Episode description

Dan and Ellen talk with Teri Morrow and Wayne Braverman of The Bedford Citizen in the Boston suburb of Bedford, Massachusetts. Wayne is a longtime journalist who is now serving as the managing editor of the Citizen. Teri, the executive director, has lived in Bedford since 1996, and has been active in local government. Dan wrote the chapter on this homegrown, grass-roots news site in "What Works in Community News." In the book, he tells the story about how the free digital site grew out of co-founder Julie McCay Turner's desire to find a home for information on a church plant sale.

Dan has a Quick Take on an unlikely good news story. The media industry is in the midst of another painful downturn, with news organizations from The Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times to CNN cutting their newsrooms and with The Messenger, a high-profile national startup that never seemed to make sense, shutting down after less than a year. But there's one news organization that’s hiring journalists and that says it’s succeeding at the very tough job of selling ads. You won’t believe who he's talking about, so stay tuned. 

Ellen talks about the robots that may come to steal our jobs. Or at least help us compile real estate listings and police blotters. It's all part of an initiative undertaken by that venerable journalistic organization, the Associated Press.