CONNECTICUT
Dominic Serio, Sr.
Irma Josephine Trusz
MAINE
None Reported
MASSACHUSETTS
Chazy Dowaliby
Frederick B. Burnham
Lawrence H. Centrella
Donna Cogliano
Francis T. Hurst
Ann E. Mills
James I. O’Hearn
John C. Perron
Richard A. Tyler
Samuel G. Weisberg
Barbara St. George
The annual Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting honors investigative reporting that best promotes more effective and ethical conduct of government, the making of public policy, or the practice of politics.
Financial support for the Goldsmith Awards Program is provided by an annual grant from the Goldsmith Fund of the Greenfield Foundation. The program is administered by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
The winner receives $25,000, and five finalists receive $10,000. Prize money is paid directly to the journalists, not the news organizations. While the subject can address issues of foreign policy, a submission qualifies only if it has an impact on public policy in the United States at the national, regional or local level.
Nominations for the 2020 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting are open now. Up to two entries are allowed per news outlet and entries are due by January 2, 2020.
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Christine Schmidt | Nieman Lab | December 10, 2019
The Connecticut Mirror — Hartford’s nonprofit news outlet, created ten years ago with $1.8 million from residents of the state concerned about layoffs at local news outlets. Now, 90 percent of the Mirror’s revenue comes from reader donations and its journalism is shared in the state’s 12 largest daily papers. The Mirror said it received a $830,000 grant from AJP.
The Mirror is among the first 11 grantees of the American Journalism Project. Each site gets a part of $8.5 million — average grant around $800,000. The grants will fund an organization’s first dedicated revenue positions, or grow an existing revenue team. Most will fund at least two new full-time positions for 24 months dedicated to revenue and fundraising.
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The Pulitzer Prize Board | December 5, 2019
The Pulitzer Prize Board announced a new Journalism prize category for the 2020 prize cycle: Audio Reporting.
The new prize will be awarded “For a distinguished example of audio journalism that serves the public interest, characterized by revelatory reporting and illuminating storytelling.’’
The Board invites submissions from producers of radio programs and podcasts that exemplify the excellence the Pulitzer Prizes have honored for more than a century. Competitive entries will reflect the work the Prizes has championed traditionally, from investigative reporting that exposes wrongdoing to dynamic features, and news coverage of major issues or events.
News organizations currently eligible to compete for the Pulitzer Prize — “U.S. newspapers, magazines, wire services and online news sites that publish regularly’’ — will be permitted to enter audio stories in this new category, as will independent American producers and U.S. radio broadcast outlets. Non-U.S. outlets are ineligible. Eligibility rules for the other 14 Journalism categories will remain intact.
The contest for Audio Reporting and all other Journalism categories will open on December 16, 2019, and the deadline for all submissions is January 24, 2020 at 5 p.m. Eastern Time. Audio entries must be submitted without preroll advertising.
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Ken Doctor | @kdoctor | Dec. 6, 2019
News industry analyst and author Ken Doctor reports how the 5 biggest newspaper chains could become 2 before the end of June 2020 in his latest Newsonomics article published by Nieman Lab.
Is an end in sight?
The first half of 2020 “will be the final dance of the newspaper industry,” one of my savviest financial sources told me Thursday — someone who’s been right on the money for years. “Everything will get resolved in the first half of 2020.”
By “everything,” he means the consolidation of ownership and control of the United States’ major newspaper companies. What as recently as three weeks ago were five big chains — Gannett, GateHouse, McClatchy, Tribune, and Alden Global Capital’s MNG Enterprises — could well, by the middle of 2020, be two.
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Tim manages an ad sales team. “When I started my career in the newspaper business, I quickly learned that advertisers can be worlds apart in their knowledge of marketing,” he said. “That’s why one of my favorite sales principles is the old slogan, ‘Meet them where they are.’
“This means we have to recognize that our prospects have different levels of experience. Most of them don’t have our knowledge of the intricacies of newspapers. If we don’t talk to them on their level, they will tune us out. And most of them are too polite to tell us we’re doing a poor job of explaining things.”
Tim comments remind me of the time my wife and I helped her father select a car. He loved his 14 year old car, but it was time for a replacement, because expensive things were beginning to go wrong with it. At the dealership, we found a nice used car with only 12,000 miles – a much newer version of his old model.
Our salesperson was sincere and down-to-earth, but unfortunately, he was hung up on technology. He spent most of the test drive talking about the screen in the middle of the dashboard. He was a walking encyclopedia of Bluetooth and wi-fi and digital programming, but my father-in-law had no interest in those things. He just wanted to see how the car drove and learn the relevant differences between his old car and the new one. His patience with the barrage of comments like “look at this other cool feature” was a clear sign that he liked the car.
In spite of the salesperson’s single-minded focus, my wife’s dad decided it was the right car for him. When the transaction was over, he mentioned that the salesperson was nice, but extremely confusing. The next day, he accepted my offer of a simple tutorial. I sat in the car with him, placed my hand over the dashboard display and said, “The first thing we’re going to do is forget about all of this.” He said, “That’s a good start.” Then we reviewed and practiced some basics until he was comfortable. When we finished, he said he was more confident and even more excited about the car.
