Category Archives: News deserts

The Vallejo Sun – Benicia residents should think about subscribing!

Local journalism is so important…

By Roger Straw, September 27, 2023

The Vallejo Sun is celebrating it’s second anniversary, and has earned my respect with excellent in-depth reporting on police, local government, schools, arts, and local events.  Recently, I re-subscribed with a voluntary increase in my annual renewal amount. You can subscribe here.

Understand – I’m a longtime supporter of our own small town press, the Benicia Herald, and our next door neighbor paper, the Vallejo Times-Herald. And gosh, wouldn’t ya know, I read the Benicia Independent, yes! I hope you do, too, because local journalism isn’t on firm ground anywhere in the U.S. these days. We need a variety of perspectives – and no one source can cover it all.

Here’s how Scott Morris of the Vallejo Sun puts it on the occasion of the Sun’s second anniversary:

Scott Morris, co-founder of the Vallejo Sun. Scott is a journalist who covers policing, protest, civil rights and far-right extremism. His work has been published in ProPublica, the Appeal and Oaklandside.

Dear readers,

I’m writing because the Vallejo Sun just passed a major milestone: Our second year anniversary. While this is cause for celebration, it remains to be seen whether we can keep going for another year. So I’m also asking for your help.

We founded the Vallejo Sun in 2021 because we saw a need for in-depth reporting about local government, policing, and extremist movements in the region. In 2022, we expanded to cover Vallejo’s rich arts and culture.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our in-depth reporting on police, local government, schools and arts, and have found our extensive event listings useful. We think it’s important to bring you the best information available. But we can’t do it without your help.

This year we’ve overcome some challenges. Our founding member John Glidden departed for a new role with the county. Upheaval at social media companies has made it harder for news publishers to reach consumers.

But we remain committed to bringing you the news and added six new contributors in the last year. These new voices have expanded our breadth of coverage and brought you even more of the in-depth news you’ve come to expect from us.

For the first time, you can make a tax deductible contribution to the Vallejo Sun through our fiscal sponsor, the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. Your contribution means more work for local journalists and more thought-provoking, impactful stories.

Click here to make a tax deductible donation to the Vallejo Sun.

Click here to become a paid subscriber to the Vallejo Sun.

Alden Capital bought the Times-Herald, cut staff, moved facilities, weakening coverage of Vallejo, Benicia and American Canyon

National news stories rip owners of Vallejo Times-Herald

By Roger Straw, October 23, 2021

Four national news sources have named the Vallejo Times-Herald in the last two weeks, in stories citing a corporate hedge fund that is gutting newspapers.  (See links below.)

On Thursday, the PBS News Hour published How this ‘vulture’ hedge fund’s gutting of local newsrooms could hurt Americans. Judy Woodruff begins the discussion, “The hedge fund Alden Global Capital has been acquiring scores of U.S. newspapers across the country — then gutting newsrooms and selling off assets. It’s part of a larger trend in the erosion of local news and related jobs in the last decade.”

In three of the four national news stories, former Times-Herald reporter John Glidden is mentioned.

This reporter, John Glidden, told me that he started out as a general assignment reporter, which meant he was kind of covering local crime and community events and whatever came up. Within a few years, he was the only hard-news reporter left in town. He said he had this legal pad that he kept at his desk where he would write down tips that he got from sources. And a lot of them were tips for stories that he knew were important but that he would never get to. He was ultimately fired after criticizing Alden in an interview with The Washington Post. But, you know, when I talked to him, he said it was heartbreaking to see what this once-proud newspaper serving this proud city had been reduced to under Alden’s ownership.

– A Martinez, NPR Business News

Local readers should note that John Glidden has recently joined with Brian Krans and Scott Morris to publish an independent online news publication, The Vallejo Sun.  Another former Times-Herald reporter, Katy St. Clair, also started her own online news medium, katystclair.comThe Benicia Independent has been in operation since 2007, providing news and views on Benicia, Vallejo, and select issues of concern including climate change and the environment.

Here are links to all four national news stories mentioning the Vallejo Times-Herald:

How this ‘vulture’ hedge fund’s gutting of local newsrooms could hurt Americans (Full transcript)
PBS News Hour, by John Yang & Ryan Connelly Holmes, Oct 21, 2021

When this hedge fund buys local newspapers, democracy suffers (Full transcript)
NPR KQED Business News, by A. Martinez, October 18, 2021
The Chicago Tribune Is Being Murdered Before Our Eyes – And it’s a serial killing
GEN, by Cory Doctorow, October 17, 2021

A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms – Inside Alden Global Capital
The Atlantic, by McKay Coppins, October 14, 2021

 

Will the federal infrastructure bill help local news media?

