Lessons from buying local newspapers

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

→ Lessons from buying local newspapers

→ Lee announces layoffs

→ Video: Local journalism in crisis

→ AI was all the buzz at ONA ‘24

→ RCFP says new bill could threaten nonprofit newsrooms

📰 Lessons from buying local newspapers

Ross McDuffie, chief portfolio officer of The National Trust for Local News, recently shared some numbers of the organization’s growth at the ONA conference in Atlanta.

The Trust has grown its number of publications, gross revenue, employees, and nearly every other metric. In the year and a half since McDuffie took the reigns, the Trust has added nearly 40 newsrooms and $45 million in revenue to its portfolio.

The Trust has had success in reviving media brands, starting new ones, and has learned lessons along the way. One key learning is that philanthropy is not the end all be all solution to the local news crisis.

Read more here.

📰 Lee announces layoffs

Lee Enterprises has reportedly laid off staff at four of its publications.

The cuts included ten positions from The Buffalo News, six from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and one each from The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Augusta Free-Press. The layoffs follow others in Montana earlier in the month.

The cuts come as a cost cutting move after the company reported Q3 operating revenue down more than $20 million compared to the same period last year, despite their digital subscribership being up 23% year over year.

📺 Video: Local journalism in crisis

Check out this recent video on the news industry crisis through the lens of the local journalism ecosystem in Arlington, Texas. Arlington is currently the countries’ largest city with no daily newspaper.

📰 AI was all the buzz at ONA ‘24

Sixteen of the forty scheduled events at this year’s Online News Association conference were on the topic of AI. The events focused on operations, research, public perception, defense, and more.

According to this piece, the mood at the conference was decidedly more skeptical than last year’s event, despite the productivity increases enabled by AI over the last year.

📰 RCFP says new bill could threaten nonprofit newsrooms

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sent a letter to the US House of Representatives last week urging them to stop legislation that they say would give the Executive Branch powers to “retaliate against nonprofit newsrooms whose coverage of terrorism federal officials dislike”.

The bill, H.R. 6408, would grant the Secretary of the Treasury powers to remove the tax-exempt status of organizations that they designate as “having provided … material support or resources” to a terrorist organization.

The RCFP say that the bill is a threat to the free press and have urged legislators to oppose it.

Read more here.