Media roundup: Alaska TV show is about Natives; candidate buys up paper with attack ad; brevity, soul of journalism?

Hilary Swank and Grace Dove are protagonists on "Alaska Daily."

"CNN is laying off hundreds of employees in a cost-cutting effort that illuminates the financial challenges facing a wide array of media companies as the economy teeters toward a possible recession," Jeremy Barr and Elahe Izadi of The Washington Post report in a story that is also about the previously announced layoffs at Gannett Co., which began yesterday.

"NPR is also facing a financial shortfall that will require $10 million in budget cuts over the next 10 months, chief executive John Lansing told employees on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee informed employees of plans to close the company’s weekly print magazine, citing the Post’s plans for 'global and digital transformation'."

The Post's owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, built success on his "overlooked and underappreciated communication skills," Bill Heavey writes in a Wall Street Journal review of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman, by Carmine Gallo, who analyzed 24 years of Bezos's letters to shareholders, which now average 16 words per sentence "with a readability score fit for an eighth-grader."

Some newspapers have used the Flesch-Kincaid readability scale to guide their reporters and editors, and maybe it's time to use it again, when they are competing with other information sources for attention. Axios is building readership nationally and in local markets with "smart brevity."

Gallo writes, “Our brains are not made to think,” citing neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, who says “Your brain’s most important job is to control your body’s energy needs. In short, your brain’s most important job is not thinking.” Heavey writes, "This is one of the most reassuring sentences I have ever read. . . . Whether you’re writing an article, document or email, says Mr. Gallo, you have 15 seconds—the time it takes to read 35 words—to grab a reader’s attention. After that, 45% of readers will stop paying close attention."

ABC's "Alaska Daily" is in reruns until Feb. 23, but that means you can catch up with the show's primary subjects: local journalism and Alaska Natives. For The Seattle Times, Chase Hutchinson interviewed Vera Marlene Starbard, a Native and journalist who is a co-writer for the show: "She’s hoping the show will provide a more authentic portrayal of Alaska Natives that pushes back against harmful stereotypes she argues have been perpetuated in both television and journalism."

News literacy: "Billionaire couple Melanie and Richard Lundquist are throwing their support behind the News Literacy Project to arm students and the public against mis- and disinformation," Inside Philanthropy reports (behind a paywall).

Kentucky Press Association Executive Director David Thompson reports, "Seems there was an unhappy political candidate in Breathitt County just prior to the election. And you might think a newspaper selling out of all of its newsstand copies is great publicity for the paper. But what happened to the Jackson Times Voice on Nov. 2 was unusual. As soon as the paper opened its office that morning, calls and messages started coming in. There wasn’t a copy of the Times Voice to be found anywhere. After checking with some stores, the Times Voice learned that county judge-executive candidate Harvey Jason Richardson and his driver traveled throughout the county that a.m. buying up all copies of the Times Voice. The duo apparently told people they were buying up the copies for a “school project.” But investigating further, the Times Voice learned from sources close to the situation that Richardson was not happy with an ad that showed him in a negative light, namely multiple mugshots and court documents from previous DUIs and public intoxication arrests. Instead of going back to repress the day’s edition, the Times Voice just put the entire paper on its Facebook Page."

Journalism skills: Chris Sutcliffe and Catalina Albenau of Journalism.co.uk update their list of "12 essential self-taught journalism skills," from shorthand to coding.

Rural editor-publisher with racist writings is ejected from Maryland-D.C.-Delaware Press Assn. Hall of Fame

A rural journalist "who helped shape public opinion on Maryland’s Eastern Shore for decades during the mid-20th century has been stripped of one of the region’s top professional honors after a review of his work found writings that were 'viciously racist' and even promoted lynching," The Baltimore Sun reports.

The Maryland-D.C.-Delaware Press Association, which inducted Edward J. Clarke, the longtime owner and editor of the Worcester Democrat, into its Hall of Fame in 1954, "voted last week to terminate that honor after Gabriel Pietrorazio, a University of Maryland journalism student, brought to light editorials written by Clarke that likened the Black suspects in a 1940 homicide to 'a rabid dog,' 'a disease-spreading germ' and 'garbage'," the Sun's Jonathan Pitts reports.

"The work of Pietrorazio, a 23-year-old master’s degree student, is part of 'Printing Hate,' a collaborative research project at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism," Pitts explains. "Journalism students from seven colleges and universities across the country are reviewing racist media coverage of the past as part of the project. The focus is on the years between the end of Reconstruction and the mid-20th century, a time when more than 5,000 people lost their lives in terror lynchings, most of them Black men and boys at the hands of white mobs, researchers say. Such research centers as the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, have shown in recent years that white-owned press outlets routinely played a role in encouraging the practice, either by displaying indifference toward its horrors or using the kind of biased and incendiary language that could foment violence."

