What Works: The Future of Local News

Dan and Ellen talk with Mike Shapiro. Mike is a friend of the pod. He came on in 2022 to talk about his role as founder and CEO of TAPinto. TAPInto is a network of nearly 100 franchised local news and digital marketing sites serving more than 150 communities in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Florida. Shapiro is a graduate of Rutgers and Stanford Law School, but he's got the journalism bug, as well. He was working as an attorney in New York when his young son underwent open-heart surgery. He wanted to spend more time at home, so he and his wife, Lauryn, launched The Alternative Press in 2008 to give their hometown of New Providence, New Jersey., an independent, all-digital daily news source. Pretty soon, neighboring towns asked for their own sites, and a network was born. In 2013 Shapiro turned TAPinto into a franchise model: local owners run their own sites, while the company supplies the technology, training and back-office support, and franchisees share content and sell advertising across the network. But now, he's expanded the business model again. In 2024 he launched the Hyperlocal News Network, a licensing option that gives publishers more freedom to control their own branding but helps with those vexing back-office needs.  Ellen has a Quick Take on the Minnesota Star Tribune's lack of endorsements in some very consequential state races. The Strib's editorial board didn't interrogate candidates, do its own reporting, and weigh in on who would make the best governor or senator. Instead, op ed columnists wrote in support of each candidate. The Strib called these columns "closing arguments." Dan has a Quick Take about OpenAI's support for local journalism. On the one hand, it's a welcome development. On the other hand, I'm worried that news organizations may be getting co-opted by a technology they should remain deeply skeptical of. Will newsrooms shy away from critical coverage of AI lest they offend the golden goose?

Dan talks with Jon Keller, who has been explaining Massachusetts politics to Boston broadcast audiences for nearly half a century. Jon returned to WBZ-TV just in time to cover a contentious governor's election. He brought his trademark quick thinking and level-headed approach to the recent debate between Maura Healey and Mike Minogue. Jon was a colleague of Dan's at The Boston Phoenix, where he wrote a political colum. His Keller @ Large show remains one of the longest-running political franchises in local television. Boston Magazine twice named him "Best TV Political Analyst" and he's won a boatload of New England Emmys. In the Jurassic era, Jon wrote an opinion column for me at The Boston Globe, and today writes a column for the MASSterlist political newsletter. Jon has also been caught in the Paramount media swirl, as well. WBZ-TV laid him off in October 2025 as part of Paramount's cuts. But WBZ brought him back as a special contributor in March of this year. Dan has a Quick Take about turmoil at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. Editor Rob Curley, who's leading an effort to take the paper nonprofit, was placed on administrative leave recently for unspecified inappropriate behavior. Now a deeply reported article by two nonprofit news outlets have published a devastating story about what went wrong. (Ellen couldn't make it on air for this episode, but she's editing behind the scenes and will be back soon.)  

Dan and Ellen talk with Clay Wirestone the opinion editor of the Kansas Reflector. His first book was published Sept. 29. It's called, aptly enough, "Opinionated: Kansas Journalists who Proved Why Commentary Matters -- Then and Now."  His second is set for 2028. Wirestone seems to be on a first-name basis with Kansas opinion journalists past and present, and he profiles a number of them. Wirestone knows the state well: he graduated from the University of Kansas and lives in Lawrence with his husband. He also edited news at The Topeka Capital-Journal and spent more than a decade at New Hampshire's Concord Monitor,  where he worked with Dan's Northeastern colleague Meg Heckman — a past guest on this podcast. Dan has a Quick Take about yet another new book — "Deserted: Life Without Local News in Rural America," by Nick Mathews. Dan reviewed it recently for The Arts Fuse. Mathews offers some interesting insights into what happens to community life when there's a shortage of reliable news and information. Ellen's Quick Take is on an excellent Substack post by media observer Dick Tofel on the recent massacre at McClatchy. It's like a slasher movie and the slasher has come for newspapers that were great in their heyday.  

Dan talks with Margaret Sullivan, who has spent the last decade or so doing the toughest of jobs: Telling the country's most powerful newsrooms what they're getting wrong. She was the fifth public editor of The New York Times, from 2012 to 2016. Somebody once called it the worst job in journalism, but she took it anyway. Then she went to The Washington Post as media columnist, where she covered the 2016 and 2020 elections, the Trump years, and January 6th. She left the Post in 2022, which, in hindsight, looks like excellent timing. (Ellen is ailing but did the editing and will be back behind the mic in the next episode.)  Sullivan writes a weekly column on media, politics and culture for The Guardian US, and she publishes a fearless Substack called American Crisis, where she calls out lapses in media coverage of rising authoritarianism. But she also has deep roots in local journalism. She was a summer intern at her hometown paper, The Buffalo News. She worked her way up to become its first woman editor-in-chief. So she knows firsthand what happens to a community when its newspaper is gutted.  Dan has a Quick Take that Yogi Berra would have called déjà vu all over again. The Block family, which owns The Blade newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, says it will shut down the paper if they can't find a buyer by the end of 2026. Now where have we heard that before? He also dives into the new impact report from the American Journalism Project, a philanthropic organization that turns out to be one of the biggest funders of nonprofit news in the country. AJP makes the case that nonprofit news as a business model has moved past the experimental stage.

Dan and Ellen talk with Emily Sweeney of The Boston Globe. As the Globe's first social video journalist, Emily broke through the clutter on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram with her Boston accent and her collection of track suits. Not to mention her skills as a reporter.  There's a Northeastern connection, as well. Sweeney played on NU's championship-winning Division 1 women's ice hockey team.  Dan has a Quick Take about NJ Spotlight News, a website and a newscast that covers politics and public policy in New Jersey. It's also featured in "What Works in Community News." Spotlight was in danger of being seriously downsized after Donald Trump and the Republican Congress zeroed out funding for public media. The state of New Jersey, facing a budget crisis, cut its public media subsidy as well. Now, though, it looks like there's good news to report.  Ellen's Quick Take is on a comprehensive investigation into a Trump donor named Tim Barnard. Barnard Construction has received billions in taxpayer dollars to build the border wall in the Southwest. The story was reported by the nonprofit High Country News in Colorado and republished by another nonprofit news site, AZ Luminaria in Arizona. It's a strong example of how a national story can be localized and, in doing so, pack a real punch.