Digest 02/15/2023

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For the Love of Local News

The narrative around local news and newspapers has been dire in recent years, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Northwestern’s State of Local News Report, the US lost more than 360 local newspapers between late 2019 and the end of May 2022 and more than a fifth of Americans now live in news deserts, with limited access to local news. “Gutted,” “threat to democracy,” and “news desert” are thrown about liberally in stories regarding the state of local news, and for good reason. Yet, there are some emerging models for local news and innovation at established papers that, amid so much grimness, may offer some insight on how national outlets, which are analogously contracting, could also experiment to survive.

Simon Owens, a journalist who covers the media industry, posited that aside from the decimation of dinosaur newspapers, it’s actually an exciting time for local news. “It’s on the upswing in terms of a lot of new interesting, really lean news startups that don’t have all that overhead that you see from these legacy newspapers,” Owens told Study Hall. Startups have not replaced legacy publications in terms of functionality, Owens added, but he noted that these smaller outlets forgoing expensive offices and websites and instead focusing on hyper-local community building, aren’t getting their due coverage. Owens pointed to a few examples of this promising trend, including Ken Doctor’s digital-only, mobile-first network of websites LookOut Local, a project in Santa Cruz; the non-profit Baltimore Banner; WhereBy.US, a network of local newsletters; and The Charlotte Ledger, which operates through Substack.

After finding out that his young son needed open-heart surgery in 2008 (he’s healthy now), Michael Shapiro, founder of TAPInto, came up with a “franchise model” for local news. Shapiro was perpetually exhausted, working long hours and commuting back and forth from New Providence, New Jersey — where he lived — to Manhattan. At the time, he worked as an attorney and wanted to find a way to work closer to home so he started an online news site in New Providence.  Since then, he’s quit his job as an attorney and runs TAPInto full-time (still long hours, he said).

“I kept getting all these people reaching out to me saying, ‘Hey, can you expand to our town?’ And I had to say no because I couldn’t do any more local news sites myself,” Shapiro said. “And so I started thinking, ‘How could we expand, yet keep it really local?’” He started looking for people who’d want to start TAPInto in their own areas. It’s the franchisee’s own business but Shapiro provides the back-end, the training, the support, the technology, and other resources.

According to Shapiro, TAPInto has been profitable for five years and there are now 95 franchise sites: three in Florida, one in Pennsylvania, six in New York, and the rest are in New Jersey. He hasn’t seen any other publication adopt his model, but he’s optimistic about the future of local news. In 10 years, he thinks print will be dead but that there will be a plethora of local news sites launching. “There’s such a need for it and nobody’s providing the meat,” he mused.

Noah Hertz, a general assignment reporter for the West Volusia Beacon — a paper in his hometown in DeLand, Florida — jumped into the role straight out of college and feels like he’s doing something fulfilling. He covers one half of one county in Central Florida and on top of his reporting work, he’s been helping the paper transition to the digital age. The paper used to give free digital access alongside a $48 a year subscription for a weekly print issue (“an insane deal!”), but recently switched to a “pay what you want” model that has been successful. They’re up to nearly 500 subscribers over the course of the year, according to Hertz. On the day that I spoke to him, he and a colleague live streamed the demolition of a historic building in their district on Twitch. At one point, the stream had 150 viewers. “I know it doesn’t seem like a huge number, but when you consider the average age of our readership… like I was seeing people in those Twitch comments and I was like, ‘I know you’re 75,’” Hertz said. “We got one comment that was something to the effect of ‘I think it’s so cool that the local newspaper is on Twitch.”’

Hertz has witnessed firsthand what it’s like to be the only journalist in the room during government meetings where important matters like rezoning requests and city commission-approved building projects are being discussed. “I’m sure other people might catch wind of it and listen to a recording that they’ll request three weeks later,” Hertz said. “But they’re not gonna know anything was important unless someone like me, who works for a small under-funded outfit, is sitting in the commission meeting until 9 or 10 PM that night.”

Shapiro echoed this sentiment and expanded on the importance of the local journalist attending those city council and board of education meetings. “Your local officials eventually become your county officials and eventually become your state officials and your federal officials,” the founder said. “And so if there’s no transparency and no accountability on the local level, there’s not gonna be any accountability as they move up the ladder and then you have the George Santos situation happening on an ongoing basis.”

