E&P Reports with Mike Blinder

When much of the news media industry is talking about contraction, Detroit PBS is doing something decidedly different: building. The public media organization has broken ground on a new 50,000-square-foot campus designed not simply as a television facility, but as a home for journalism, radio, education, culture, community engagement and multiplatform storytelling. During a recent episode of E&P Reports, Detroit PBS President a...

Every week seems to bring another announcement of a newspaper closing, a newsroom shrinking or another community joining the growing list of America's news deserts. Against that backdrop, launching a new local news organization might seem like a risky proposition. Expanding into print less than a year later might sound almost unimaginable. Yet that's exactly what Alabama Newswire has done. During this episode of E&P Reports, fo...

For the third consecutive year, Northwestern University's Medill School has tracked how Americans' local news habits are changing. The latest survey confirms that audience demand for local journalism remains remarkably resilient, but it also reveals widening cracks in the industry's business model, growing skepticism about AI and an accelerating shift away from traditional broadcast platforms. During this episode of E&P Reports...

Twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, leading journalists, First Amendment advocates and scholars gathered at Columbia University for The Forever War and the First Amendment, a symposium examining how two decades of conflict reshaped journalism. Fresh from the event, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Azmat Khan joined E&P Reports to discuss what the press learned—and failed to learn—from c...

News industry leaders weigh whether pressure to repeal Canada's Online News Act could threaten newsroom funding and weaken publishers' push for platform compensation worldwide.

Could a deal to ease the U.S.-Canada trade war let Big Tech off the hook for funding news? Canada's Online News Act has secured millions for journalism, but publishers fear that support could become a bargaining chip in negotiations with Washington. For news...

Local news remains under enormous financial pressure, but the market for community publications is far from dead. A varied group of independent publishers, entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations is stepping forward to invest in titles that still matter to their communities. Sara April, president of Dirks, Van Essen & April, says many of these buyers are motivated by more than profit. Their commitment to preserving local jour...

When wildfires roared toward Spokane, the journalists covering the disaster suddenly found their own homes, neighbors and newsroom in its path. Three newsroom leaders reveal how The Spokesman-Review raced toward the danger to deliver lifesaving information, verify rapidly changing facts and document the devastation consuming its community. Their experience offers a powerful lesson in what local journalism demands when the story hit...

Alternative weeklies were once the unruly heartbeat of American cities, shaping politics, culture, nightlife and public conversation before collapsing advertising and changing media habits pushed many toward extinction. Brady Walkinshaw believes the industry mistook disruption for irrelevance. Through Noisy Creek, he is acquiring, reviving and reinvesting in beloved local publications that others had written off. His wager is that ...

She expected to find an industry weighed down by layoffs, closures and uncertainty. Instead, a summer spent visiting independent newsrooms across America introduced Jasmine Shiffer to publishers, editors and reporters who remain deeply committed to serving their communities—and surprisingly optimistic about the future. Along the way, she discovered that local journalism's greatest strength isn't its technology or business mod...

For job seekers, landing a newsroom job can feel increasingly dependent on luck, connections and an opaque hiring process. Cristina Silva, managing editor for Operations & Standards at The Boston Globe and the new author of Poynter's Ask the Recruiter column, says candidates have more control than they may realize. The key is to understand how editors make decisions, communicate clearly and make it easier for a hiring manager t...

Local journalism does not need another obituary. It needs a new operating model. In New Jersey, Stefanie Murray is helping build one that treats local information as civic infrastructure, supported by collaboration, philanthropy, local business revenue and carefully protected public funding. Her message to the industry: The future may not look like the past, but communities still need journalism that serves them.

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As broadcasters debated whether to air President Donald Trump's recent prime-time address live and local newspapers continued rethinking political opinion pages, one question has become increasingly difficult to ignore: Has journalism's greatest challenge shifted from protecting free speech to preserving productive public discourse? Constitutional scholar Stuart Brotman believes the First Amendment remains remarkably ...

For decades, the leaders of America's newspaper industry have gathered separately to tackle many of the same challenges—from protecting journalism and strengthening business models to navigating public policy and emerging technology. This September, that changes as the News Media Alliance and America's Newspapers bring their flagship meetings together in Washington, D.C., creating an unprecedented week of collab...

While much of the news industry continues to focus on shrinking newsrooms, disappearing newspapers and expanding news deserts, Village Media is proving another path is possible. In this exclusive E&P Reports conversation, founder and CEO Jeff Elgie and Board Chair Richard Gingras explain how their digital-first company has grown into one of North America's most successful local news organizations by putting commun...

Local media sales has entered a new era. Advertisers no longer need a salesperson to launch a marketing campaign, buy digital ads or build an online presence, giving them more choices—and less patience for generic sales pitches—than ever before. According to Dream Local Digital founder and E&P "Ad Sales Life" columnist Shannon Kinney, the sales professionals who thrive won't be those with the best rate...

News organizations have spent years debating whether artificial intelligence will replace journalists, whether social media is helping or hurting democracy, and whether younger audiences still value news. But according to Nebraska Public Media Chief Innovation Officer Chad Davis, those may no longer be the most important questions. During a recent episode of E&P Reports, Davis argued that journalism's greatest cha...

A new global study suggests journalism's biggest challenge may not be AI, declining trust or shrinking revenues. Instead, it may be the widening gap between what news organizations say their priorities are and how their newsrooms actually operate. In a recent E&P Reports conversation, WAN-IFRA CEO Stig Kirk Ørskov and FT Strategies Insights Manager Lamberto Lambertini discussed findings from the Future Newsrooms S...

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how media sales teams prospect, research, communicate and report results. Yet according to media revenue strategist Ryan Dohrn, the technology itself is not the competitive advantage. The real differentiator remains the same as it has always been: the salesperson using it. In a conversation with E&P, Dohrn argues that AI won't replace strong salespeople or save weak ones...

The future of local journalism is increasingly being shaped by two fundamental questions: Who should pay for it, and what should it produce?

Those questions were at the center this conversation between E&P Publisher Mike Blinder and media critic, author and journalism educator Jeff Jarvis. The discussion grew out of two recent E&P Reports episodes that sparked debate beyond E&P's audience: an interview with Rebuild Loc...