Dan Kennedy and Ellen Clegg
123 episodes listed below
Local news, examined from the inside.
What Works: The Future of Local News studies the institutions trying to rebuild local journalism from the ground up. Its conversations favor operating details over slogans, with journalists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and news leaders explaining what is actually being tested.
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What Works: The Future of Local News is a grounded interview series about the repair work happening inside local journalism. It does not treat the crisis as new, neat, or easily solved. Instead, it follows the people building replacements, extensions, and support systems for newsrooms that have lost staff, revenue, reach, or public trust. The tone is patient. Recent guests describe how nonprofit outlets choose a geography, how statewide and county coverage can coexist, how philanthropic money reaches local reporters, and how student journalists fit into the larger news ecosystem. Rachel White discusses the Associated Press Fund for Journalism and the challenge of helping more news organizations without overloading them with training and requests. Zuri Berry explains The Banner's blend of subscriptions, philanthropy, advertising, events, and community presence. Barbara Allen makes the case for student media as real community journalism, especially when college papers face censorship and financial cuts. Dale Anglin brings the funder's view from Press Forward and connects local information to a broader sense of community. Other episodes consider AI, public media, local television, education politics, anti-Semitic attacks in Boulder, wildfire coverage, death threats against a small newspaper, and the strange durability of everyday local details. The show is serious without being grandiose. It cares about models, but it also cares about the people expected to make those models work. Conversations regularly linger on process: who is served, what a newsroom can afford, how a cohort is managed, what training is actually useful, and why proximity matters when a community is under stress. Listeners looking for quick media takes may find it deliberately slow. Listeners interested in how local news survives will find a practical record of experiments in motion.
Made for: For journalists, editors, funders, educators, policy watchers, and civic-minded listeners who want practical insight into how local reporting is being rebuilt. It suits people who prefer careful case studies to quick media commentary.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by staying close to operations: revenue mixes, newsroom geography, safety training, student press pressures, philanthropic strategy, and community trust. Its interviews let practitioners explain the tradeoffs behind the public mission.
From Northeastern University's School of Journalism. Local news, the bedrock of democracy, is in crisis. Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University and veteran Boston Globe editor Ellen Clegg talk to journalists, policymakers and entrepreneurs about what's working to keep local news alive.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · August 2026
A grounded guide to local journalism's survival models, told through newsroom leaders, publishers, funders, and campus press advocates.
What Works: The Future of Local News is a News & Politics interview show about local journalism at ground level: how newsrooms stay open, how they pay for the work, and what communities lose when local reporting gets thin.
A Boulder newsroom launches three weeks before a wildfire; your "who's covering this?" question gets urgent.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful look at scaling nonpartisan reporting without adding more strain to local newsrooms.
Rachel White frames the AP Fund for Journalism as an attempt to push nonpartisan, fact-based reporting into more state and local newsrooms without making the process feel like another burden.
A practical look at how hyper-local reporting is balanced with statewide coverage and a four-legged business model.
The episode lands on a practical question: how The Banner keeps county by county reporting local while still thinking statewide. Zuri Berry gives that problem some weight.
A sharp argument for taking student journalism seriously.
Bob Allen makes a clear case for student press as part of the local news ecosystem. He argues that student journalists should know their role, and that colleges do better when they support reporting instead of boxing it in.
A practical look at how one local newsroom was built to answer a real information gap.
Stacey Feldman's path here is practical rather than mythic: she moved to Boulder in April 2020, wanted to understand her new community, kept hearing there was a gap in local journalism, and built the Boulder Reporting Lab to fill it.
A grounded argument for local journalism in a market that keeps shifting.
Mike Blunder leads a talk that makes a plain case for local journalism: independent voices still matter if local news is going to survive. The hosts treat him as a longtime media hand and the publisher of Editor and Publisher Magazine, then follow the pressure points one by one.
Calm thinking for a divided public life.
Twelve years of journalists explaining how the work gets done.
Rachel White discusses the Associated Press Fund for Journalism and what it is trying to do for local news.
Zuri Berry joins What Works to talk local news.
Barbara Allen, known as Bob, joins Dan Kennedy and Ellen Clegg for a conversation about college journalism and student media.
This episode features an interview with Dale Anglin, executive director of Press Forward, discussing her background and strategic vision for philanthropic funding of local news initiatives to strengthen communities.
This episode features Charlie Sennett discussing his career transition from foreign correspondent to entrepreneur, focusing on his projects like Ground Truth and Report for America that aim to support local news and journalism's adaptation to AI.
The episode follows Stacey Feldman, founder and publisher of the Boulder Reporting Lab, as she explains why she launched a nonprofit newsroom in Boulder.
What Works talks with Mike, the publisher of Editor & Publisher Magazine.
This episode features an interview with journalist Laura Pappano about her new book on parent activism and the battle for public education.
This episode features an interview with Wendi C.
This episode features an interview with Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, president of La Voz Hispana de Connecticut, discussing the growth and unique position of this Spanish-language weekly newspaper in serving the Latino market.
This episode interviews Andy and Dee Hall, co-founders of Wisconsin Watch, discussing their careers, the growth of non-profit investigative journalism, and their transitions to new roles in local news.
This episode interviews Bob Sprague, founder of the hyperlocal news site Your Arlington, discussing his career, retirement, and the future of local journalism.