 

 

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A Brief Q&A with Jacques Ze Whipper

Jack Lepiarz, AKA Jacques Ze Whipper, went semi-viral last week after tweeting that he was leaving his full-time job after a 13-year stint as a WBUR news anchor to be a circus performer. He did not make this decision on a whim: Jack’s father is also a circus performer who goes by “El Zappo” and “Mr. Fish.” Lepiarz’ act is a modern adaptation of some of his dad’s signature moves. He was gracious enough to share the details of his decision to leave the media industry with Study Hall. While many of us may not have Jack’s talents with the bullwhip, we can still glean insight into what it’s like to leave a full-time gig to follow your passion.

Why are you leaving the media for the circus?

First and foremost, the circus is what I have done my whole life. I grew up in the circus so the whole idea of me running away and joining the circus is a little different from most people. For me, it’s basically just going back home. The first six years of my life, we lived in a trailer on the circus lot. All through childhood, I was in normal school but we did a lot of touring so I would miss a month of school and bring my homework with me. So this is a life I’m very familiar with. And over the last 15 months or so since my social media blew up, I’ve felt like, “Well, there’s never going to be a better time to do this.” And I think what I can do by going full-time now is much more than what I can do by staying where I’m at.

Did being a circus performer from the time you were a kid inform your approach to media work at all or vice versa?

Being on stage so young, I got pretty comfortable being in front of a lot of people quickly and I also learned that when things don’t go according to plan, it’s not the end of the world. It taught me a certain level of flexibility that I may not have had otherwise, and so I’ve always been very comfortable talking off the cuff on radio, going without a live script, which is not something we usually do at NPR or public radio and I think that’s helped me a lot. I remember covering a protest in Boston right after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. There were something like 125 people on the far right side and something like 33,000 counterprotesters and I realized very quickly that I couldn’t tell what was happening because the crowd was so big, so I just climbed a tree. I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s fine, we’ll just scope it out up here!” And a lot of my colleagues were like, “What? You did what?!”

That’s awesome. What do you think you would say to other people who are thinking about leaving the media industry to follow a passion or even take another gig?

Leaving WBUR is probably the riskiest move I’ve ever made but I tried to make sure I did it as smartly, and as safely as possible. I didn’t give my notice at WBUR until I had booked, I want to say, 16 weekends worth of work and I was very sure that another 8-12 were going to be coming in as well. For the past six months, I’ve been making more money outside of WBUR than I have been at WBUR — I make a few thousand from YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok combined; and I make about $500 a month on Patreon and another $400 a month on Twitch. I’ve been working essentially three jobs for the last 15 months with social media, live performing, and the radio and I have enjoyed almost every minute of social media and performing, even when it’s been exhausting.

As a circus performer, what’s your take on the phrase ‘media circus’?

I don’t know if you saw my tweet responding to Jess Bidgood. The Governor of New Hampshire referred to running for office as “joining the circus” and I said, “I will once again be taking up the mantle of trying to explain to people that most circuses are actually extremely well-run and organized.” And I really don’t like when people use it to describe something that’s complete chaos. Let me put it this way: most circuses nowadays don’t have live animals the way they used to, but think back to the old days when they had lions and tigers and elephants, you can’t have the tigers going out when the acrobat family is also in the center of the ring. You need to have a certain level of organization in the circus.

 

 

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EVERYTHING ELSE

 

–Well, BDG CEO Bryan Goldberg sure had a memorable Valentine’s Day. Yesterday, following a string of layoffs and the shuttering of Gawker, members of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) donned Napoleon hats and showed up to the BDG office to give Goldberg an Unfair Labor Practice charge.  Romance isn’t dead!

–Catapult is ending both its online magazine and writing classes.

–Following a three-month strike, the HarperCollins union reached a tentative deal with the publisher. Upon approval, the agreement would increase “minimum salaries across levels” and provide “a one time $1,500 lump sum bonus” to union members.

–Men’s Journal recently pivoted to using A.I. to churn out content — perhaps an eerie foreshadow of what’s to come. However, this buzzy tool seems ill-equipped to handle medicine and health articles that could have potentially more dire consequences than, let’s say, a clunky recipe that recommends one too many milligrams of olive oil. The outlet’s first foray into A.I, an article about “What All Men Should Know About Low Testosterone,” was riddled with factual errors, according to Futurism.

–Over 200 members of the NBC News Guild walked out in protest last week. “NBC has repeatedly broken the law, disrespected the rights of its employees, and illegally terminated hard-working union journalists. Enough is enough,” the Guild wrote in a tweet.

–Twitter Wellness Check: Last week, Twitter celebrated #humpday by being unusable for 90 minutes. Users had to schedule Tweets to post. Maybe accidentally forcing us to pause and reflect on our takes about “Twink death” was a good thing!