Interview Only w/ John Adams - Bringing Local News Back From The Brink

nutrients antioxidants. There's also no preservatives and no shortcuts. The Wild Grain boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their variety box, they have a gluten free box, a vegan box, and a new protein box. I will tell you I have done the gluten free box. I have done it a second time. I have also used the code, the

todcast code. If you use the promo code toodcast at checkout, you get thirty dollars off. I've already used it as a gift to somebody else who loves this bread. It is hard to find good gluten free bread. It is fantastic. They give you step by step instructions. I really dig this. There is nothing like having an artesion bakery in your freezer to chase away the winter chill. Now is the best time to stay in and enjoy some comforting homemade

meals with Wild Grain. I obviously highly recommend it. It is worth giving Wildgrain to try. Right now. Wildgrain is offering my listeners thirty dollars off your first box plus free croissants for life. Come on when you go to wildgrain dot com slash podcast to start your subscription today. That's thirty dollars off your first box and free croissants for life when you visit wildgrain dot com, slash podcast,

or simply use the promo code podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace, so use that code. I'm pretty excited about both my next guest and to announce a new thing I'm involved with. I've dropped some hints about it earlier on earlier podcast, but I am

a participant. I'm on a steering committee. I am here, rabble rouser, whatever you want to call me to promote Local News Day, and the idea of Local News Day, which is April ninth, is essentially it's an awareness day, you know, similar to the whole premise of Earth Day way back when it first started in the early seventies, which is, you know, take a day to think about you know, your role in the environment and things like that. Well, with Local News Day, this is look our information ecosystem.

You've heard me talk about it. Why am I even here as an independent operator these days? Right? The information ecosystem as fragmented in a huge way. The revenue streams for news organizations have dramatically shrunk and changed. As I often joke, a man named Craig decided classified ought to be free, YadA, YadA, YadA. We ended up with know local news organizations in half the country. But the But as much as that seems like there's been bad news,

there's been an incredible right that. You know, I always say politics and ports of vacuum, Well, the information ecosystem of whoors a vacuum and where people live? People want

to know what the hell's going on? As I always say, look at you know, look at social media. How do you know that we all like local news because we think whatever's happening around us is important enough to share with the world. Well, hey, that's local news. Well that's the purpose of Local News Day. In April ninth, get people more aware of people working in their own communities already trying to rebuild what was an important part of frankly civic life, uh for so many Americans over the

last two hundred years. If you want to go and read Democracy in America by Detokeful, one of the things that he will he marked upon when he toured America to try to understand what made this democracy work. He was incredibly blown away by how engaged Americans were locally. Well, that was thanks to what was an incredible local media

that we had in the nineteenth century. Well, we're all trying to rebuild the information ecosystem, and we know trust is built from the bottom up. Well, somebody had to come up with the idea of doing this, and that's who my next guest is. It's the founder an editor of the Montana Free Press. It's John Adams and those

of us that cover the issue of campaign finance. I was involved in the Meet the Press film festival back in the day and one of the films we featured had a starring role for John Adams, and it's how I first got to know him. So, John Adams, welcome to the podcast.

serious issue. And and and this was one way you thought, well, how do you begin to build a network of local news entrepreneurs. Let's start with a shared day of awareness.

the idea for Local News Day is that there's actually so much going on on sort of the revival of this you know, critically important civic institution, which is your local news organizations. And you know, this Local News Day is really about helping Americans know where they can find that those sources of information where they live. You know, we are as we've lost sources of local news, our

attention goes elsewhere. People are curious, people want to stay informed, people want to be you know, in the know on things. And we all carry around these incredibly powerful supercomputers in our pockets that are that are radically connected to the entire world, and so we can find out what's happening in in you know, Israel or Iran within minutes of it happening. But in terms of you know, what happened to you know, why is that street closed three blocks

from my house? You may wait days to find the answer to that, and you might have to find it out on social media. You might have to find it out by asking your neighbors. And you know, in a lot of communities, they kind of left their attention which was you know, often started their day on their doorstep, right a paper delivered to their door. You wake up,

you drink the coffee, you unroll the paper, you read the headlines, you you swear at the opinion page. Then you check the local sports box scores for the basketball game that happened the night before, what have you. And then you end your day watching the newscast and knowing what's going on. Sure that you might tune in for the national news, but then you stick around to find out about what's going on with the weather, what's going

on in your community. And you know, a lot of those traditional sources of information didn't adapt very efficiently to the information environment that we're currently in. But there's a lot of us who understood, you know, saw that that reality kind of taking shape and kind of hit the ground trying to figure out what the next phase of this was. The need for local news has never gone away.

