🛡 How local papers fought attacks on the press

Plus: Season three of Small Press, Big Ideas has wrapped!

Author

Paul Gewuerz
April 03, 2025

Your weekly briefing of stories from around the local news space about business, policy, trends, and more

Hello! Here’s what’s in this week’s issue:

» How local papers fought attacks on the press

» National Trust Grows Big, Hits Bumps

» New Licensing Deal Could Pave the Way for AI Revenue Sharing

» CherryRoad CEO on the uphill battle for local news

» LMC announces speakers for ‘25 conference

🎧 Small Press, Big Ideas Podcast: Season Three Has Wrapped!

🛡 How local papers fought attacks on the press

The Freedom of the Press Foundation hosted a webinar highlighting how local publishers like the Marion County Record in Kansas and The Clarksdale Press Register in Mississippi have persevered after attacks from local authorities critical of their reporting. The actions taken by local judges have included police raids and legal actions aimed at suppressing critical coverage.

A federal judge has ruled that The New York Times' copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft can proceed, rejecting OpenAI's motion to dismiss. The decision allows the case to move into the discovery phase. If NYT succeeds, it could pave the way for local publishers to demand compensation or legal protections against AI scraping and republishing work.

📰 National Trust Grows Big, Hits Bumps

Nieman Lab explores lessons learned at The National Trust for Local News, which expanded to a $50 million media organization owning 65 newspapers across three states while aiming to preserve community journalism. Despite its growth, the nonprofit has faced challenges including layoffs, closures of some newspapers, and financial strains.

🤖 New Licensing Deal Could Pave the Way for AI Revenue Sharing

The News/Media Alliance has partnered with ProRata AI to establish an AI licensing framework that ensures fair compensation for publishers when their content is used by AI technologies. The initiative aims to address concerns about unauthorized use of content by AI companies and provides a model for revenue sharing between AI companies and publishers.

🗻 CherryRoad CEO on the uphill battle for local news

CherryRoad Media CEO Jeremy Gulban appeared in the Wall Street Journal in a piece called He Wanted to Fix Local News. It’s Harder Than He Thought. The article reflects on the challenges faced by CherryRoad’s 92 community newspapers including public distrust in print media, competition from digital, a shortage of journalists, and financial hurdles like rising costs and declining subscribers.

🎤 LMC announces speakers for ‘25 conference

The Local Media Consortium announced its lineup of speakers for the upcoming Digital Connections event in Arizona on May 5-7. Keynotes will be from Aaron Parnas from The Parnas Perspective and Mi-Ai Parrish, Professor for Media Innovation and Leadership at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. You can register for the event here.

Create a Profitable AI Podcast for you Newsroom

Learn how to create a high-quality, AI-narrated podcast for your organization quickly and affordably. In this workshop, Paul Gewuerz, founder of LocalPod.co, will walk you through the process of using AI text-to-speech tools to produce a podcast and the playbook they’ve used to grow revenue for local news publishers.

You'll walk away with:

✔ A step-by-step process to create an AI-narrated podcast

✔ Insights into AI text-to-speech platforms and how to use them

✔ A breakdown of time and costs involved in AI podcast production

✔ Strategies for hosting, publishing, and distributing your podcast

✔ Promotion tips to grow your audience

✔ Monetization methods to generate revenue from your podcast

Register now for free to start your AI-powered podcast journey!

When: Wednesday, April 16th - 9am MST

Events

Create a Profitable AI Powered Podcast - April 16th, 2025 11am EST

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Small Press, Big Ideas

A podcast about the business of local news

Season Three Has Wrapped!

Season three of Small Press, Big Ideas has officially wrapped up. A big thanks to all of the guests who appeared on the podcast this season! Subscribe in your podcast app of choice to never miss a new episode, look for new episode in season four in the next month or so.

Season three episodes:

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