Kathie Obradovich, Becky Vonnahme, and Suzanne Mineck spoke at Iowa Public Radio’s “Rebooting the News” panel on Nov. 2.
It’s never hard to find a Starbucks. You just kind of bump into them. They’re in suburban strip mall parking lots, tucked inside grocery stores and Targets, and even in Olmsted and Cowles Library. And no matter where you are, you can always get the same drink you’ve been having for years, right down to the caramel drizzle. It’s always the same no matter where you are in America.
Journalism doesn’t operate the same way. Sure, there are national stories that everyone needs to keep up on, that impact our government, our lives, and our Taylor Swift obsession. But you don’t want homogenized news, news that’s the same no matter where you are in America. You want local news. The latest road closures. The high school football scores. The mayoral election results. The school board minutes. The things that matter to your daily existence and your local community. And you’re not going to get those from a national news outlet like Fox News or The New York Times.
But local news is struggling. According to “The State of Local News 2022,” a study from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, the pandemic claimed 360 newspapers. Iowa wasn’t immune. Several papers shut down including the Sidney Argus Herald, which was run by Ellen Longman, mother of alum Molly Longman (Mags, ’17). Other papers were hollowed out and turned into ghost papers, newspapers that don’t have an office, barely have local staff, and print stories that come from a centralized hub. Either way, the impacts are real.
“When a community loses a paper crime goes up, corruption goes up, even drunk driving goes up because there’s no public shaming.”
That was Art Cullen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and publisher of the Storm Lake Times Pilot. He said that during “Rebooting the News,” a panel discussion hosted by Iowa Public Radio at the Iowa Historical Building on Nov. 2 on how local news could be saved in the state. Cullen said that while detailing the struggles his paper went through in the last several years. It wasn’t good.
“We lost $70,000 the year we won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017, but we’re too stupid to quit,” he said.
The paper received more than a few lifelines. The Pulitzer resulted in a documentary, Storm Lake. The documentary resulted in an appearance on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air.” The radio appearance resulted in a donation from a Taiwanese American tech billionaire named John Tu, who gave Cullen enough money to buy his local competitor, the Storm Lake Pilot Tribune, from an out-of-state owner. That purchase meant he no longer had to fight for ad dollars. Revenue went up. Page count went up. “We’re now solidly in the black for the first time in 30 years,” he said.
But not every paper has a John Tu, though the panel did lean into the idea that some combination of philanthropy and local ownership can stop the hemorrhaging. Kathie Obradovich of the Iowa Capitol Dispatch talked about the State Newsroom, the non-profit that’s funding 36 different publications including hers. Suzanne Mineck of Mineck Advisors detailed why she helped fund health reporting at Iowa Public Radio. And Becky Vonnahme, executive director of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, discussed how her organization has raised over a million dollars and has started distributing that back to area newspapers.
‘If we can make this work we can serve as a model for the state and the rest of the country,” she said.
And there’s plenty of money floating around to support those sorts of endeavors. There’s the $500 million pledged by Press Forward, a consortium of 22 donors working together to prop up local news. There’s the $25 million the state of California is pumping into local newsrooms there. Or the $3 million New Jersey’s Civic Information Consortium controls. Throw on hundreds of different journalism grants and philanthropic-supported fellowships and there are gobs of money flowing into local journalism. Is it enough to ensure every town that still has a newspaper will have one in a decade? Probably not. Will it help? Definitely.
But Cullen pointed out an even easier way that people can support local news, and in the process decrease crime, corruption, and drunk driving.
“For less than a bad cup of Starbucks coffee, you can buy your local newspaper,” he said. “That’s a cheap way to support democracy.”
Now on with the memo.
Peer Review
Want a sneak peek at all the treats the staffs of Drake Mag, Drake Political Review, and DUiN have been cooking up this semester? At Wednesday night’s triple pin-up event, they’ll all have everything out on display for the world to see. All they ask in return is that you destroy it.
OK, not literally. But the publications do want you to help them look for errors and design issues in each of their magazines before they get shipped off to the presses. There will be pens and sticky notes waiting for you to spot a correction. The Board of Student Communications will even feed you for the effort, the student media overlords providing pizza for the event. All you need to do is be in Meredith 124C and 125 from 6-8 p.m. on Wed., Nov. 8. Happy editing.