The appetite for local news has never dissipated. It's just that, you know, the business model that had supported it for so long had kind of failed in our current information environment. And so what this is all about is saying, like, look,

people are reinventing the business model. There are successful local news organizations all over the country, for profit, nonprofit independence creators, you know, people who are committed to finding out the facts about what's going on in their community and sharing it with with as broad of an audience of local

folks as they can. And there this campaign Local News Day is really about highlighting, uplifting, celebrating, and connecting the public with those sources of local news that they may not even know exist.

as soon as it became that, people suddenly said, wait a minute, you know, and you know, I know it seems like a weird but but now there's truth to this. Right, every town you go to now has their own beer. And we see this as, oh, isn't that great. You know, there's a local flavor or there's a local diss and there's a local that. But in some ways it was

because we didn't like the whole commoditized aspect of this. Right, yet the big companies scale was everything, right, There's less money to be made if you somehow made two hundred and fifty different kinds of recipes of beer. And I think that's what hurt local news is it tried to sort of participate in the scale economy when actually it was just antithetical to scale and then ended up being a mistake. But I sort of now I look at it and it's like, yeah, local news looks different. Craft

beer is different. Sometimes you put a lot of fruit in yours, or oh, your local news is based on just this one neighborhood association, you know, and yet different. You know, if you're serving a community, then you're doing a good version of local news, right, And maybe I'm butchering it a little bit.

to do, which is connect people. Like you can have disagreements and whatnot, but you're disagreeing at least around the same set of facts about what you read in your your local paper, heard on your local newscasts, or saw on your local you know, your local evening newscasts, and so you know, and like those those local beers, you know. I think what we have found has been so successful in you know, particularly what I've experienced mostly in the

last ten years in the nonprofit news space, is there isn't a one size fits all business model or editorial strategy or solution to the local news challenge. The organizations that we're seeing that are having so much success are you know, entities that really know their community. They know what their community, you know, is looking for what's the gap, you know, what what is the information that people most need or most want, And so you know, they're they're

so tied in with what is happening. They're part of the community that they build trust, They're reflecting the flavor of the community in many ways, like you you can sense the familiarity because you recognize the people, you recognize the voices, you recognize, you know the issues that are happening around you, and you know, like you know, you know, a lot of craft breweries will you know, the water that they have access to is part of what makes

their beer special. You know, the makeup of the water is a big deal. You know, people use local barley, local malt, local hops. You know, maybe if you're in certain parts of the country, like Montana, you might add a huckleberry beer to your mix during huckleberry season. And you know, these are all things that people see kind of reflected. They see their lived experience, their world reflected in this thing. And that's something that they feel an

attachment to. And and I think that is what we're trying to do with Local News Day is sort of recreate that same kind of connection, that same kind of attachment with the information about what's happening around them and empowering people.

documentary that you were in. Let's talk about the documentary is a documentary about dark money and Montana's you know, sort of the and this was a story about how there was a bipartisan effort to try to you know, Montana is different, right, the whole fight against the copper against the longtime copper barons. I guess you might call them really sort of create you know, there really is a legacy of you know, skepticism of outside money, skepticism

of outsider whether you're left or right. You know, it sort of explains why Montana politicians in general are not cookie cutter, right, no matter which side of the isle

they send. You're like, now, a Montana Republican is not like a regular Republican, and a Montana Democrat is not like a national Democrat. They're just there. And because there is a Montana identity that that is distinctive, that goes all the way back, frankly to it to its sort of early days as a state. And you were sort of the featured reporter in this documentary. But but but tell me about the doc and then what happened to your career in the middle of the dock.

public you know, it was. It was It aired on PBS stations all over the country at a big natural national theater release, and certainly the audience for it is a national audience, but it really is local reporting in a large part. It's it's it's one of those stories. It's sort of kind of drives home how you know, the powers and the influence of uh, you know, at the national level can really impact you know, local communities and local uh public policy. And that's what Dark Money

was about. And I was a reporter for the Great False Tribune. I was the capital bureau chief for the Great False Tribune, which was you know, at the time, if not the most, definitely one of the most prominent. And and uh why the newspapers that was Gannett. It was the only Gannett owned property in Montana still is

