Breaking News: Does anybody know what happened today?

The broken and beleaguered local news ecosystem we live in now makes us uneasy. Who can we turn to and trust to tell us what's going on?

In a perfect world, I'd publish a daily newspaper called, say, The Charlottesville Messenger, and I'd hire 10 of the best journalists in town, from a variety of diverse backgrounds, and they'd cover everything - restaurant openings, arts and entertainment, government corruption, politics, crime, police, equity issues, land use, development, what UVA is really up to, etc. I'd trust my reporters to follow the truth wherever it leads them. I'd encourage them to take risks, follow their instincts, make themselves a nuisance if they have to, question sources, verify their facts, and always question their own assumptions. We'd have a beautifully designed print edition and a website that was easy to read and navigate. We'd have interesting podcasting and video programming. We'd try both to inform and entertain. We'd have great Christmas parties.

The reality, however, is that our local news operations have been limping along into the 21st century for over two decades now, still trying to find their way. Digital subscriptions and advertising are saving some, or rather keeping them afloat, and new non-profits models have emerged, but they've had to rely on a public that's been half-hearted about supporting local journalism. Understandably. People like to hate journalists as much as they like to hate lawyers, but lawyers aren't asking you for $8.98 a month so they can keep lawyering. Let's be honest, most people would rather spend their money on efforts to feed the hungry or find a home for an abandoned animal than save a journalist. Still, the broken and beleaguered news ecosystem we live in now makes us uneasy. Who can we turn to and trust to tell us what's going on? What kind of shenanigans are going on without strong media watchdogs? Will someone please fix this!

In a recent fundraising appeal, Charlottesville Tomorrow's executive director Giles Morris declared that the non-profit news organization, which has been around since 2005, "must raise 350K by the end of the year to keep doing high-quality journalism in 2023." This follows a September announcement that Charlottesville Tomorrow received a two-year, $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to expand its coverage.

"Our 850K budget is mostly salary and benefits, along with the essential costs of a small nonprofit organization," writes Morris. "It has been an uphill journey to get to this point — just five years ago, we were an organization of three people — and while we are a model for small market nonprofit news organizations around the country, the reality is that for us to fulfill our mission, we have to continue to grow as an institution."

Charlottesville Tomorrow's 2020 IRS Form 990 shows that contributions made up 97.3% of total revenue ($717,294) and that program services made up 2% ($19,625). Notable expenses include the executive director’s salary, $130,000 (19.9% of total expenses), and other salaries and wages, $263,454, which account for 39.9% of total expenses. Charlottesville Tomorrow currently has an editor, three reporters, and a development director on staff. They are also advertising for a new reporter position.

Back in 2019, Morris said that CT was working toward a "sustainable subscriber-supported revenue model," but a big appeal like this, with just two months left to go in the year, suggests those subscribers haven’t shown up. Also in 2019, CT took a leap of faith by ending a nine-year partnership with The Daily Progress, one that was recognized and honored by Editor & Publisher Magazine in 2011 as one of the most innovative in the country. Many considered the sharing of content a win-win for both news organizations and readers. But CT adopted a new editorial philosophy in 2019, one that sought to disassociate itself from The Daily Progress and embrace a more equity-driven, socially-conscious approach, reflected today on their About page:

"We believe in journalists and in journalism, but we get that the status quo local news model is broken and we have to earn your trust every day. Race is a big part of that conversation, so let’s address it right up front. Legacy news organizations have largely failed communities of color and news business models have punished both journalists of color and POC-owned companies. No one can fix that overnight, but being part of the solution is a north star for us."

Since that philosophical change in 2019, the raw amount of CT’s news coverage has diminished, but its focus on issues of equity intensified. So has the language criticizing "legacy news organizations," i.e. The Daily Progress, in their fundraising appeals. What was an award-winning partnership with our daily paper became adversarial.

"Given that Charlottesville’s for-profit news outlets are covering fewer and fewer local stories, our ambition to supply you with robust, in-depth and equitable news coverage is taking on ever greater significance for our community," wrote Charlottesville Tomorrow board chair George A. Beller in a 2021 appeal letter.

