Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lauren Hall, Associate professor of Political Science, Rochester Institute of Technology

When it comes to national politics, Americans are fiercely divided across a range of issues, including gun control, election security and vaccines. It’s not new for Republicans and Democrats to be at odds over issues, but things have reached a point where even the idea of compromising appears to be anathema, making it more difficult to solve thorny problems.

But things are much less heated at the local level. A survey of more than 1,400 local officials by the Carnegie Corporation and CivicPulse found that local governments are “largely insulated from the harshest effects of polarization.” Communities with fewer than 50,000 residents proved especially resilient to partisan dysfunction.

Why this difference? As a political scientist, I believe that lessons from the local level not only open a window onto how polarization works but also the dynamics and tools that can help reduce it.

Problems are more concrete

Local governments deal with concrete issues – sometimes literally, when it comes to paving roads and fixing potholes. In general, cities and counties handle day-to-day functions, such as garbage pickup, running schools and enforcing zoning rules. Addressing tangible needs keeps local leaders’ attention fixed on specific problems that call out for specific solutions, not lengthy ideological debates.

By contrast, a lot of national political conflict in the U.S. involves symbolic issues, such as debates about identity and values on topics such as race, abortion and transgender rights. These battles are often divisive, even more so than purely ideological disagreements, because they can activate tribal differences and prove more resistant to compromise.

Such arguments at the national level, or on social media, can lead to wildly inaccurate stereotypes about people with opposing views. Today’s partisans often perceive their opponents as far more extreme than they actually are, or they may stereotype them – imagining that all Republicans are wealthy, evangelical culture warriors, for instance, or conversely being convinced that all Democrats are radical urban activists. In terms of ideology, the median members of both parties, in fact, look similar.

These kinds of misperceptions can fuel hostility.

Local officials, however, live among the human beings they represent, whose complexity defies caricature. Living and interacting in the same communities leads to greater recognition of shared interests and values, according to the Carnegie/CivicPulse survey.

Meaningful interaction with others, including partisans of the opposing party, reduces prejudice about them. Local government provides a natural space where identities overlap.

People are complicated

In national U.S. politics today, large groups of individuals are divided not only by party but a variety of other factors, including race, religion, geography and social networks. When these differences align with ideology, political disagreement can feel like an existential threat.

Such differences are not always as pronounced at the local level. A neighbor who disagrees about property taxes could be the coach of your child’s soccer team. Your fellow school board member might share your concerns about curriculum but vote differently in presidential elections.

These cross-cutting connections remind us that political opponents are not a monolithic enemy but complex individuals. When people discover they have commonalities outside of politics with others holding opposing views, polarization can decrease significantly.

Finally, most local elections are technically nonpartisan. Keeping party labels off ballots allows voters to judge candidates as individuals and not merely as Republicans or Democrats.

National implications

None of this means local politics are utopian.

Like water, polarization tends to run downhill, from the national level to local contests, particularly in major cities where candidates for mayor and other office are more likely to run as partisans. Local governments also see culture war debates, notably in the area of public school instruction.

Nevertheless, the relative partisan calm of local governance suggests that polarization is not inevitable. It emerges from specific conditions that can be altered.

Polarization might be reduced by creating more opportunities for cross-partisan collaboration around concrete problems. Philanthropists and even states might invest in local journalism that covers pragmatic governance rather than partisan conflict. More cities and counties could adopt changes in election law that would de-emphasize party labels where they add little information for voters.

Aside from structural changes, individual Americans can strive to recognize that their neighbors are not the cardboard cutouts they might imagine when thinking about “the other side.” Instead, Americans can recognize that even political opponents are navigating similar landscapes of community, personal challenges and time constraints, with often similar desires to see their roads paved and their children well educated.

The conditions shaping our interactions matter enormously. If conditions change, perhaps less partisan rancor will be the result.

Lauren Hall is a Distinguished Fellow for the Study of Liberalism and a Free Society with the Institute for Humane Studies. She was previously a Pluralism Fellow with the Mercatus Center.

– ref. Local governments provide proof that polarization is not inevitable – https://theconversation.com/local-governments-provide-proof-that-polarization-is-not-inevitable-273986

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christopher Magra, Professor of American History, University of Tennessee

This Presidents Day, I’ve been thinking about George Washington − not at his finest hour, but possibly at his worst.

In 1754, a 22-year-old Washington marched into the wilderness surrounding Pittsburgh with more ambition than sense. He volunteered to travel to the Ohio Valley on a mission to deliver a letter from Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, to the commander of French troops in the Ohio territory. This military mission sparked an international war, cost him his first command and taught him lessons that would shape the American Revolution.