Lee Newspapers. Uh, Lee sort of famously liberated UH five of the largest state dailies from the copper collar, which was ownership by the Anacona Company, which you know alludes back to that history you talked about with the copper barons, and you know, that one hundred year old history of corruption and big money interest trying to buy our politics at the local, you know, the legislative level and on up is a fight that we've been just steeped in

here in Montana forever. And in nineteen seventy two, Montana's

got together and called a constitutional convention. We just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary a couple of years ago the passage of the of the new Constitution. But that new constitution was really aimed at limiting the role of outside corporate influence in our politics. At had strict limits on campaign finance.

And what we saw in twenty thirteen, twenty fifteen and beyond was, you know, we had my reporting had started to reveal like how this dark money was really infiltrating these these local legislative elections, primarily super local.

this company's doing what in what little state praise.

didn't have an opportunity to respond. And it turned out, and the documentary kind of really spells all this out, but it turned out that there was a kind of a group that was orchestrating all of this on behalf of candidates and in some cases illegally coordinating with those candidates campaign. So they weren't disclosing they were providing very valuable political resources to a campaign, very valuable you know, attacks and other services, but there was weren't being disclosed.

And so we you know, those of us who liked to spend time digging around in files in the basement of the Commission of Political Practices office, we couldn't see who like this was a totally undisclosed money. We didn't know how much they were spending. We didn't know who was spending it. We didn't know, you know, whether or not these candidates were you know, directly involved with it. Fast forward a few years, there was a series of trials that aimed to bring some of these elected officials

to account for this illegal coordination. And during that period of time, I had also been laid off at the Great False Tribune, and so I followed this story as a political reporter for the state, one of the state's largest dailies. And then I found myself without a job in the middle of the twenty fifteen legislative session. And that was what sort of gave birth to the idea of Montana Free Press, because I looked around the state

at you know, where could I continue to do this kind of brand of journalism, And I didn't really see any viable options. You know, I saw a continued decline of the print newspapers that were still you know active in the state.

or two. Yeah, and then Montana's a very small media market, so any of the good TV reporters im mediate as soon as their contractor was up, went to a bigger market.

that point, you know, probably close to forty years. I'd followed a Mike and Chuck's footsteps in both the Great Falls Tribune and and then they went on to the lead bureau, And so we were friendly competitors, you know, much as I'm sure you kind of experience, you know in DC, you know, you want to beat them on a scoop, but you also, you know, have fun conversations in the basement of.

what's going on. And we were still in the midst of all this dark money stuff, and you know, the need for legislative coverage certainly hadn't gone away, and that, you know, and that's what I really understood. You know,

Montana Free Press was founded on the belief that this journalism has value, whether or not it is uh, you know, clickbait, whether or not it is the kind you know, ass as news models had really kind of focused on on views over news. It's sort of like the main value proposition to advertisers. I still believe that there were people. There might not be as many advertisers who are interested in it, but the individuals still cared about that kind

of reporting. So I found a Montana Free Press is a nonprofit kind of focused on state house coverage with the with the idea that those who understood how important that coverage is would support it through their you know, charitable giving their fill and throught support.

sleeve Mongolian kashmere, polos, linen bottoms, and shorts. Quinz works directly with top factories and cuts out the middlemen. That's why it's more affordable. You're not paying for the brand markup or any fancy retail stores, but you're still getting quality. Everything is built to hold up to regular wear and still look good. Quite often I'm wearing something that I've gotten from Quints. It is incredibly comfortable. I've become a middle aged man who loves his quarter zips. They have

plenty of those. I have been very pleased, and it's just you know, when I like a piece of clothes,

I probably wear it too much, and usually you can tell after about two or three months. That's not the case. So far with Quint's that's been impressive. So right now, go to quins dot com slash chuck for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. It's a full year to build your wardrobe and you'll love it. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to qui nce dot com slash chuck for free shipping, three hundred and sixty five day

returns quints dot com slash chuck. This episode of the Chuck Toodcast is brought to you by American Financing. So if you looked at your credit card statement lately, you're working forty fifty hours a week just to buy groceries and gas things that used to be able to afford, right, and the credit card companies are charging you over twenty percent interest for the privilege. Think about that. It's a

lot of extra money out the door. It's designed to keep you under water well American Financing is doing something they hate. They're actually trying to help people. They have mortgage rates in the fives. They're showing homeowners how to take their hard earned equity to wipe out that high interest debts. The average savings is eight hundred dollars a month. So talk to a salary based mortgage consultant, no upfront fees, no obligation, commission, none of that, to see how much

you can say. And if you start today, you could delay two mortgage payments. Give American Financing a call America's home for home loans eight six six eight eight five ten eighty one. That's eight six six eight eight five one zero eight one. Or go to Americanfinancing dot net.

