As is obvious to virtually everyone in Worcester and Central Massachusetts, the dominant news entity for the region has had a precipitous collapse over the past 10 years. As The Worcester Telegram has changed ownership over this time period, and particularly with its current owner Gannett, the news staff has been cut dramatically. This has left a huge news void in a region that lacks other daily newspapers or nationally affiliated local TV stations other than Spectrum 1 News. The consequences of this collapse and lack of local news services is not unique to Worcester and the region. As stated in the recently published “The Roadmap for Local News”:
Cities and towns across the United States are in an information crisis. Local news is collapsing or has collapsed. People don’t have the basic information that they need to build functioning communities. Rampant disinformation is being weaponized by extremists. Democratic participation and representation are under threat.
Thankfully, in response to this threat to the civic and economic health of local communities, a variety of new collaborative news models have emerged from across the country. The Chamber over the past year has investigated many of these models and partnerships. It is the Chamber’s intention based upon this search to take the lead in establishing a non-profit news organization that will deliver responsible and civically oriented journalism on an array of topics important to the social and economic health and well- being of the Central Massachusetts region.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Central Massachusetts offers fertile ground for an enterprising, curious, and empathetic news outlet dedicated to exploring and explaining the region, without sociological detachment or exploitable financial imperatives. The retreat of traditional media, part of a much broader national trend that has both led to and been fueled by declines in civic values and engagement, poses a distinct challenge to Worcester and its surrounding communities but also provides the opportunity for renewal and growth.
Once home to four daily newspapers, the city now has only one, the Telegram & Gazette, which is owned by Gannett, a Virginia-headquartered mass media holding company with significant debt obligations and a proven track record of eliminating jobs and, by extension, coverage. But Central Massachusetts also presents a perhaps unique opportunity: a vibrant central city phalanxed by energetic suburbs and rural areas; a lively, but cohesive business and political infrastructure; a story of renewal and upward trajectory that lends itself well to spirited coverage and debate. Worcester is a community-based decision-making city, with outsize impact on its economically diverse surrounding municipalities, spheres of interest, spheres of influence, and everyday people. That template lends itself to and demands a news organization prepared to tell its story.
THE SPRAWL OF THE NEWS DESERT
Since 2005, one quarter of the nation’s newspapers have shuttered. Put another way, since the Red Sox’ first championship of the millennium and the dawn of President George W. Bush’s second term, printed news has declined by 25 percent. On average, the country loses two newspapers each week.
These trusted, local sources of local news are not, typically, becoming the protected ward of civic-minded groups or individuals with roots in the communities they cover. Instead, they are disappearing into the portfolios of profit-driven corporations with bottom-line mandates. By some estimates, private equity companies and hedge funds have devoured fully half of the country’s daily papers. About 70 million
Americans now reside in “news deserts,” defined by the University of North Carolina’s Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media as “a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.” Through May 2023, according to the firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the media industry had announced more than 17,400 job cuts during the calendar year, outpacing the cuts at the start of the pandemic; broadcast, digital, and print outlets have already eliminated significantly more jobs this year than in all of 2022.
“Across the country … people are losing access to relevant, trustworthy news — and we’re suffering consequences in real time,” Washington Post columnist Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote in July.
Like other community institutions, from hospitals to playing fields to grocery stores, distance proves devastating. The farther away a news source is located from its “beat,” the less likely it is to cover that beat adequately and the less likely a business-side staffer is to connect with local small businesses working to get the word out to potential customers, or to draw the attention of a larger employer hoping to make inroads through a trusted outlet. Practically speaking, reporters or editors who live among the people they cover are more likely to hear about a news story waiting for a doctor’s appointment or watching a youth soccer game or food shopping. And there are fewer than ever. Between 2008 and 2020, about 40,000 newsroom jobs disappeared, according to the Pew Research Center.
As these venerable, tangible sources of information recede, some have transformed into so-called “ghost-papers,” husks of themselves. These publications, often bearing the same name and superficial appearance, are nominally devoted to the same mission – portraying a community or an interest group in a manner recognizable and relatable to readers – but lack resources and institutional support to execute it.