While it's true that the number of local news stories in The Daily Progress has diminished when compared to years past, that was an odd argument for CT to make. In March 2022, for example, the DP published about 40 local news stories while CT published 8 local news stories. What’s more, in a beleaguered news market, why pick an ideological fight with a daily paper struggling to survive? UVA associate professor Christopher Ali, who specializes in local media, found the split puzzling at the time. “This was one of the most innovative partnerships in digital news,” he told C-Ville Weekly. "I'm more worried about the Daily Progress than I am Charlottesville Tomorrow. It is really difficult to be a small market paper.”

Indeed, if CT had issues with DP leadership in 2019, all they had to do was wait. A short time later the DP changed owners, editors, and publishers. This year, the layoffs and departures of a solid core of reporters at the DP nearly left the newsroom unstaffed. Surprisingly, the DP now runs politically left-leaning editorials and hired veteran local journalist Hawes Spencer [as a former reporter for The Hook, where Spencer was the founder and editor, I can tell you this would have been unimaginable back then], who works with two recently hired reporters, Alice Berry, who has written on trans advocates speaking out about Gov. Youngkin’s recommended school policies, and Sydney Shuler, a journalist of color, who has written about on-going threats of racial violence at UVA.

Indeed, collectively, there have always been any number of good working journalists in town, and the truth is they could probably serve the community better if they were given a single employee-owned platform and didn’t have to deal with the idiosyncrasies of their particular publications. And that’s actually not such a crazy idea. Defector, an employee-owned, for-profit news site launched by former Deadspin staffers has emerged as a new model. While Defector is a national publication focused on sports and culture, its strategy of capitalizing on a number of digital revenue streams at once, including a merch store and live event ticketing, has made it profitable in only its second year. Could a native digital for-profit local news/media company make a go of it here?

As CT’s Morris notes in his recent appeal, a reader survey indicated that people wanted the non-profit to expand its coverage into new areas, featuring more arts and culture, UVA, and business coverage. That’s actually something CT used to do in the past when it was partnering with The Daily Progress.

"We can do that — and at the same time reach more people and create more impact — but we need to recruit and invest in journalists," Morris wrote, " grow our visibility with readers, and fund events and programs that engage at the grassroots."

Ironically, back in 2019, Prof. Ali, who has since become a CT board member, told C-Ville Weekly that working with The Daily Progress "guaranteed visibility for Charlottesville Tomorrow" and that he would be "interested in seeing their strategy for visibility.”

Like most non-profits, CT spends a lot of time talking up its values, saying how important they are to the community, but the news organization has had years to invest in journalists and grow its visibility with readers. At what point does a venture like this stop being aspirational? At what point does it actually become valuable enough to the community that enough people are gladly willing to support it? Is it even possible for a local non-profit news organization, or a for-profit one, for that matter, to develop a sustainable subscriber-supported revenue model?

A recent story by VPM News, "Newsrooms finding success in Virginia as nonprofit organizations," doesn’t mention Charlottesville Tomorrow as a model, but it does mention some other Virginia non-profit news organizations enjoying some success, including Cardinal News, which calls itself a "non-profit, non-partisan” news website serving Southwest and Southside Virginia. Cardinal News was launched in September 2021 by two long-time Roanoke Times reporters and editors, Luanne Rife and Dwayne Yancey, after layoffs by the paper's corporate owners, Lee Enterprises -- which owns 11 other Virginia newspapers, including The Daily Progress -- left the newsroom depleted.

“The last round of layoffs in the spring of 2021 meant that we could no longer do in-depth reporting,” Rife told VPM News. “It also meant that there would no longer be a full-time political reporter covering this part of the state.”

Cardinal News already operates on a $650,000 budget with an editor (Yancey) and four staff reporters, much of it from corporate and foundation support. IRS Form 990 information for Cardinal News was not available.

Cardinal News cranked out approximately 40 original news stories in October on politics, culture, and the economy. That's close to the number of local news stories The Daily Progress published in October, despite those significant newsroom layoffs and departures earlier this year. Cardinal News also features news briefs, weather, and opinion sections, as well as some sports reporting. By comparison, Charlottesville Tomorrow published 13 local stories in October and for-profit C-Ville Weekly published 14 local stories.