Slash the Chuck toodcast use that code.

twenty five years. Right this issue, you know, the concern about shrinking newspaper coverage of state capitals was a huge issue in the nineties, and then it became a really problematic in the early odds, and it was the sort of the first round of consolidation, you know, the initial ganetification of local news, right when Gannett gobbled up all these dailies back in the late eighties early nineties.

person pointed out they never brought the reader in to explain, you know, how the economics were changing, and hey, this is why the Sunday paper is now seven dollars instead of a dollar fifty. This is why you can't just use pocket change to go to a newspaper vending machine and get a copy of the paper. Right it was we were getting up to two dollars of paper, three dollars of paper, which is still a bargain considering everything you got in in. But it was necessary in order

to do that. What I think is interesting, it's sort of like local news didn't bring the community along with its problems in the eighties and nineties and the nineties and odds. But now as we're read as local is reinventing itself, you do get the sense that people understand. And I guess part of it is social media has taught us the power of community, right, And it's like, well, you can create you don't have to create a community, this one already exists. Just just just tap into it.

But if you let readers know what you're up to, then you'll find out what readers want, right.

like desire to be informed. And I don't think it's just that, and I don't suggest that that's what you're saying, Chuck, But it's not just that the news industry did didn't do a good enough job bringing readers along on the on the problems. You know, part of it is I think audiences were distracted you know, we had these new, shiny,

very attractive objects in smartphones that were uh, in social media. I mean these things. I mean, in my personal opinion, we let this genie out of the bottle without really thinking it through when it comes to, you know, putting super connected supercomputers in everybody's pocket and then unleashing social media and algorithms on the population without any real like thought about what that would do and how those those motive.

companies who already completely broke the information ecosystem, totally distorted it, totally ruined it, and we're trusting these people that come up with sort of permanent facts on behalf of society, which is essentially what AI is going to. They're going to normative, as somebody put it to me, you know, AI is sort of what becomes normalized. Yeah, eighty percent of what's normalized is factually true, but twenty percent of

what normal is normalized over time is not. You know, you know, take the take the myth about I mean, this just came up recently. We were watching a new documentary and Catherine the Great and of course there's this infamous rumor about Catherine the Great and her and her sexcapades with a supposed horse. Okay, well, this is a piece of misinformation that has actually survived hundreds of years

and there are still people who factually believe it. And now we're going to take AI and essentially take what normalized rumors that become factualized. And you know, I have people that are in the world of worrying about, you know, the rise of anti Semitism and the history of Israel getting sort of distorted by AI chatbots. This is these are the same people that have algorithmed us to death,

and now we're doing this. So it's anyway, I don't mean to digress there, but is this is why we need new sources of information to continue to feed these language models who are gobbling up and potentially spitting out garbage.

to these things than we give them credit for. And it truly is my parents generation that it is, you know that love local news currently, who are the ones that like struggle the most to sort of like draw the distinction between what's real and what's fake online? And you know, my parents can't tell what's AI and what's not.

I'm John.

use the brewery analogy. One that's really kind of feels relevant to me is just the dramatic increase in vinyl record sales in recent years. And now you're seeing, you know, magazine sales are starting to pick up, and you're starting to see or some places are even going back to print or increasing print because more people are kind of seeking the tangible nature, the more permanency of an analog product.

And so I'm not suggesting that we all go analog overnight, but I do think that local news is something that you can It's tangible, right. You can go to an event and meet the people who are producing it. You can you know, you can go to a website and see that they have the same you know, zip code or area code is you and and you know, as

people are looking for what's real and what's not, connecting with local news sources who you know and you know they're real because they're they're in front of you, they're they're participating, they're in your community. I think there's going to be a strong demand for the authenticity of local news over the uncertainty of everything else.

