From Other Sources: News for and About Amherst.  This Week – Local News Roundup and the Disappearance of Local Media and Its Implications for Democracy

Here are links to some local stories from the last few weeks that we were unable to cover in the Indy as well as some worthwhile reading on the demise of local journalism and its implications for sustaining democracy.

This week, Indy editor Kitty Axelson-Berry and I sat for an interview with Sarah Robertson and Dan Torres for their podcast Panorama which airs on WHMP and is also available online.  Part of our conversation focused on the rapidly shrinking local news ecosystem and the threat that this poses to democracy. The Associated Press reports that last year, 2.5 U.S. newspapers closed each week, compared to two closings /week in the previous year,  And for those local papers that remain, many have been bought up by corporate giants such as Alden Capital, which has dramatically cut budgets and staff and discontinued local reporting in its newly acquired holdings.  The trend has left more than half of U.S. counties without access or with very little access to local news.

This week, in addition to our regular local news roundup from other sources, I have pulled together a collection of compelling writing on the crisis of local news.  While hardly a comprehensive sample, the collected articles provide a reasonable summary of the current trends in the demise of local journalism and the arguments for why local news is essential to sustaining a healthy democracy.  And while this is a pretty grim trend,  I have also included a couple of hopeful examples of local efforts to resurrect local reporting after papers have shut down.

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AMHERST AREA NEWS
Amherst Historical Society Pledging to Protect Historic Home by Scott Merzbach (1/5/24). While some residents may worry about potential damage to the historic Simeon Strong House during expansion of the neighboring Jones Library, trustees for the Amherst Historical Society are assuring the public that, as caretakers of the building, they will protect the historic asset. Georgia “Gigi” Barnhill, president of the society’s trustees, wrote in a letter to the community that there has been no definitive decision on the easement to permit construction vehicles to pass along the east side of the society’s property at 67 Amity St. to the library site at 43 Amity St. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

2023 Among the Hottest Rainiest Years on Record for Western Mass by Dusty Christensen (1/5/23).  Last year, the Connecticut River Valley witnessed massive flooding that destroyed crops, swamped basements and ravaged municipal infrastructure. And as climate change continues to grip the globe, federal climate data now show that 2023 was one of the hottest and wettest ever recorded in the region. In 2023, Hartford, Connecticut — the nearest of the Northeast’s 35 major climate data-gathering sites — witnessed the second-hottest annual average temperature ever recorded since data collection began there in 1905. The Hartford area also saw the third-most precipitation ever recorded. Similar trends played out in Amherst, where the National Weather Service has run a “cooperative observer program” since 1836. There, volunteer-collected data show that 2023 was the fifth-hottest year ever recorded and the fourth wettest. Average annual temperature records were broken in locations across New England in 2023, from northern Maine and Burlington, Vermont, down to New Haven, Connecticut. Worcester saw its hottest annual average temperature in 126 years and Boston experienced its third-hottest year in 150 years of data collection. (The Shoestring)

The Power of Pickelball: Courts Are Springing Up Around the Region as Its Legion of Devotees Continues to Grow by Maddie Fabian (1/5/24).  On any given weekday morning, upward of 40 people fill the Holyoke Community College gymnasium to partake in the sport that has become a favorite pastime for those looking to socialize and for people of all ages and abilities looking for a little exercise: pickleball.“Most people play, like they have to play, every day,” said one player, Kim Callico, who herself plays for a few hours once or twice a week. At 9 a.m. on a weekday, when the HCC courts are open, pickleball players tend to fall in the retired 55-plus age range, but “if you play closer to 5 or 5:30 you’ll get a whole different crowd,” said Callico. The pops and whacks of pickleball can be heard all around Hampshire County. With colder weather and snow on the horizon, players are starting to flock to indoor courts including HCC in Holyoke and Bay Road Tennis Club in Amherst. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Valley Bounty: Community Has Kept Leverett Coop Beacon Burning for Half a Century by Jacob Nelson (1/5/24). This year, the Leverett Village Co-op turns 50. Over half a century, it has grown beyond a grocery store to become a cultural institution and hidden gem on North Leverett Road. For many it is an indispensable source of food to eat and food for the soul, and they don’t want to imagine life without it. “Leverett Village Co-op is a member-owned co-op that serves many purposes,” says general manager Ken Washburn. “We are a grocery store, but also a coffee shop, a music venue, and a place where friends or groups can meet.”Back in 1974, the co-op began as a bulk food buying club. Each week, members placed a combined food order with a wholesale distributor in Boston that was connected to regional farms and other suppliers. Delivery was made to Franklin County, and the order split among members. (Greenfield Recorder)