Local news as infrastructure

Reliable Sources Newsletter, by Brian Stelter, June 2, 2021
New views of the local news crisis

… Up first, a brand new 538 piece by Joshua Darr. The LSU professor worked with colleagues to show that “less local news meant more polarization” in communities. “Then, with a little luck,” he wrote, “we were also able to study the other side of the coin — whether more local news could actually bring people together.” The answer was yes, at least in Palm Springs, California.

But, Darr wrote, “the market is simply not providing local newspapers the resources they need to deliver the civic benefits they’re capable of, which raises the question as to what extent the government should step in to help.” He flicked at the proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in the Senate and pointed out that “even bolder policies have been proposed to help local news, such as giving direct payments to news organizations to hire reporters or offering Americans vouchers to spend on local nonprofit media.”

“Critical infrastructure”

Local news as civic infrastructure? With Democrats controlling the levers of power in Congress, these ideas will at least get a hearing. Whether they’ll come to fruition is another matter altogether. But Maria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said earlier this spring that local news, “frayed beyond belief,” should be treated as “critical infrastructure” that “needs to be preserved.”

Billions in funding for local news?! I can hear the bad-faith mockery on Fox News at the same time I type these words. But for a good-faith argument about this, read Steven Waldman‘s recent piece for Poynter: “Why local news should be included in the infrastructure bill…”

 >> Related: This NYT guest essay by Sarah Bartlett and Julie Sandorf details how NYC is supporting small news outlets through ad spending commitments…

“Fixing” local TV news?

“National news outlets and social media have gotten a lot of attention for contributing to mistrust and disinformation, but local TV news is no less complicit,” Amanda Ripley wrote in this deep dive for The Atlantic last month. Ripley surveyed some experiments by Scripps‘ local stations to improve TV news and rebuild trust — from “increasing the length and complexity of its segments” to “backing away from crime coverage and other cheap thrills.” There’s a lot to think about here…

The “nationalization” problem

“Can local TV news keep politics local?” Matt Grossman of the Niskanen Center posed this question on a recent podcast. Here’s a transcript. Local coverage is “threatened by nationalization,” Grossman said, citing new work by two scholars. In summary: “Daniel Moskowitz finds that local TV news helps citizens learn more about their governors and senators, encouraging split-ticket voting. But Joshua McCrain finds that Sinclair has bought up local stations, increasing coverage of national politics and moving rightward. Local news coverage is in decline but offers one of the major remaining bulwarks against nationalization and polarization.” More here…

Vallejo Times-Herald’s not-so-subtle promotion of Trump’s Supreme Court judicial pick

By Roger Straw, October 16, 2020

The Vallejo Times-Herald’s headline writer was decidedly NOT impartial this week.

Local commercial news media in one-paper towns are obliged to do their best to present a balanced perspective, especially on controversial topics.  True objectivity is difficult, but the public’s primary source of news needs to do its very best.

And yet, consider the Times-Herald’s headlines Oct. 13-16, each of which accompanied a sweet photo of the fast-tracked Trump/GOP sham nominee, Amy Coney Barrett:

VALLEJO TIMES-HERALD HEADLINE DEPARTURES FROM ORIGINAL AP HEADLINES
  • Original AP headline on Oct. 13: “Barrett vows fair approach as justice, Democrats skeptical
    • VT-H headline: Barrett vows fair approach
  • Original AP headline on Oct. 14: “Barrett bats away tough Democratic confirmation probing
    • VT-H headline: Barrett unscathed by tough questions
  • Original AP headline on Oct 16: “GOP pushes Barrett toward court as Democrats decry ‘sham’
    • VT-H headline: GOP pushes Barrett’s nomination ahead

When approached by email, Times-Herald Editor Jack Bungart let me know that staff does not write the paper’s headlines.  Their “pagination hub” converts from an Associated Press headline according to “what fits in each situation.”

So who or what is the “pagination hub” serving our friendly staff at the Vallejo Times-Herald?  Is there bias at work here?  Who, exactly, is responsible for the seemingly partial editing of the AP headlines that came up with these pro-Barrett Times-Herald headlines?!

Come on, Vallejo T-H “pagination hub”.  Who are you?  In the future, give us a more nuanced and accurate first look at the day’s highly controversial news.