Other schools participating are the University of Arkansas and five historically Black institutions: Morgan State University in Baltimore, Howard University in Washington, Hampton University in Virginia, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and Morehouse College in Atlanta. The effort has produced 30 investigative stories, which are posted twice a week on the Capital News Service’s Howard Center website, on the National Association of Black Journalists’ news site, and on Word in Black, a collaboration of prominent African American news publishers.

Candidate, clearly bigoted on social media, got elected to New Jersey Senate after getting no news-media coverage

New Jersey state Sen.-elect Edward Durr
(Photo by Ellie Rushing, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

"Edward Durr was such a long-shot candidate in his New Jersey legislative race that no one seemed to notice something rather striking about him: He had a history of posting bigoted, misogynistic and derogatory comments on social media," reports Paul Farhi of The Washington Post. But he beat the state Senate president, probably because he was such a long shot that he got no news coverage in a largely rural district.

Durr, a Republican, called the prophet Mohammed a pedophile, blamed "illegal aliens: for spreading disease, "used the motto of the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement and compared vaccination mandates to the Holocaust," Farhi writes. "He also denigrated Vice President Harris on Facebook, writing that she had earned her position only as a result of her race and gender."

"According to a search of the Nexis database, which catalogues thousands of news sources, there were no published or broadcast reports about Durr’s posts in the six months leading up to Election Day," Farhi reports. "Durr’s comments made plenty of news after last week’s election, when reporters finally caught up to his social-media history. But by then he had already scored a stunning upset over Democrat Steve Sweeney, one of the state’s most powerful officials. Durr, 58, won the Senate seat by roughly 2,200 votes out of 65,000 cast."

Durr had a long record of "incendiary posts," but he also "got no media coverage when he ran unsuccessfully for a state assembly seat in 2017 nor when he ran and lost again two years later," Farhi writes. Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science and law at Montclair State University, told him, “No one even considered that [Durr] was a real threat, and that includes me.”

Legislative districts of southern New Jersey
(Each district has a senator and two House members)

Farhi writes, "Years of cutbacks and consolidation among news organizations have left many communities without vigorous local coverage. . . . The southern New Jersey region once had four daily newspapers. But in 2012, Advance Publications merged three that it owned — the Gloucester County Times, Today’s Sunbeam in Salem County and the News of Cumberland County — into a single paper, the South Jersey Times. Salem, Gloucester and Cumberland counties form the heart of the district won by Durr. The Times’s major competitors include the Courier Post in Cherry Hill and its sister paper, the Daily Journal in Vineland, both owned by Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper owner and a vigorous cost cutter. The Philadelphia Inquirer is the region’s leading metropolitan paper."

"The reporting staffs of the surviving local newspapers “have been decimated” and “barely cover local news anymore," David Wildstein, who runs the New Jersey Globe, a digital news site focused on state issues and politics, told Farhi, who writes, "Collectively, the South Jersey Times, Courier Post and Daily Journal list a total of 13 news reporters on their mastheads, covering a four-county region that has a population of just over 1 million. Editors of the papers didn’t reply to multiple requests for comment."

UPDATE, Nov. 15: Eric Lach of The New Yorker interviewed defeated Senate President Steve Sweeney, who said “We used to have local papers. And people used to be able to read about all of these wonderful things that were going on.” He also noted, Lach writes, an "NJ Advance Media analysis of his district . . . showed that Republican registration went up some thirty per cent in the past four years, while Democratic registration rose only twelve per cent. Southwestern New Jersey is poorer, more rural, and whiter than other areas of the state—bad conditions lately for the Democratic Party. Sweeney had received about as many votes this year as he did when he won re-election in 2017, but thousands of additional voters had come out."

Rural news media need to promote vaccination, not just by delivering facts to quash misinformation, but by example

By Al Cross
Director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

Millions of Americans say they have decided not to get vaccinated to protect themselves, their families and their neighbors from the coronavirus, but polling and anecdotal evidence show that some will change their minds. News media have a role to play in that, especially in rural America, where vaccination rates are lower than the rest of the nation, sometimes dangerously lower.

Few vaccine-hesitant or -resistant people are likely to be persuaded by a news story or editorial urging vaccination, but it's important to keep delivering facts about the vaccines, because social media are awash with misinformation about them. And there's another way to promote the shots: lead by example.