UMass Students Barred from Studying Abroad in the Wake of October Sit-ins by Alexander MacDougall (1/4/24). At least one of three UMass Amherst students denied the chance to study abroad next semester after being arrested for participating in the October sit-in protests against the war in Gaza has raised the possibility of bringing a federal lawsuit against the university. Shay Negrón, the attorney representing the student, said her client had appealed the sanctions against them by university administration for occupying the school’s Whitmore Administration Building late into the night while participating in the protest, in which 56 students and one faculty member were arrested on charges of trespassing after they remained in the building after it closed. The university subsequently imposed the sanctions, saying the students violated a student code of conduct they agreed to when enrolling at the university. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Catch Suessical at Bowker Auditorium by Bill Zito (1/2/24).  They will all be there, The Cat in the Hat, Horton the Elephant, the Whos and Gertrude McFuzz as Amherst Community Theater presents their production of the Broadway musical “Seussical!” The curtain rises on Jan. 11 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Bowker Auditorium where the show will run for two weeks of Thursday through Sunday performances. Member Phoebe Hazzard said “Seussical!” is her eighth show with ACT and this time out she’s a cast member, handles props, publicity and serves on the group’s board. (Amherst Reminder)

East Amherst Affordable Housing Project Grows but Opening Pushed back to 2028. by Scott Merzbach (1/2/24). A significant affordable housing development in the East Amherst village center will provide housing for more families and individuals than first envisioned, but the new homes likely won’t be available for rent until about two years beyond the original timeline. Representatives from Way Finders Inc., a Springfield nonprofit housing organization, selected to undertake the $27 million project in March 2022, informed the the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust at a recent meeting that the development, on two sites, will have 78 apartments, up from 70 in the original plan, with occupancy possible sometime in 2028. The project includes incorporating the former East Street School at 31 East St. into a two-story addition facing East Street and South East Street, close to the current Fort River School and future new elementary school, along with the construction of a new three-story building at 72, 76 and 80 Belchertown Road. (Amherst Bulletin)

NLRB Rules Trader Joes Illegally Fired Union Supporter by James Pentland (1/2/24). Trader Joe’s illegally terminated a long-term employee and retaliated against workers at two unionized stores by providing them a less favorable retirement benefit than non-union stores, the National Labor Relations Board ruled this week. In a statement, Trader Joe’s United said the board ruling “validates what we’ve known all along: that Trader Joe’s is willing to act unlawfully and violate our rights as workers — even firing us — in an attempt to discourage organizing and protect their bottom line.” On June 8, Trader Joe’s fired Steve Andrade, a sign painter and vocal union supporter at the Hadley store, allegedly for failing to remove a small power tool from the store’s premises when asked to do so by management. Workers at the Hadley store petitioned for his reinstatement and held a walkout at the store to protest what they termed a retaliatory firing. Employees also rallied outside Trader Joe’s corporate offices in Boston, where they presented executives with a petition signed by over 27,000 community supporters demanding Andrade’s reinstatement. The NLRB decision calls on the company to make Andrade financially whole, to offer to reinstate him in Hadley and to write him a letter of apology, among other remedies. (Amherst Bulletin)

Timeline for Amherst’s Sixth Grade Move Up in the Air by Scott Merzbach (1/2/24). Beginning in either fall 2025 or fall 2026, sixth graders at Amherst’s three elementary schools will be relocating to the Amherst Regional Middle School. But even after extensive planning was previously completed for a move that was supposed to have begun this past fall, the exact process for getting these students into the regional building remains uncertain. The future move is necessitated by construction of the new 575-student elementary school for grades K-5, to be opened at the Fort River School site on South East Street in fall 2026.“One of the questions that we can come to, and we’ll probably start working on right away, is whether or not we can modify the regional agreement and have sixth grade be part of the regional agreement,” Slaughter told the Amherst School Committee on Dec. 19. That regional agreement between Amherst, Pelham, Shutesbury and Leverett allows students in grades 7-12 to be educated at the middle school, high school and Summit Academy. The elementary schools in the four towns are not regionalized. (Amherst Bulletin)