No one's going to read it. And I'm trying to get religion on this, and you know, every day I get a little more comfortable realizing, yeah, you got to you got to sing for your supper. You know, as an old saying goes, just how hard is it? I mean, you don't. You don't strike me as somebody who you know wants, hey, look look at me, put the spotlight

on me. And yet you know, in order to drive relevancy, in order to make sure people are looking at their stuff that should be looking at her stuff, you kind of have to do that, so how did how did you sort of how have you broken through whatever whatever discomfort? And I always say as journalists, we were sort of like, hey, let the facts speak for themselves, right. That always is sort of a phrase that like rolled in my head the early days of early editors that I work for.

And yet it turns out that's not it's it's that's not a way to build a successful local news startup.

expand in a fourth and billions this year. So we do have local reporters on the ground covering local issues and UH and we send our reporters to the two

local communities to report on for and about those communities. But I think showing up first and foremost. I think, you know, being present and showing up is really important.

I think showing your work is another one. I think there's you know, a lot of people just don't understand, you know, they've got a conception of what reporters are from the media, the popular media where usually you know, it's a it's a jerk, you know, with a camera or microphone, you know, you know, trying to catch somebody in a in a in a hard spot or you know,

a tragedy or what have you. And like, sure, that's part of it too, but a lot of us, most of us, really it's it's about you know, showing up, being there to represent the interest of audience, Like what what what's the audience going to care about? What are my readers? And as a as a print reporter, what are the people who read Montana Free Press? What do they want to know? And what information do I need to get because I want to, you know, interpret their

their questions even before they ask them. And and this really came clear to me even before I lost my job at the trip where I had written I was one of the first reporters in the state the blog, not the first, but one of the first. And I

had a blog and in my blog, I had taken the Attorney General to task over what I thought was an inappropriate attack on the Associated Press, which had you know, very reasonably asked for public information, and instead of producing that public information or denying it and you know, going through the necessary you know channels, you know, sometimes they deny it and then we sue them and then the courts decide whether we have access to that information or not.

Rather than kind of go that traditional route, the Attorney General, you know, issued a press release denying it and saying that he was protecting gun owners' rights from the prying eyes of you know, the news media that you know, was asking for information about concealed carry permits. You know,

which communities have the most concealed carry permits. This is information they've been asking for for years and publishing stories that would say, you know, they would report on the trends, you know, never like listing who has concealed carry permits. But that's sort of like that attack on that a P reporter led to a doxing incident, one of the early docing incidents, where that AP reporter his his name address, Google images of his house were posted on an extreme

far right you know, extremist network. And I took issue with that and I called I made my my attitudes known, and that very quickly led to an invitation for the Montana Tea Party Association to come basically answer for my my attacks on the Second Amendment. So I took that invitation. I went to an evangelical church out in the out in the helen and of our valley, and they wanted to know, like why I wrote what I wrote, and why I think journalists should have access to that information.

And we had a really interesting conversation where we heard each other right, like, I heard what their concerns were, and then I said, let me tell you how we do our job, why we do our job, why this information is important, why the Montana Constitution has a right to know. And I kind of explained just sort of like the whole process and how the role that journalism plays in representing the public in holding their government officials accountable.

And it didn't take long for them to make those connections and see that this was a more complex story than the sound bites might have you believe, and that takes work. Right. Every journalist doesn't have time to go out there and have individual conversations about every single story, but we do. We do through the technology and the platforms that we have access to now, like what we're doing right here, we can show our work to a

broader base of people. We can talk more about not just what we do, but how we do it, why it's important, and it doesn't all have to be negativity, and it doesn't all have to be accountability. Some of it is, you know, we provide a public service that isn't always just you know, getting people in trouble or you know, quote unquote holding public officials accountable. A lot of what we do is just informing people.