Age and experience make a big difference. That car salesperson should have known that a person of my father-in-law’s age wouldn’t care about fancy technology. But he was so blinded by his own interest that he couldn’t see things from another person’s perspective.
“It’s all a matter of common sense,” Tim said. “If a prospect is a numbers person, we should talk in terms of numbers – even if we’re not numbers people ourselves. If someone is an idea person, we should focus on ad concepts. Of course, this means we have to be prepared to talk to about advertising from all angles.”
Meet your prospects where they are. Let that be your guideline and you’ll be on the right road.
(c) Copyright 2019 by John Foust. All rights reserved.
Lucinda Southern | Digiday | November 28, 2019
Since changing its social media strategy to drive traffic from social media back to its own pages where people can register and, ultimately, subscribe, the publisher has grown monthly referral traffic from social media platforms by 180%. Now, about a third of its site traffic comes from social platforms, said Kevin Young, head of social at The Economist, although he was unwilling to share specific figures on how many subscribers this is driving.
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Audrey Schomer | Business Insider | December 3, 2019
As digital resources and social media have given all people a public, open platform to communicate, user-generated content has become primary source material and created a trail for open-source journalists to investigate. And by performing investigative research in this way, reporters can more easily connect directly to visual evidence on the web, rather than refer to private sources.
Open-source techniques can also help to restore trust in journalism by improving transparency because they often involve journalists showing the process behind their reporting.
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WBUR | December 03, 2019
After more than 30 years of working at the daily newspaper, Joe Sciacca is leaving the Boston Herald for the role of Enterprise Editor at Channel 7 News. WBUR spoke to Sciacca about his tenure, and turned to WBUR Media Analyst John Carroll for more on what this means for the newspaper industry.
Listen to the interview
Kevin Slimp | December 4, 2019
Steve Andrist, executive director of North Dakota Newspaper Association, asked me an interesting question yesterday. It was related to my visit to Bismarck in October to work with a focus group of millennials from throughout the state who met together to spend a good part of a day looking at, and discussing, newspapers.
Prior to my trip to Bismarck, I did what I often do: I surveyed newspaper readers and non-readers throughout the U.S. and Canada to determine what differences there were, if any, between the general population and millennials related to interest in newspapers. After meeting with the focus group in Bismarck, I met with North Dakota publishers to discuss what we had learned during the day. A week or so later, I wrote a report for NDNA with the findings of the focus group.
Steve’s question yesterday was simple, “Do you have any quick advice on what you’d suggest newspapers do with this information?”
We learned a lot about millennials prior to, and during, the day in Bismarck. We learned they’re not quick to spend money on any type of news. If they do spend money, they’d prefer to spend it on their local newspaper than anywhere else. We also learned that most of the millennials who live away from home check their hometown newspaper website for local news now and then.
In answer to Steve’s question, here are the main takeaways I would suggest community newspapers keep in mind:
Millennials, like most other in the general population, aren’t looking for national or international news in their community papers. Even when looking at papers from larger cities in the state, the group reported having no interest in reading news from outside the community.
Millennials prefer print, as do most other newspaper readers. While they will check out their hometown paper online while away in college or after college, they indicate they would be more likely to spend money on a printed newspaper in the place they live than a digital version.
Millennials have less interest in sports in their community papers than the general population. When ranking areas of interest, local sports came far down the list.
Millennials are most interested in local news, especially news related to – and stories about – individuals. They are more likely to buy a newspaper if it includes stories about individuals in the millennial age group now and then. They are also interested in local government news.
Millennials have a lot of interest in reading about local entertainment, even in a small town. This might mean the entertainment is taking place in a larger town up the road, but entertainment and music are of great interest to readers in this age group.
Millennials, much like the general population, indicate they would read a free paper if it arrived in their mailbox once a week. More than 50 percent (in the national survey and in the focus group) indicated they would read the paper every week, with another 35 percent indicating they likely read the free paper most weeks.
In answer to Steve’s question, what would I take away from this information if I were a local newspaper publisher?
First, I’d remember that millennials of this generation aren’t so different from most of us when we were in our 20s. They’re busy and don’t read newspapers as often as older groups, but most of them will likely be newspaper readers as they marry and have families.
To promote readership among millennials, keep in mind their interest in stories about individuals. Interview high school, college-age and young adults for stories on a regular basis.
Include more news about local entertainment and music.
Finally, I’d keep the statistic related to free weekly papers in mind. I wouldn’t change my current structure, but I’d begin the thinking about how to use the knowledge that most people report they would read a free newspaper if it ended up in their mailbox. Whether that meant creating an alternate news pub or finding other ways to take advantage of this statistic, it’s important information.
In my next column, I’ll share some of what I’ve learned about newspaper websites – what works and what doesn’t – as a result of research I did for the Texas Center for Community Journalism in November and December.
