but can be year to year in terms of ensuring that that continues.
And so still a lot of questions, but I think at least in the research, I was doing some really early success stories
and journalists feeling really emboldened that they were learning and having better work as a result of those
opportunities to work with other people and I think seeing a lot of potential and what that could become.

Thank you. And it's great to see that those conversations perhaps are shifting recognition and the fact that
you are not necessarily in competition with your peers or you shouldn't be, that we do need to work more
collaboratively and collectively. And we only have a short bit of time left I want to just...
I have two final questions that I want to touch on. I mean, one of which was something I alluded to in the
introduction, which is really my fear that the momentum that we have seen over the last year or so in the
media policy space risks evaporating over the course of the next year if we see changes on the hill and
potentially what might happen in 2024.
So my question for each of you is, how do we maintain the momentum, the positive discussions that we have
seen, and indeed the positive examples that we're starting to see, particularly at a state level? What can we
do, how to keep our foot to the floor here? Phil, can I come to you first? And then I'll come to Elizabeth and
Joy.

Sure. And this might be a very provincial answer, which is I think research that continues to document the
consequences of not paying attention to this issue, but that also makes clear in some comparative way, right?
Like, look, this is how communities benefit.
I think the more that this could be framed in that way and what are these tangible benefits that communities
receive when their local news ecosystem is healthy and robust. And so I think that's our role as researchers to
keep injecting where we find it in the work that we do. Assuming maybe we don't find it, but if we do we
need to be really good about making sure everyone who needs to know that learns about it.

Great. Elizabeth, let's come to you next.

Yeah. I would definitely underscore what Phil said. I think documenting the positive effects. And positive
effects are not sustainability. It's the so what of the journalism that's supported by the sustainability. I think
that will definitely help to build an even stronger case. And then part of me is also like let's just lean in at the
state level.
Colorado just introduced a bill that took actually provisions of the local journalism sustainability act around
the tax credit for subscriptions and local advertising credit that's in this session, and that's great.
So we could also get a whole host of interesting state level interventions, even if it feels like the federal
intervention is further away. So I think that's an important place to keep the work going.

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Yeah. Well, and when Phil said provincial earlier, I actually don't mind provincial as part of the answer to this,
because I think we may well be that there is no one size fits all national level response to this and that
actually we need bottom up solutions-

I'm a provincial from the standpoint of me as a researcher advocating a little bit more research, that's a big
cliche, I know.

That's true. Joy, what was your take on this and how do we maintain this momentum? Do you agree with
your fellow panelists?

Yeah. No, absolutely agree with that. Showing the tangible effects and that so what factor in ensuring that's
completely clear to those in the industry and to citizens as well. Of course, as researchers, it's continuing to
emphasize this very public facing approach to getting our work out. So it's not just having conversations
among academics, but presenting it in ways whether it's reports or predictions or events or focus groups or
whatever it is so that we are working alongside the people we're hoping to help and making our research
available and accessible to them.
I think also just at universities getting our students in this, reinforcing to them how valuable local journalism
is, ensuring their pipelines for them to seek out jobs that they can get in and stay in the local news sector. I
know this was highlighted in the first panel in this series and really having that conversation. And there's
some interesting initiatives at University of Kansas and University of Georgia where they've brought a local
paper created entire local outlet within a university program.
And so thinking about how to engage our students in this work and get them excited so they'll continue the
conversation too.

Yeah. And then lastly, I'd like to end on a note of optimism if we can. And so I just ask each of you to just very
quickly give us a sense of either what's most exciting you in this space right now, or what do you see as a
possibility in this space where perhaps there's an idea that's not being fully explored, but you think there is
potential and that could be a game changer.
So what's exciting you about either what's happening now or that you think could happen in the future? Joy,
should we come to you first on that? The tough question to ask at the end.

It’s a tough question. I think just the diversity of things going on. So of course we see all these headlines
calling for the death know of local news, but then when you actually get into it and you talk to people who
are working and researching and who have efforts in this area, there are so many fantastic ideas and such an
emphasis on serving communities that have been left out and such potential to involve them in the
conversation. I would too really thinking broadly about local journalism and what it is.
Things like I've been doing some work in alternative news weeklies with colleague, with Kelsey Whipple and
that's a whole other area of cultural journalism that is very much at stake of being lost. And so I think there's

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potential to involve even more players in this and to think really broadly about what local journalism looks
like. And that's happening and it's been really exciting to see.

Thank you, Joy. Phil.

Probably I think it pops immediately to mind maybe we briefly referenced but should at least be very explicit
about which is the growth in philanthropic commitment and attention in this area. I've been doing this long
enough that I've been part of these various initiatives over the years to pitch and sell different foundations on
that this is the thing that does fall within their mandate. Whether a community health foundation was being
persuaded to think about community health to include the information health of a community. And so to see
that resonate more and an upward trajectory in how this issue is resonating in the philanthropic community
is something we should call out.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Phil. Elizabeth, the final word to you.

Yeah. I totally agree with everything my distinguished panelists have shared. I think the exciting possibility in
my mind and it relates to the funding and the diversity of models is that we'll really start to build new
institutions at the ecosystem will level. We've had everyone on their own bottom for a really long time.
And I think all the experimentation and work on collaboration, my hope is that these really become more
durable, long lasting structures supported most likely in many places by philanthropy, but I think that's really
going to be what helps make some of these experiments longer lasting. I think that's a very exciting
possibility.

Just to follow up on the philanthropy front to see how they're approaching it in many times in the way that
we would hope with attention to issues of inequities that have characterized the old model and
decentralizing decision making and allowing a lot of the real work to happen at the community level. It's nice
to see that attention to those details.

Yeah. Great. And it's also nice to end on something positive because there's always a risk of a slightly doom
and gloom narrative when we talk about this topic. But as we've seen today, there is a lot of interesting
things going on and we hope that we can maintain that momentum.
Thanks to the three expert panelists who join us today. Joy Jenkins, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, and Phil
Napoli. Thank you to all of us… thank you to all of you rather for watching.
This is the last in a five part series made possible, thank you to Emily Bell, Pete Brown, Hana Joy and Nick
Matthews at the Tow Center for their support for this series.
All of our previous recordings and indeed this one will be available on Tow's YouTube and SoundCloud
channels. This recording should go up in the next 24 to 48 hours. You can see the archive of four previous

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talks and do keep an eye on Tower's excellent weekly newsletter, which will include a summary of our
discussion today.
In the meantime, thanks again to our panelists for joining us today and to all of our guest speakers over the
past few months and again, to everyone who's tuned in to watch these discussions.

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Elizabeth Hansen (00:17:07):

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Phil Napoli (00:18:11):

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