beverages and gummies are a modern, mindful alternative to a glass of wine or a cocktail. And I'll tell you this, I've given up booze. I don't like the hangovers. I prefer the gummy experience. Soul is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Soul specializes in delicious HEMP derived THCHD and CBD products, all designed

to boost your mood and simply help you unwine. So if you struggle to switch off at night, Sol also has a variety of products specifically designed to just simply help you get a better night's sleep, including their top selling sleepy gummies. It's a fan favorite for deep restorative sleep. So bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to Soul today. Right now, Soul is offering my audience thirty

percent off your entire order, So go to getsold dot com use the promo code toodcast. Don't forget that code. That's getsold dot Com promo code todcast for thirty percent off. Having good life insurance is in incredibly important. I know from personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away. We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in the best shape. My mother, single mother, now widow, myself sixteen trying to figure out how am I going to

pay for college? And lo and behold, my dad had one life insurance policy that we found wasn't a lot, but it was important at the time, and it's why I was able to go to college. Little did he know how important that would be in that moment. Well, guess what. That's why I am here to tell you about Etho's life. They can provide you with peace of mind knowing your family is protected even if the worst

comes to pass. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy, all designed to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. There's no complicated process, and it's one hundred percent online. There's no medical exam require you just answer a few health questions online. You can get a quote in as little as ten minutes, and you can get same day cover ridge without ever

leaving your home. You can get up to three million dollars in coverage, and some policies start as low as two dollars a day that would be billed monthly. As of March twenty twenty five, Business Insider named Ethos the number one no medical exam instant life insurance provider. So protect your family with life insurance from Ethos get your free quoted ethos dot com slash chuck. So again that's

Ethos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and the rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me, life insurance is something you should really think about, especially if you've got a growing family.

what the biggest difference between local and national And I used to say and sort of why national media trusts you know what, guy? What has gotten me into the local space is my conclusion that the law loss of trusted local character references or national news media. You know that that in some ways, if you trusted your local news outlet, then you were more likely to trust the national news outlet that local news outlet was affiliated with.

And now we've gone the other way, which is, you know, it's like Fox News viewers nationally only trust the local Fox right, And it used to be the other way around. If you trusted your local then then that worked its way up. And so and the conclusion that I drew as to why that was, well, one is you fact check local every day, right, you find out what the weather is, you know, or little things like that. And if they're misinforming you on the weather and traffic as

you're getting ready to work or whatever it is, well, you're not going to trust them for anything else. Right. If they take at the they take at the weather, right, they're got to get the other stuff. But local also served a different purpose than National. Right, National told you the things that you should know as a citizen. Local was informing you of things that you both needed to know to live your life. But sometimes stuff that you kind of it's kind of cool to know, right right.

That might be local sports. That might be you know, the local play that's coming to town. So it's it's finding out what's happening in the neighborhood. It might be where do I find cheaper groceries I'm a little you know? Or or hey, what grocery stores accept snap benefits in which grocery stores don't write, or things like that, And it was just sort of the the consumer. It was the consumer aspect of of helping the helping your reader,

who's also a consumer, right, be helpful. And I will say this, my biggest concern with the rise of a lot of local use outlets right now is that I think we all want to, you know, as my my friend Richard Gingris, who was at the Google News Initiative for a very long time and he's now working with a company in Canada that's doing some interesting local news work called Village Media by the way, But Richard said the worst thing to happen to journalism was all the

presidents men, because it's a whole generation of us all wanted to be Bob Boarder, right, and it was all about accountability when there's a service part to journalism right

where we're just sort of a public servant. Right, we're letting you know, hey, there's going to be a rise in electric bills this week, but we're also going to let you know that, hey, there's a sale. You know, sometimes you saw the sale via an advertiser, or sometimes you found out, hey, if you you know, there's there's cheaper chicken at the Aldies this week versus the Trader

Joe's this week or wherever it is. And I think sometimes with some of our journalism colleagues, it's hard to tell them and hey, you know, you got to just help people live their life too, And you may not see that as journalism, but that's how you build trust.

incredibly powerful to us some of the technologies and some of the platforms and some of the things that you know, we could point to that said, you know, these are part of the problem.

first business person. So we were a team of four, I believe when the pandemic hit and we had the shutdown, and I had a weekly podcast at the time called The Lowdown, which is now the Montana Lowdown, which is now the name of our weekly newsletter. And I went from a weekly podcast to a daily podcast, and it went from being sort of a like a big you know something along akin to what you and I are doing now, to something a little bit more like, hey, here the here are the ten things you need to

know today or the three things that you need to know today.

And then now we know the questions that the public has on their mind. Let's go out and get those answers. And so we went from a weekly newsletter to a daily newsletter and we had a COVID tracker that you know, just provided just a running you know, latest, this is what we know, this is what's happening. And what we saw was just a massive, you know, increase in audience overnight.