As a professor of early American history who has written two books on the American Revolution, I’ve learned that Washington’s time spent in the Fort Duquesne area taught him valuable lessons about frontier warfare, international diplomacy and personal resilience.

The mission to expel the French

In 1753, Dinwiddie decided to expel French fur trappers and military forces from the strategic confluence of three mighty waterways that crisscrossed the interior of the continent: the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers. This confluence is where downtown Pittsburgh now stands, but at the time it was wilderness.

King George II authorized Dinwiddie to use force, if necessary, to secure lands that Virginia was claiming as its own.

As a major in the Virginia provincial militia, Washington wanted the assignment to deliver Dinwiddie’s demand that the French retreat. He believe the assignment would secure him a British army commission.

Washington received his marching orders on Oct. 31, 1753. He traveled to Fort Le Boeuf in northwestern Pennsylvania and returned a month later with a polite but firm “no” from the French.

Dinwiddie promoted Washington from major to lieutenant colonel and ordered him to return to the Ohio River Valley in April 1754 with 160 men. Washington quickly learned that French forces of about 500 men had already constructed the formidable Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio. It was at this point that he faced his first major test as a military leader. Instead of falling back to gather more substantial reinforcements, he pushed forward. This decision reflected an aggressive, perhaps naive, brand of leadership characterized by a desire for action over caution.

Washington’s initial confidence was high. He famously wrote to his brother that there was “something charming” in the sound of whistling bullets.

The Jumonville affair and an international crisis

Perhaps the most controversial moment of Washington’s early leadership occurred on May 28, 1754, about 40 miles south of Fort Duquesne. Guided by the Seneca leader Tanacharison – known as the “Half King” – and 12 Seneca warriors, Washington and his detachment of 40 militiamen ambushed a party of 35 French Canadian militiamen led by Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. The Jumonville affair lasted only 15 minutes, but its repercussions were global.

Ten of the French, including Jumonville, were killed. Washington’s inability to control his Native American allies – the Seneca warriors executed Jumonville – exposed a critical gap in his early leadership. He lacked the ability to manage the volatile intercultural alliances necessary for frontier warfare.

Washington also allowed one enemy soldier to escape to warn Fort Duquesne. This skirmish effectively ignited the French and Indian War, and Washington found himself at the center of a burgeoning international crisis.

Defeat at Fort Necessity

Washington then made the fateful decision to dig in and call for reinforcements instead of retreating in the face of inevitable French retaliation. Reinforcements arrived: 200 Virginia militiamen and 100 British regulars. They brought news from Dinwiddie: congratulations on Washington’s victory and his promotion to colonel.

His inexperience showed in his design of Fort Necessity. He positioned the small, circular palisade in a meadow depression, where surrounding wooded high ground allowed enemy marksmen to fire down with impunity. Worse still, Tanacharison, disillusioned with Washington’s leadership and the British failure to follow through with promised support, had already departed with his warriors weeks earlier. When the French and their Native American allies finally attacked on July 3, heavy rains flooded the shallow trenches, soaking gunpowder and leaving Washington’s men vulnerable inside their poorly designed fortification.

The battle of Fort Necessity was a grueling, daylong engagement in the mud and rain. Approximately 700 French and Native American allies surrounded the combined force of 460 Virginian militiamen and British regulars. Despite being outnumbered and outmaneuvered, Washington maintained order among his demoralized troops. When French commander Louis Coulon de Villiers – Jumonville’s brother – offered a truce, Washington faced the most humbling moment of his young life: the necessity of surrender. His decision to capitulate was a pragmatic act of leadership that prioritized the survival of his men over personal honor.

The surrender also included a stinging lesson in the nuances of diplomacy. Because Washington could not read French, he signed a document that used the word “l’assassinat,” which translates to “assassination,” to describe Jumonville’s death. This inadvertent admission that he had ordered the assassination of a French diplomat became propaganda for the French, teaching Washington the vital importance of optics in international relations.

Lessons that forged a leader

The 1754 campaign ended in a full retreat to Virginia, and Washington resigned his commission shortly thereafter. Yet, this period was essential in transforming Washington from a man seeking personal glory into one who understood the weight of responsibility.

He learned that leadership required more than courage – it demanded understanding of terrain, cultural awareness of allies and enemies, and political acumen. The strategic importance of the Ohio River Valley, a gateway to the continental interior and vast fur-trading networks, made these lessons all the more significant.

Ultimately, the hard lessons Washington learned at the threshold of Fort Duquesne in 1754 provided the foundational experience for his later role as commander in chief of the Continental Army. The decisions he made in Pennsylvania and the Ohio wilderness, including the impulsive attack, the poor choice of defensive ground and the diplomatic oversight, were the very errors he would spend the rest of his military career correcting.