That's what Alan Gibson, editor and publisher of the Clinton County News in Albany, Kentucky, did this week. On the back page of the newspaper is a "house ad" telling readers that the paper's entire staff of five is vaccinated and urging readers to do likewise.

Gibson told me he got the idea from the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce's "Covid Stops Here" campaign, which provides signs that businesses can download and print to display their level of vaccination, and lets them post their logos to do likewise.

Gibson knew his staff was fully vaccinated. "I thought, we should promote this," he said. Why? "We're one of the hardest-hit counties in the nation but we're one of the slowest to get vaccinated." And he thought it would be better to persuade by example than to lecture: "Do as I do, you know? I'm tired of arguing with people, because the arguments aren’t valid." He said it's worth the effort "if just one or two people look at it and say, 'I need to go ahead and do this.'"

Clinton County (Wikipedia map)

Gibson could be called a beacon in a wilderness. Only two other newspapers have their logos posted on the Kentucky Chamber site, and they're in the state's most highly vaccinated counties: The State Journal of Frankfort, in Franklin County, and The Woodford Sun, in Versailles; 79% and 77% of the adjoining Bluegrass counties' vaccine-eligible residents, respectively, are fully vaccinated. In Clinton County, it's only 38%.

What are you doing to promote vaccination? In addition to editing and publishing The Rural Blog, I do likewise with Kentucky Health News, which sends a weekly update to Kentucky editors. A few weeks ago, I told them, "There is no more immediately pressing public interest in this country than persuading people to get vaccinated, and local medical professionals and news media are more trusted than those at state and national levels. Please do your part. It's a slog, but if the heroes of public health can do it, so can we."

Paxton Media buys Landmark Community Newspapers

Map by The Rural Blog denotes newspaper ownership and company headquarters towns.
See last paragraph for an UPDATE on the newspapers in Grayson County.

This story has been updated.

One of America's larger community newspaper companies is buying the other.

Paxton Media Group of Paducah, Ky., announced Tuesday that it is buying Landmark Community Newspapers LLC, a chain of 44 weekly and two daily newspapers based in Shelbyville, Ky.

Landmark has 19 papers in Kentucky, including The News-Enterprise, the daily in the Hardin County seat of Elizabethtown. Its other daily is the Citrus County Chronicle in Crystal River, Fla. Paxton has 18 Kentucky papers, with dailies in Owensboro, Madisonville, Hopkinsville and its headquarters city of Paducah, where the family-owned company has its only television station. With the purchase, it will have 119 publications in 14 states, according to a story in its papers.

"PMG believes strongly in the value of local newspapers and the vital role they play in the communities that they serve," said Jamie Paxton, PMG president and CEO. "We appreciate Landmark choosing us to be the new stewards of these important community assets."

Landmark's papers have been for sale for more than 13 years. The Norfolk-based Batten family sold its dailies in that city, Greensboro, N.C., and Roanoke, Va., years ago. The community-newspaper company has been based in Shelbyville since its founding in 1968 by a group of eight weekly newspaper publishers and the Battens' purchase in 1973. The company also has publications in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Indiana and Iowa.

The purchase price was not revealed, but the transaction is one of the largest involving community newspapers in some time, said Lewis Floyd of Business Valuation Consulting, a newspaper and business broker who specializes in small papers.

“Paxton has been interested in acquiring newspapers as part of our strategy given the conditions and the nature of the newspaper industry,” said Mike Weafer, publisher of the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer and group publisher for the company's Kentucky-Indiana region. “Acquisitions strengthen us and help us to persevere, so it is part of an overall strategy to continue to acquire newspapers.”

Paxton's purchase "continues an ongoing effort at PMG to acquire community newspapers in the company's existing geographic footprint," said its story, which quoted no one from Landmark. A version of the story in the Chronicle quoted Publisher Gerry Mulligan: “Paxton Media is a strong newspaper company that brings years of expertise to our company.” Landmark has eight papers in Florida.

The story said PMG will officially take over the Landmark papers on June 8, "but there will be a transition period to PMG regarding systems and procedures, Weafer said."

The deal is likely to means the end of one paper, because the companies have weeklies in Leitchfield, Ky., an unusual if not unique situation for chain-owned weeklies. Many years ago Landmark bought The Record, a locally owned competitor to the Grayson County News-Gazette, to make it part of a cluster with its Elizabethtown daily. It gained the local circulation lead and thus the public-notice advertising, and the News-Gazette changed hands more than once before Paxton bought it in in 2017, along with two other papers. Its circulation is now less than 1,000, in a county of 26,000 people, but Paxton now owns the market. It announced June 24 that the papers would be consolidated under the name Grayson County News, the name of the paper that merged with The Leitchfield Gazette in 1977.