Of course, at least Cardinal News, Charlottesville Tomorrow, and The Daily Progress have a journalistic mission — C-Ville Weekly appears to have checked out a while ago, and while they still work with some good reporters, the decision of its publishers to sell the publically available web archive of The Hook, which won the state’s top journalism prize three times during its 12-year history, to an anonymous buyer who then killed the website - likely to remove coverage they didn’t like - is antithetical to everything journalism should stand for.

VPM News also spoke to Jeff South, a former Virginia Commonwealth University journalism professor, who questioned the viability of non-profit news organizations that rely so heavily on corporate and foundation support.

"There’s not an unlimited supply of deep-pocketed foundations to help news organizations that are nonprofit," South said, adding that individual donors might also "experience fatigue from contributing to multiple news organizations."

Indeed, with many news readers in Charlottesville already subscribing to local and national newspapers, as well as supporting local independent reporters, a big ask like the one Charlottesville Tomorrow could fall on deaf ears and stressed wallets.

Still, as NiemanLab just reported, the number of non-profit local news organizations is on the rise. According to the Institute for Nonprofit News, nonprofit news outlets increased by nearly 70% between 2017 and 2021, and the number of local nonprofits more than doubled. "What’s become increasingly clear," writes NiemanLab, after attending this year's LION Local Journalism Awards, " is that the nonprofit local news model is today more easily replicable than it used to be.”

Indeed, back in 2005, Charlottesville Tomorrow was a bit of a unicorn on the online news landscape. Today, many non-profit news organizations are experimenting with all kinds of approaches. Among the winners at LION this year were news non-profits focused specifically on ethnic communities; committed to tough investigative reporting; offering perks like giving work from local artists to gain subscribers; focusing on specific reader-influenced and funded journalism projects; and attracting talent by offering staff sabbaticals and paid parental leave. Indeed, it's quite remarkable what the non-profit news business has become, operating more like academic think tanks or, well, non-profit organizations — gruff editors and chain-smoking, obsessed reporters yelling at each other have been replaced with folks who use terms like 'solutions journalism,' 'catering to audience information needs,' 'systemic journalistic gain,' and 'community-driven journalism.'

Meanwhile, as the news business has been trying to reinvent itself, the local news and information landscape around us has changed dramatically (some would say it’s become a hellscape), something traditional media has been slow to acknowledge or learn from. For example, independent journalists have been able to build sizable audiences of their own. Sean Tubbs, a former Charlottesville Tomorrow reporter, has a subscriber-supported newsletter and podcast, Charlottesville Community Engagement, that delivers more raw information and news about local goings-on than any publication in town. Jerry Miller’s ubiquitous live stream interviews rival anything on local television. And Molly Conger's Patreon-supported live reporting and analysis of local government meetings - among her other interests - reach over 130,000 Twitter followers. Journalism, after all, is a vocation, and a calling for some, so there will always be those compelled to bear witness to history as it unfolds, especially now that the Internet allows everyone a platform to build an audience.

That’s good news. The bad news is that independent journalists can’t be expected to save local journalism on their own. What’s more, those changes in the news and information landscape around us mean breaking news typically originates online, either from citizen observers or local influencers, and can generate a fog of rumor, bias, and misinformation. Indeed, narrative lines can quickly veer off in the wrong direction, as people have a tendency to interpret news in a way that reinforces their own position or opinion on an issue. Local media organizations find themselves having to monitor and sort through the chatter to find and build the local news stories they run. Oftentimes, when stories do finally appear, the news is already dated and the facts and circumstances of the story have changed. As the recent shooting on the Downtown Mall that left one dead and two wounded showed, many people find this dynamic disconcerting, and expressed frustration that traditional media weren't putting out stories ahead of the chatter and the rumors. But with the news and information ecosystem being the way it is now, and with local newsrooms depleted, it's a puzzling expectation. But perhaps it’s less of an expectation than an expression of anxiety - because when something frightening, confusing, or momentous happens in our community it can feel like we’re being left alone to figure out what’s going on.