Though he did not capture Fort Duquesne in 1754, the young George Washington left the woods of Pennsylvania with a far more valuable prize: the tempered, resilient spirit of a leader who had learned from his mistakes.

Christopher Magra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How a 22-year-old George Washington learned how to lead, from a series of mistakes in the Pennsylvania wilderness – https://theconversation.com/how-a-22-year-old-george-washington-learned-how-to-lead-from-a-series-of-mistakes-in-the-pennsylvania-wilderness-274466

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Siti Nuraisyah Suwanda, Doctoral Student and Graduate Researcher in Marketing, West Virginia University

It’s February, and you grab a box of cheap Valentine’s chocolate from the grocery store on your lunch break. Later, you’re eating it at your office desk when you realize someone else is watching. Suddenly, you feel a flicker of embarrassment. You hide the box away, make a joke or quietly wish they hadn’t noticed – not because the chocolate tastes bad, but because you don’t want to be judged for choosing it.

If the scenario above feels familiar, you’re not alone. Many people experience subtle embarrassment or self-consciousness about everyday consumption choices, from eating cheap Valentine’s chocolate to accepting free lunch from a school food program or having visible tattoos.

We are social marketing researchers who study stigma in marketing. In our research, we coined the term “consumption stigma” to describe how people can be judged or looked down on by others, or by themselves, simply for using certain products – even when there’s nothing objectively wrong with them.

Living with consumption stigma

When people feel judged for what they consume, or choose not to consume, the effects can be mentally exhausting. Feeling stigmatized can quietly erode self-esteem, increase anxiety and change how people behave in everyday settings. What starts as a small moment of embarrassment can grow into a persistent concern about being seen the “wrong” way.

In reviewing 50 studies about stigma in marketing, we found that people respond to consumption stigma along a continuum. Some try to avoid stigma altogether by hiding their consumption or staying away from certain products. Others adjust their behavior to reduce the risk of being judged. At the far end of the spectrum, some people actively push back, helping to destigmatize certain forms of consumption for themselves and for others.

The research we reviewed found that to avoid stigma, people may deliberately consume more expensive or socially approved alternatives, even when those choices strain their finances. Imagine someone who switches to a premium chocolate brand at the office, not because she prefers the taste, but because she wants to avoid feeling embarrassed.

Over time, this kind of adjustment could pull people into spending patterns that are beyond their means, feeding a cycle of consumption driven more by social pressure than genuine need or enjoyment. We suggest that the ramifications can be even more stark in other contexts – for example, when a child skips a free school lunch to avoid being teased, or when a veteran turns down mental health support because they fear being judged by others.

From a business perspective, when consumers avoid or abandon products to escape stigma, companies may see declining demand that has little to do with quality or value. We suggest that if consumption stigma spreads at scale, the cumulative effect can translate into lost revenue and weakened brand value.

Understanding consumption stigma, then, isn’t just about consumer well-being; it’s also critical for businesses trying to understand why people buy, hide or walk away from certain products.

Take back the narrative

Stigma often feels powerful because it masquerades as reality. But at its core, consumption stigma is a social judgment, a shared story people tell about what certain choices supposedly say about someone. When that story goes unchallenged, stigma sticks. When it’s questioned, its power starts to fade.

One way people reduce stigma is by reclaiming the narrative around their consumption. Instead of hiding, explaining or compensating, they openly own their choices. This shift from avoidance to acceptance can strip stigma of its force.

Imagine a shopper who embraces buying cheaper store brands at the grocery store, seeing it not as a compromise but as a sign of being savvy to pay less for the same thing. When people wear their choices like armor, whether it’s cheap chocolate, secondhand clothing or specialized physical or mental health services, those choices lose their sting. When a behavior is no longer treated as something shameful, it becomes harder for others to use it as a basis for judging or looking down on people.

Of course, stigma doesn’t disappear overnight. But research shows that when enough people stop treating a behavior as something to hide, the social meaning around it begins to change. What feels embarrassing in one moment can become normalized in the next. For example, research on fashion consumption has shown how wearing a veil, once widely stigmatized in urban and secular settings, gradually became seen as ordinary and even fashionable as more women openly adopted it.

Enjoying cheap chocolate shouldn’t require justification. Cold water tastes just as good out of an unbranded travel mug as it does from a Stanley tumbler. A generic sweatshirt keeps you just as cozy as Aritzia. And yet, many people feel the need to explain, deflect or upgrade their choices to avoid being judged. Understanding consumption stigma helps explain why and underscores that these feelings aren’t personal failures, but social constructions.