Impending Doom
Drake Student Media is in crisis. Like seriously bad. Rain-fire-from-the-heavens bad. Four-Bulldog-Alerts-and-a-personal-message-from-Jerry-Parker bad. Because after last Monday, there’s just nowhere left to put all of the awards. It’s a real emergency.
Drake publications walked away with 14 Pinnacle Awards last week, including four first-place finishes. Even after clearing out a whole bunch of hardware before last year’s move to Meredith East, this haul had Prof. Bruhn searching for shelf space to show off the latest plaques. Any more goodies and we’re going to start piling them in Griff’s dog bed for safekeeping.
Here’s the full rundown:
• Drake Mag, First Place, Division II, Best Feature Magazine of the Year, Annie Peterson, EIC
• Sydney Hamilton, First Place, Division II, Best Enterprise Coverage of Diversity, “The Last Gay Bar in Lincoln,” Urban Plains.
• Annie Peterson, First Place, Division II, Best Magazine Feature Page/Spread, “Figs,” Drake Mag.
• Lia Reichmann, First Place, Division II, Best Feature Story, “The Importance of Drake’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic,” Times-Delphic.
• CJ Younger, Second Place, Division II, Best Feature Story, “We Can Bring Back the Stars,” Urban Plains.
• Emily Postlethwait, Second Place, Division II, Best Contents Page/Spread, Drake Mag
• Princess Hart, Second Place, Division II, Best Editorial Illustration, “A Perspective on the Proposed Carbon Pipeline,” Drake Political Review.
• Paige Minor, Third Place, Division II, Best Portrait, Tori Soliz, Drake Mag.
• CJ Younger, Third Place, Division II, Best Arts & Entertainment Story, “Radio Resonates,” Urban Plains.
• Drake Political Review, Honorable Mention, Division II, Best Feature Magazine of the Year.
• CJ Younger, Honorable Mention, Division II, Best Sports Feature, “For the Dogs,” Urban Plains.
• Grace Altenhofen, Honorable Mention, Division II, Best General News Story, “’Dirty Dodge’ Gets a Facelift,” Urban Plains.
•Patrick Lucas, Honorable Mention, Division II, Best Entertainment Page/Spread, “Art for All,” Drake Mag.
• Princess Hart, Honorable Mention, Division II, Best Magazine News Page/Spread, “The State of Hate,” Drake Mag.
On Hands and Knees
Yes, technically it is a “crawl.” No, that does not mean you bring your Peggy’s mug. In fact, it’s probably best to show up in your internship finest for the American Advertising Federation’s Student Agency Crawl this Fri., Nov. 10, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. You’ll be hitting up to four different local agencies, talking with creative types, peaking over their cubicle walls, and getting a personal look at Des Moines’ finest firms. Bonus: The $30 registration fee gets you lunch at the fancy Allora Café inside the Krause Gateway Center. But you need to act fast. Registration closes Tues., Nov. 7. Get more info and sign up here.
Helping Hand
Tracking down the right sources is hard. Sometimes you need a little help—which is where JMM comes in. Four SJMC students are searching for folks in the Beaverdale and North of Grand neighborhoods to talk about park use and access and how it impacts mental health. If you or anyone you know is willing to be interviewed about the topic or, even if you don’t live in those areas and you have thoughts, they’ve asked you to fill out this handy Google form and they’ll contact you. JMM thanks you for your service.
The Rehash
• Dow Jones News Fund summer internship application is due Nov. 16.
• The ASME Internship Program is looking for Summer 2024 candidates. Students will paired with a major magazine brand in NYC or DC. The position is paid. To apply,
• The Houston Chronicle has multiple summer internships available, including reporting and photojournalist positions. Deadline for applications is Nov. 22.
• Texas A&M Program on Conflict and Development Student Media Grant Program. This year’s theme is how hospitality and tourism play into mediation of conflict worldwide. The fellowship comes with a stipend of $5,000 to fund your travel. The registration deadline is Nov. 30. Get more details here.
Cooking up a hot dish?
Do you have some essential info or did you just get your pilot’s license like KNWI 107.1 FM DJ Mariah Lewis (BJM, ’16)? If you do, send it on over to jeff.inman@drake.edu. JMM will treat it like this new tool Rolli, a journalist-built platform to help you find expert sources, and tell everyone about it.
Finally, a rundown of the political parties of dogs.