On Media – Christopher Wink

What Works (and doesn’t) in Community News

This is primarily a place for my notes from this book for my future reference, but I have also included below an essay about the book I originally posted on Linkedin.

American journalism leaders rightly view local news models as worryingly limited. After nearly 20 years founding and operating a local news org, I believe many take too narrow a view of how to address that worry.

That’s why I was interested to read What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate, published in 2024 and written by Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy, two well-regarded journalism insiders who also host a podcast on local news. (Clegg is a longtime Boston Globe veteran who founded hyperlocal news site Brookline News; Kennedy is a Northeastern University faculty member.)

The book came out two years ago, and for fellow local news nerds, it’s still worth adding to you collection. Buy it!

Below, I share my reflections, and I have criticisms, but they’re more about the broader local news discourse than the book itself 🙂 I come with peace and love.

How to write short

All writers are either putter-inners, or the taker-outers.

We either write sparingly, and then add more in. Or, we over-write, and then edit down. (Count me as an over-writer). It helps to know who we are, so we can then focus on how to keep tight and clear prose.

That’s from the 2013 book How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times by the journalist and journalism scholar Roy Peter Clark. Below I share my notes for future reference.

Multi-local news can thrive when it’s about more than just place

(This originally appeared a Linkedin article)

Newspaper veterans keep trying to rebuild newspapers.

The impulse is rarely stated so bluntly. But you hear it in most strategy sessions about “saving local news.” Funding and analysis focus on a town-square-style local news bundle that newspaper veterans are determined to sustain for shared identity.

I actually agree with the civic benefits of a single, professionally-curated website, newsletter and social feed that approximates what’s happening in a place. I benefit from such efforts, even if I don’t share the deep emotional connection that people who loved the best years of local newspapers do.

Yet single-mindedness squeezes out other ideas. This blind spot is illustrated in the way the term “multi-local” is currently being discussed and digested by journalism insiders.

Examples of journalism strategy outside news organizations

Journalism is a strategy, not an industry. More verb than noun.

I’ve written for years now about what I called “Journalism Thinking,” and so I cxontinue to collect examples of what I consider acts of journalism produced outside of news organizations. Consider this a place for me to gather these examples for future use.

Beat reporters: How to respond to an angry community source

An old editor told me once: always pick up the phone, but never apologize until you mean it.

As a beat reporter, you’re going to get feedback from sources—sometimes praise, often critique. That’s a good thing. Sometimes we’re wrong, and hearing feedback helps us correct the record. Our goal is to get it right. But sometimes, the anger directed at reporters isn’t about errors or issues that require action. It’s about emotions, misunderstandings, or disagreements.

A few lessons from the 15th annual Klein News Innovation Camp

We were back. Audience was great, I enjoyed my lunchtime keynote interview with Wired editor Steven Levy.

To fill an early-morning slot, I crowdsourced a session (in old school unconference style!) on creators as distribution partners, and creators of news. (The topic has been on my mind!) In a crowded room

Below are a few notes from the daylong unconference on the future of news for my own memory.

Journalists subsidize PR

This is from a social video I posted: “PR pros without a strategy for supporting and growing journalists and creators are like safari tour guides without a strategy for protecting endangered wildlife.”

Journalists subsidize PR. That’s always been true. But today, there are now six times as many PR specialists than journalists in the United States. It’s untenable. Let me share how we got here and what we can do about it.

What I’ve learned from being threatened with legal action as a journalist and news publisher

Following a series of well-reported stories by Technical.ly on a startup in turmoil (including this most recent one), the founder threatened legal action. I’ve been here before.

In fact, I had drafted here a blog post from 2013 (!) that I’m refreshing for these purposes. Once or twice a year, we at Technical.ly get some kind of threat of legal action. Sometimes this amounts to a cease and desist letter, once it was formal-sounding demands for reporter notes and more often it is bluster.

Most usually though, our legal counsel advises us to stay quiet. No use inflaming the situation. But this time, one of the startup founder’s allies posted on social media a criticism of my reporter. That gave me cause to post this video response on social here (and embedded below for ease).

Will AI be good or bad for journalism?

This answer Sam Altman gave TIME editor Sam Jacobs this month is pretty close to my stance too (clip here). That stance? With an over-supply of content, the differentiation will come from trust and high-quality relationships. That’s why I continue to bet on journalism, and local journalism at that.