Sometimes, the most effective response isn’t to consume differently, but to think differently. When people stop treating everyday choices as moral signals, they make room for a more humane – and hopefully honest – marketplace.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why eating cheap chocolate can feel embarrassing – even though no one else cares – https://theconversation.com/why-eating-cheap-chocolate-can-feel-embarrassing-even-though-no-one-else-cares-273644

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Laura E. Alexander, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Nebraska Omaha

As Christian clergy across the United States participate in ongoing protests against harsh immigration enforcement actions and further funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, many are still pondering the words of Rob Hirschfeld. On Jan. 18, 2026, Hirschfeld, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, encouraged clergy in his diocese to “prepare for a new era of martyrdom” and put their wills and affairs in order.

He asserted that “it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

Hirschfeld’s words attracted a lot of attention, with clergy generally responding positively, though at least one priest argued that he “did not sign up to be a martyr” and had a family and church relying on him.

Other clergy have willingly faced arrest for their advocacy on behalf of immigrants, seeing it as a moral calling. Rev. Karen Larson was arrested while protesting at the Minneapolis airport. She stated that when people are being separated from their families and taken to unknown detention centers, “this is our call” to protest on their behalf.

As a scholar of religious ethics, I am interested in how Christian clergy and thinkers consider personal risk when they feel called to engage in social action.

Ethics of risk

There are many examples of Christian leaders who have taken on risks out of a religious and moral obligation to provide spiritual care for people in need or advocate for oppressed communities.

Most data on the risks that clergy face in their roles as religious leaders comes from studies of religious leaders in institutional settings, such as hospitals or prisons.

Scholarship on clergy and chaplains in medical settings points to a professional obligation to take on risks. Similar to medical providers who often see risking exposure to infection as part of their professional responsibility, many clergy and chaplains in medical settings understand their vocation to include such a risk.

Questions about professional risks became particularly acute during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, when researchers were uncertain exactly how the disease was spread and caregivers feared they might acquire HIV through their bedside work.

In her memoir about chaplaincy with HIV patients, Audrey Elisa Kerr notes that Riverside Church in New York continued to organize funerals, ministries and support groups for HIV/AIDS patients despite “terror” in the wider community about contagion.

As a chaplain herself, Kerr says this story of “radical hospitality” inspired her to set aside her own fears and embrace her professional role caring for people who were ill and dying.

Priests and nuns of the Catholic Church who cared for HIV/AIDS patients in the 1980s risked both the fear of contagion and the disapproval of their bishops and communities, since many of the people they cared for were men who had sex with men.

Some felt, however, that they must care for those at the margins as part of their role in the church or their monastic order. Sister Carol of the Hospital Sisters of Saint Francis felt that it was simply her moral duty as a sister to “go where she was needed,” despite potential risk.

Examination of the ethical obligations of chaplains and clergy ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic when at least some priest, pastors and hospital chaplains felt an obligation to continue visiting patients for spiritual care.

In a reflection from 2020, Rev. David Hottinger, then working at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, noted that chaplains “felt privileged” to use their professional skills, even though they took on extra risk because they did not always have access to adequate protective equipment.

Risks in other institutional settings are not such a matter of life and death. Because of their professional preaching function, however, clergy in church settings do accept the risk of alienating church members when they feel religiously called to speak about social issues. Rev. Teri McDowell Ott has written about taking risks when discussing LGBTQ+ inclusion and starting a prison ministry.

Risk-taking during social protest

For many clergy, religious and ethical obligations extend beyond their work in institutions like churches and hospitals and include their witness in public life.

Many feel an obligation to preach on issues of moral importance, even topics that are considered controversial and might elicit strong disagreement. It is common for priests and pastors in conservative churches to include messages against legalized abortion in their sermons.

Tom Ascol of the Center for Baptist Leadership urged Baptist pastors to preach about abortion in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.

Rev. Leah Schade, a Lutheran minister and scholar, has argued that since 2017, mainline pastors have preached more often on issues like racism, environmental justice or gun violence. Schade says pastors are inspired to speak more bluntly about social issues because of their religious concern for people who are at risk of harm from injustice or government policies.

Some clergy view their moral obligations as going beyond preaching and leading them to on-the-ground advocacy and protest. Rev. Brandy Daniels of the Disciples of Christ denomination examines these obligations in an article on her participation in a group of interfaith clergy in Portland, Oregon. The group was convened by a local rabbi and supported protesters for racial justice in Portland in 2017. In Daniels’ analysis, clergy took on the risk of staying in the middle of protests and facing a violent police response in order to “bear moral witness,” something they were both empowered and obligated to do as religious leaders.