“Many of these papers are still published – sometimes under the same name as in the past – but the quality, quantity and scope of their editorial content are significantly diminished,” wrote Penelope Muse Abernathy, the Knight Chair in Journalism and Media Economics at the University of North Carolina. “Routine government meetings are not covered, for example, leaving citizens with little information about proposed tax hikes, local candidates for office or important policy issues that must be decided.” Perhaps even worse, into the breach have stepped all manner of unreliable – and often untruthful – social media. The upside, through the removal of traditional gatekeepers like seasoned editors and trained reporters, has been the democratization of information flow. The irrefutable fatal flaw, however, has been the anti-democratic rise of misinformation and disinformation, corrosive not only to the larger republic, but also on the local level, where even fewer civic-minded eyeballs provide guardrails against malign or even simply confused actors. A Pew Research Center report in 2021 found that 18 percent of Americans in the hectic political year of 2020 got their political and election news from social media, that those people were less likely to pay attention to other news sources, and that nearly six in ten of those people were likely to demonstrate a low level of political knowledge.
THE LOCAL ANGLE
Our region has not been spared. Even as Worcester itself has continued to find ways to reinvent, exploring and nurturing new industries and redeveloping our urban core, the sources of news our parents and grandparents relied upon have fallen away. New arrivals, who breathe life into a community with fresh ideas and energy, do not encounter the same vibrant news landscape, which can leave them feeling unplugged from locals goings-on and make it harder for them to become part of the social fabric. In the long run, both the community and the newcomers lose out.
Locally, this goes beyond theory. After a second quarter in 2022 in which inflation and spiraling print costs fueled a $53.7 million loss on $748.7 million in revenue, mass media giant Gannett imposed nationwide layoffs, the total number of which it refused to disclose. And they hit home. On August 13, 2022, the Grafton Villager tweeted, the way a good local paper should, the local toll: “What we know so far about @Gannett layoffs in Central Mass.”:
Figures and bylines recognizable and knowledgeable in their local communities, with no apparent replacements. After initially telling the Worcester Business Journal that several Central Massachusetts and MetroWest newsrooms had not been impacted by the nationwide cuts, Gannett backtracked, acknowledging it had “shared inaccurate information.” Since the 2019 GateHouse merger, Gannett has reduced both daily and weekly newspapers, chopping the number of weeklies from 302 to 175 by the end of last year, reported Axios, citing regulatory filings. The company had also cut more than 10,000 jobs from the 21,255-employee workforce it had immediately following the merger, bringing its total headcount to just 562 more than Gannett had before the deal, according to Axios.
In a May 2022 presentation of their analysis of the local news landscape to the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce Executive Board, Clark University students Josh Podolsky, Alex Gullotti, Monica Sager called T&G “the sole representation of news for the massive city,” but the long- serving publication has also been hit hard by broader trends slashing the industry. In short, fewer journalists means fewer stories are being told, and not being told nearly as well. The affliction is not unique to Central Massachusetts, but it is acute here and deserving of timely redress.
WORCESTER RISING
For Worcester, a city enlivened by decades of concerted effort to restore and surpass its heyday, the timing is optimal. “Legacy media” is in retreat, throwing open possibilities that otherwise would have been constrained by the sclerotic nature of newsrooms and entrenched bureaucracies. Alan Berube, senior fellow and deputy director at the Brookings Institute, in a June Worcester Business Journal column, noted
“its eight colleges and universities; its strength in cutting-edge medicine and life sciences; the dozens of diverse cultural communities who call the city home; and its position at the heart of a vibrant, verdant region and commonwealth, represented in the Worcester seal itself.”
An Oxford native whose great-great-grandfather arrived in Worcester from Quebec in the mid- 1800s, Berube wrote, “The global economy is entering what many are calling the fourth industrial revolution, driven by the convergence of digital, biological, and physical innovations through technologies like artificial intelligence, genome editing, and robotics.