And what that told us was if you're giving people information that they can use, If if you're doing things that can help them understand the thing that they care most about right now in a way that they feel gives them some sense of comfort, some sense of agency, then they're going to reward you. They're going to reward you, may becomeing a reader. They're going to reward you. If you're a for profit model, maybe they're going to subscribe.

If you're a nonprofit model, maybe they're going to donate. And you know, that's what we saw, as you know, and then that became kind of just sort of a big part of the ethos is like give people things that they want. Yes, we're going to also give them things that they we think they need, but we want to make sure that we're not ignoring what it is that they want, because it's not a supply side problem is we need to be meeting the demand, right. That is the issue is, you.

people see themselves that their community, the things they cared about reflected in a news source, then they develop loyalty and again, you know, our goal with Local News Day is to really highlight those folks who are doing that, to get people who didn't maybe know that they had local news in their right. You know, there's a lot there's a lot of people in this in this state who don't know who they've never heard of Montana Free Press.

There's a lot of people in Helena, where we're based, where we have a local newsletter, who've never heard of it, right, And that's just because there's so much information out there. Right, people are inundated with information, and so Local News Day

our goal is to flood the zone. Right that on April ninth, people all over the country are talking about local news and if they go to Localnewsday dot org, there will be a very user friendly tool there for them to locate local news entities in their area or an area they care about. And our hope is that on this day we can you know, significantly grow audiences for local news and strengthen the local news ecosystem and in doing so, you know, make more connections, bring more

people together. Lord knows, there are plenty of platforms and and and you know, profit seeking entities that really kind of thrive off of division, and this is one of those, I think, really unique opportunities to you know, rise all boats with connection.

know these it's whatever, whatever is meaningful to you. I mean, if you're already somebody who really cares about local news, help spread the word, you know, share it on your social media, forward emails from your local news providers to the people in your world who you think would would

would be interested in it. If you're a business or an institution who understands the just the critical public service that that local news provides, celebrate it, put a banner in your lobby, you know, put a put a logo on your website.

But that doesn't mean you can't network it. It doesn't mean there aren't old ways like UPI and stuff like that where you can sort of recreate systems that actually enhance, help scale certain parts of the operations process while still allowing local proprietors to have their identities. How many participating organizations do we have already? I know, it's a bunch, you know.

to hear from you. Visit Local newsday dot org and and uh click on the you know, the join us button, and what what it means to be a partner is basically saying, yeah, I really love this idea, I want to support Local News Day and we're going to amplify the message on April ninth. And then we've got about a little about a dozen sponsors that are that are

supporting this cause with with direct financial contributions. So you know, our goal here is not to you know, to raise a bunch of money and spend a bunch of money. Our goal here is really to get the word out and really energize people all over the country to on one day come together and really express how much they value local news and how much local news elevates their community.

behind Arlington now. He's like a one man operation, you know, and he's been plugging away at it for some time. And it is you know, the Washington Post ceased covering local news a long time ago. A bunch of us know notice, but they used to at least cover the city of Washington. Just sort of pulled up stakes there. It is, so you know, if people just to simply subscribe right, sign up for the email alert, if there's an email alert, sign up for the feed, if there's

a feed. You know, most of these local proprietors are not going to beg you for money. They'll let you sign up and then you know, yes, we'd like it to if you're if you're getting something out of it, we hope you will give something back or in something that we used to call a subscription.

can create revenue and and things. And look, you you are going to have to be ah, you know, you gotta gotta be experimental.

that isn't doing any good. And if you're doing great journalism and not enough people are reading it then you don't have a long term path to sustainability. So audiences are critically import for local news from the business model standpoint, both from an impact this is how our journalism matters by reaching enough people that that that a critical mass of uh informed public can can take you know, appropriate action when need be. And also it's about the sustainability.

You know, whether your for profit and your your your money is coming from you know, advertising revenue. Those advertisers care about your audience. And if your nonprofit, your audience is a significant source of revenue in the forms of individual donations and and also earned revenue. So it's really about growing audience across the country for local news for sustainability impact.

subscription based, ones that are ads supported, you know. So there's all different models and we frankly want to showcase all of them, you know, and sometimes there's different there's ethic based local media that's doing tremendous jobs for different first gen communities. So we're going to feature at least one different type of local news outlet between now and April ninth. I'm looking forward to it.