Preliminary Budget for Amherst Pelham Schools Shows $1.9M Gap by Scott Merzbach (12/18/23). Various adjustments and cost savings totaling $1.9 million may be necessary before a fiscal year 2025 operating budget for the Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools can be adopted by the four member towns, according to school officials. “It is going to be a really difficult budget season,” said Shannon Bernaccia, interim director of finance for the school district, during Saturday’s Four Towns Meeting, which brought together elected and appointed officials from Shutesbury, Leverett, Pelham and Amherst. While the presentation was only a preliminary look at the budget that would be in place for July 1, 2024, Bernaccia explained that to maintain the current level of services the district needs a $36.5 million budget, up 8.8%, or $2.84 million, from the current year’s $33.7 million budget. But the revenues for next year’s spending plan, coming from various sources, are likely to only come to $34.6 million, falling well short of what is needed to keep all programs and staff intact. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

THE SHRKINKING LOCAL NEWS ECOSYSTEM AND THE THREAT TO DEMOCRACY
Locked out of Local Government. Residents Decry Increased Secrecy Among Towns, Counties, Schools by Eric Scicchitano/Chni News And Josh Kelety/Ap (12/18/23). From school districts to townships and county boards, public access to records and meetings in many states is worsening over time, open government advocates and experts say.“It’s been going on for decades, really, but it’s accelerated the past 10 years,” said David Cuillier, director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida. Few states compile data on public records requests, and laws governing open records differ by state, making a comprehensive analysis difficult. However, a review by Cuillier of data provided by MuckRock — a nonprofit news site that files and shares public records requests — found that between 2010 and 2021, local governments’ compliance with records requests dropped from 63 percent to 42 percent. High fees, delays, and outright refusals from local governments to release information are among the common complaints. Examples are plentiful. (Boston Globe)

Local News Has Been Destroyed. Here’s How We Can Revive It. by John Nichols (12/12/23). Over the past decade, the most useful construct for explaining the crisis that is playing out at the intersection of American media and democracy has been that of the “news desert.” Popularized through the groundbreaking work of researchers like those at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, the idea was instantly recognizable to people living in small towns like the one where I grew up, in rural southeastern Wisconsin: As old-media outlets collapsed and new media failed to fill the void, news in vast stretches of the United States was going uncovered. Over time, the definition was expanded to recognize the decline of newspapers and other forms of media in metropolitan areas, where—just as in rural America—people were being deprived of “the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level,” the center warns. (The Nation)

Opinion: A Powerful Tool for Fighting Corruption Is Going Extinct by Serge Schmemann (11/26/23). There was a time when road trips I took invariably included picking up local papers. I’d read from Page 1 through to the editorials and sports. They offered a screenshot of a small but real world — an ongoing scandal on the school board, a winning season at the high school, the death of a beloved teacher. Many reporters of my (advanced) age got their starts on small daily or weekly papers, back then fixtures in most every town or suburb. Mine was The News Tribune in Woodbridge, N.J., an independent daily with a circulation of about 58,000. We covered everything from school board meetings to a local kid who made Eagle Scout. The first big story I covered was a local election, a crash course in politics and the source of one of the best — and possibly most prophetic — quotes I ever got, from an incumbent mayor who lost and snarled, “The two-party system is divisive.” Looking back at those papers isn’t just the nostalgia of an old newspaperman. They were the building blocks of community, democracy, politics. Their loss is a major reason behind the acute polarization and political confusion we are suffering today. “In the past decade, a broad perception has formed that local news is in a serious crisis,” write Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy, both veteran journalists, in their new book, “What Works in Community News: Media Start-Ups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,” which explores ways in which various communities are trying to fill the vacuum. (The New York Times)

The State of Local News: The 2023 Report by Penelope Muse Abernathy (11/.16/23). There was both good news and bad news for local journalism this past year. The good news raised the possibility that a range of proposals and programs could begin to arrest the steep loss of local news over the past two decades and, perhaps, revive journalism in some places that have lost their news. The headlines on the bad news resoundingly conveyed the message that urgent action is needed in many venues — from boardrooms to the halls of Congress — and by many, including civic-minded organizations and entrepreneurs. (Local News Initiative, northwestern.edu)

The Alden Effect: Nonprofit News on the Rise by Brant Houston (11/9/23). In its voracious drive to apparently consume as many U.S. newspapers as possible, the so-called vulture capitalist Alden Global Capital recently bought the San Diego Union Tribune and a group of associated newsrooms in southern California. Reports on the purchase focused on the inevitable results of Alden Global acquiring newsrooms: immediate decimation of the staff, loss of office space, and the predictable ensuing loss of news coverage and service to the community. But what is often not noted is how Alden Global is a call to arms for the creation or expansion of alternative, and often nonprofit newsrooms. A call to arms that should have been sounded years ago. Call it the Alden effect. (Gateway Journalism Review)