“Worcester’s many assets position it favorably for this latest revolution: a strong cluster of life sciences and engineering research and innovative companies centered around institutions like UMass Chan Medical School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute; proximity to a major global city in Boston; and a population both highly educated and highly diverse, with connections to emerging markets all over the world. Major investments over the past two decades have reinvigorated the city’s urban fabric.
Worcester has gained back those residents it lost from 1950 to 1980.” Further, Worcester County’s housing market has continued gaining value, with all the attendant implications of such trends. According to Long & Foster, which tracks real estate trends across the country, the county’s median sales price in March had climbed 15 percent from a year prior.
Sustained economic growth fairly clamors for reinvigorated news coverage: to celebrate, to scrutinize, and to explain. Additionally, expanding business opportunities furnish fertile avenues for ad revenue, partnerships, sponsorship, signature events; this type of multifaceted approach will be critical to a startup news organization’s revenue side to ensure that the new venture is durable.
TELLING THE STORY
To function, a new media venture must be robust on both the business and news sides. Long-held journalistic guidelines on the “church and state” model dividing the two should, of course, be followed. But the constant drumbeat of “good news” stories – the newly opened business, the senior center whose residents volunteer for a good cause, the neighborhood watch group that makes a whole community safer – means that coverage does not need to discourage readers, advertisers, sponsors, or those who want to help drive coverage.
To prevent erratic coverage – that is, unreliable and uneven treatment of news that erodes the community’s trust in the organization’s ability to provide an accurate report of the region – significant investments must be made in news-side personnel. To establish a brand foothold, community stakeholders – everyone from senior-center events organizers to political operatives to high school sports coaches – must be able to count on contact, responsiveness, and follow-through, further necessitating the need for a noticeable presence of news gatherers.
Due to the streamlining effects of technology, the overhead for an accurate and efficient news report has been sharply reduced. “Legacy” media – ranging from small community papers to nationally recognized behemoths – have been slow to recognize this, and agonizingly slow to adjust. Start-ups should face no such hurdles, and do not immediately confront the painful prospect of job cuts or service reductions as a means of attaining both accuracy and efficiency. Recently attempted models provide lessons, both “dos” and “don’ts,” that can help guide the next venture.
SQUARING THE CIRCLE OF ‘GOOD NEWS’
The Central Mass Town Square (CMTS) venture is instructive. When it launched in 2021, Central Mass Town Square hit on a strategy of positivity, bringing upbeat and localized coverage in the form of stories often overlooked by more traditional outlets. Central Mass Town Square raised $400,000 in private funds, deploying three full-time reporters, one editor, and one sales staffer in the spring of 2021.
The short-lived venture faltered, however, acknowledging in a signoff note posted on its site in January, “We have not been able to develop a sustainable business model to support this great work, and we are forced to shut down the site.”
Nevertheless, the work itself of Central Mass Town Square warrants further pursuit. High school sports – the secret mother’s milk of even much larger news organizations and a fertile training ground for younger reporters – knit together communities across demographics, creating a natural reader base in the most ground-level “names make news” manner. The “business beat” section drilled down further than more established news organizations typically do.
“While we weren’t sure at first if the concept would work, we soon learned that there was an unending stream of amazing people and powerful stories in Central Mass for our reporters to write about daily. Our great team of correspondents filled a news void by delivering top-notch reporting on local sports, business, community leaders and so many other important local stories,” the team said in its final post.
A healthier financial foundation, paired with extensive preemptive outreach to the business community and others, and a well-structured rollout, would put a similarly guided news organization on more solid footing. The emphasis on positive news – rather than “gotcha journalism” – represents a welcome reprieve from the tenor of much of today’s coverage. Stories need not be spun in pollyannaish directions. That only serves to confuse readers and erode trust. Instead, news gatherers who truly embed themselves within communities can easily find “feel good” stories easily at hand. Often, those stories just need to be told.
THE NEW BEDFORD LIGHT MODEL
The Light, a free, non-profit news organization aimed at providing a concentrated slice of in- depth coverage on matters of local import in the Greater New Bedford area. The site discloses its donors – subscribing to editorial independence standards developed by the Institute for Nonprofit News – and is governed by a board of directors featuring community leaders as well as journalistic veterans. The Texas Tribune has thrived using a similar model.
Backed by well-established and well-connected members of the community, a new news organization could leverage existing business relationships to maximize this relatively novel – and increasingly accepted in journalistic ethics circles – approach to building sustainability. Inherent in this community support is an acknowledgment that sound journalism is an investment in and on behalf of the whole community. To that end, Worcester businesses, institutions, foundations, and reader-donors would participate in funding the annual operating budget, through direct contributions, advertisements, and by underwriting profit-generating events. These signature events can serve not just as profit drivers, but as stakes in the ground, conspicuous declarations of a new publication’s arrival and place of belonging in the community, while promoting civic engagement. “Newspapers of various sizes across the country have discovered a proactive program of organizing and hosting events and sponsorships,” wrote Editor and Publisher. “As a result, they’ve increased revenues, created opportunities for local businesses to engage with organizations and the public differently and strengthened the perception of newspapers as the leading supporter and voice of their communities.”
SAME OLD STORY, ALL NEW STORIES
The late, legendary New York journalist Pete Hamill wrote in 1998, during the embryonic stage of the Internet, that modern publications needed to update and mimic the New York tabloids of the 1920s.
Aware of the massive influx of Irish immigrants, the papers sought to “Tell it to Sweeney! The Stuyvesants will understand.” That is, the news sites of the day needed to address immigrants directly, both to help new waves acculturate and feed the bottom line. “They were saying that the paper was a big tent, with room for the Sweeneys and the Stuyvesants. And there were always more Sweeneys,” Hamill wrote, arguing that the “campaign wasn’t an empty sentiment or a veiled declaration of the class struggle. It was supported by one of the earliest examples of intelligent market research.” Namely, that immigrants constituted an enormous, underappreciated business opportunity, that their purchasing power was drastically underestimated, and that they became loyal brand customers. With more than a fifth of Worcester’s population born overseas, the market opportunities are undeniable.
Hamill urged an updated model to reflect modern demographics, one just as true in Brooklyn’s Park Slope in the late 1990s as it is today among Worcester’s newly arrived Ghanaian, Dominican, Vietnamese, Albanian, Brazilian populations, etc. Not only immigrant populations, but each community – whether ethnic, geographic, industry, or interest – should be regarded as potential audiences and partners for a fledgling publication looking to gain trust and credibility.
CONCLUSION
Worcester is in need of a news injection.
The marriage of bringing news to the public and building a sustainable business model is an achievable goal. The greatest business challenge to constructing a positive, community-oriented news organization means separation from traditional media in an environment of tremendous economic uncertainty, which has hit print journalism acutely. Other outlets are folding or drastically reducing their coverage. But they do so at a time when interest in the news of the day is amplified, in part due to the national political and polarized social climate and will ramp up further as contentious campaigns unfold on the state and local levels. This realized and anticipated spike in attentiveness to political and civic life will dovetail well with efforts to commit print, digital, and alternative venue advertisers in the current financial market. An uphill climb executing this vital task prior to the launch date on a publication new to the marketplace can be anticipated, but the favorable external conditions – a forward-looking business community, a potential readership hungry for news, a potential advertising market eager to spread its word – augur well for mounting sufficient buzz.
Managing a start-up with limited personnel poses fresh challenges. But energy and work ethic should be two givens in this venture. Creativity and adaptability are imperatives in the new media environment. But Central Massachusetts deserves and demands such a news organization, and those two requirements can be found and hired on both the business side and the news side. Fortunately, Worcester’s robust business, non-profit, and philanthropic ecosystem has the capacity. A community non- profit, governed by a diverse board representing anchor institutions, with at-large members and guided by a community advisory council, would provide free public access to high-quality, fact-based civic reporting and long-form journalism, strengthening local civic engagement and constructive participation in our local, state, and national democratic process through a variety of media platforms. Through collaboration, a new news organization can tell the everyday stories that bind a community, build trust and accountability in institutions and government, celebrate diversity, identify challenges and opportunities, and harness the community’s ability to address them.