The Local News Crisis Is Weirdly Easy to Solve by Steven Waldman (8/8/23). Restoring the journalism jobs lost over the past 20 years wouldn’t just be cheap—it would pay for itself. (The Atlantic)

In Cambridge, A Bid to Keep Local News Alive by Dana Gerber (4/21/23). Digital news publication Cambridge Day is looking to raise $75,000, an attempt to shore up its future as the only local news outlet covering Massachusetts’ fourth largest city. Marc Levy has operated the publication solo since he launched it online in 2009, covering City Hall, development, schools and crime, as well as lighter community happenings.Levy always had a full-time job that allowed him to run Cambridge Day on a volunteer basis, with donations covering any expenses. But last month, he was laid off from his role as a senior editor at website Cheapism, and that ramped up the urgency to make Cambridge Day into a viable business. It became sort of an existential thing,” said Levy.So he teamed up with the newly-formed Cambridge Local News Matters Advisory Board, made up of six community members, to set up the crowd-funding campaign. The funds will give Levy some “breathing room,” he said, to pay his bills as he works to figure out the next steps for Cambridge Day. (Boston Globe)

Welcome to the Barnraiser, Your Independent Source for Rural and Small Town News by Joel Bleifus and Justin Perkins (12/9/22).  In rural and small town America, the local newspaper has been the prime—and many times only—source of credible and comprehensive news and information. But half of the 3,143 counties in the United States now only have one newspaper—usually a small weekly. More than 200 counties have no newspaper at all. And 47% of U.S. adults say the local news they get mostly covers an area other than where they live. Further, between 2004 and 2018, the United States experienced a net loss of 1,779 papers. In total, 62 dailies and 1,749 weeklies closed or merged with other papers. Far-right media (talk radio, TV, and internet sites) dominate the current rural news environment, exploiting people’s sense of resentment and alienation. The Metric Media network, for example, operates more than 1,200 local news sites whose sole purpose is to attack Democratic candidates running for public office. Conspiracy theories such as the “Big Lie”—the claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election—thrive in this environment. Lack of access to fact-based reporting fuels misinformation that can drive public policy. Barn Raiser publishes independent news, analysis and information to support diverse, civically engaged and dynamically connected rural and small-town communities. We champion the free exchange of public dialogue, bringing together underrepresented voices and perspectives on the intractable issues facing rural communities and policymakers.We seek to convene a space where big questions and bold ideas enliven proximate connections, where daring criticism, rational debate and compassionate care may renew the social imagination to build common ground, encourage democratic participation, and inspire change. (The Barnraiser)

What Happens to Democracy When Local Journalism Dries Up? By Margaret Sullivan (11/30/21).  It has been our great privilege to bring you news from Stoneham and Woburn over the years,” read the announcement. “We regret to inform you that this will be the final edition of the Sun-Advocate newspaper.” The Massachusetts weekly, as of August, is no more. It is an increasingly familiar story across the United States. Already in a sharp downward spiral, the local news industry was hit hard by the covid-19 pandemic. The worst blows were taken by newspapers — businesses that, as a group, had never recovered from the digital revolution and the 2008 recession. Between 2005 and the start of the pandemic, about 2,100 newspapers closed their doors. Since covid struck, at least 80 more papers have gone out of business, as have an undetermined number of other local publications, like the California Sunday Magazine, which folded last fall — and then won a Pulitzer Prize eight months later.Those papers that survived are still facing difficult straits. Many have laid off scores of reporters and editors — according to Pew Research Center, the newspaper industry lost an astonishing 57 percent of its employees between 2008 and 2020 — making these publications a mere specter of their former selves. They are now “ghost newspapers”: outlets that may bear the proud old name of yore but no longer do the job of thoroughly covering their communities and providing original reporting on matters of public interest. (Washington Post)

About ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network by ProPublica (no date). ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network began in January 2018 after our staff thought about how we could help to remedy the lack of investigative reporting at the local level. Many local news organizations are facing enormous financial strain and cutbacks; they want to do deeper accountability coverage but simply don’t have the resources. That issue is exacerbated by the fact that the strongest accountability reporting these days often relies on a mix of specialized skills that can be scarce in local newsrooms, including data, research, design and social media. Our partners’ stories have made a real difference in their communities, and their work has been recognized nationally with prestigious journalism awards. One of our partners, the Anchorage Daily News, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for public service for our collaboration that examined sexual violence in Alaska. We have now partnered with more than 70 newsrooms across the country…  (ProPublica)