Risking their lives

There are more extreme cases in which clergy who challenged government leaders or policies were killed for their words and actions of protest.

In a well-known historical example, Bishop Oscar Romero, canonized as a martyred saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 2018, was assassinated in 1980 after speaking out against human rights violations against poor and Indigenous communities committed by the government of El Salvador. Romero viewed himself, in his priestly role, as a representative of God who was obliged to “give voice to the voiceless.”

During recent protests against ICE in Minneapolis and elsewhere, many clergy risked arrest and bodily harm. Rev. Kenny Callaghan, a Metropolitan Community Church pastor, who says that ICE agents in Minneapolis pointed a gun in his face and handcuffed him as he tried to help a woman they were questioning, said, “It’s in my DNA; I have to speak up for marginalized people.”

On Jan. 23, 2026, over 100 clergy were arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport as they protested and prayed against ICE actions. Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard said that she and others accepted being arrested as a way of demonstrating public support for migrants who are afraid to leave their homes.

In Chicago, ministers have been hit with projectiles and violently arrested. Presbyterian pastor David Black was shot in the head with a pepper spray projectile while protesting outside an immigration detention center in October 2025.

The clergy have told reporters that they feel a particular call to be out in public and to protect and support their vulnerable neighbors against ICE raids, at a time when families are afraid to go to school or work and U.S. citizens have been swept up in enforcement tactics as well.

As I see it, for these and many Christian clergy and ethicists, the call to ministry includes an obligation to express their values of care for vulnerable neighbors precisely through a public willingness to accept personal risk.

Laura E. Alexander receives funding from the Mellon Foundation for research on immigration and religion and was previously a fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute. She is independently affiliated with the Nebraska Alliance for Thriving Communities.

– ref. Why Christian clergy see risk as part of their moral calling – https://theconversation.com/why-christian-clergy-see-risk-as-part-of-their-moral-calling-274820

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Dan Kennedy, Professor of Journalism, Northeastern University

The Washington Post’s evisceration at the hands of its billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, didn’t have to happen.

Following months of speculation, the Post cut at least 300 of its 800 journalists on Feb. 4, 2026, drastically reducing its international, local and sports coverage and eliminating its photo department and stand-alone book review section. The downsizing followed several decisions by Bezos that drove away hundreds of thousands of subscribers, from killing the Post’s endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election to announcing that the editorial pages would henceforth be dedicated to “personal liberties and free markets.”

But though those moves inflicted considerable damage, the paper had been floundering ever since Donald Trump’s first presidential term, when Bezos proudly added the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” to its nameplate and the paper achieved both growth and profitability.

While its principal rival, The New York Times, successfully pivoted by rolling out ancillary products such as games, a cooking app and a consumer guide, the Post lost momentum – and was then pushed off a cliff as Bezos, in my view, started placing a higher value on peace with Trump than on making sure that democracy didn’t die in darkness.

I’m a journalism professor and the author of three books about the future of news. I tracked Bezos’ stewardship of the Post during better times in my 2018 book, “The Return of the Moguls: How Jeff Bezos and John Henry Are Remaking Newspapers for the Twenty-First Century.” And I’ve been watching in horror over the past several years as he’s dismantled much of what he built.

The Times, as the nation’s leading newspaper, is unique, and the extent to which other publishers can learn from its example is limited. But if Bezos ever decides he wants to take journalism seriously again, then he might take a look at a handful of large regional papers that have charted a route to sustainability against the strong headwinds that continue to buffet the news business.

5 good examples

Perhaps the most important difference between these papers and the Post – and the hundreds of other shrinking media outlets owned by corporate chains and hedge funds – is that they are rooted in the communities they cover. Whether owned by wealthy people or run by nonprofits, they place service to their city and region above extracting the last smidgen of revenue they can squeeze out.

Although I could add a few to this list, I am mentioning five large regional newspapers as examples of how it’s possible to succeed despite the long-term decline in the economics of journalism.

These papers have an array of ownership models.

The Boston Globe and The Minnesota Star Tribune, both for-profits, were bought in recent years by the billionaire owners of sports teams.

The Seattle Times, another for-profit, has belonged to the same family since 1896.

The Philadelphia Inquirer was acquired by a billionaire and donated to a nonprofit foundation in 2016, making it a leading example of a hybrid for-profit and nonprofit model.

The Salt Lake Tribune, which a billionaire bought from the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, was converted to a pure nonprofit – the first such paper to undergo such a transition.

Also known as major metropolitan dailies, these papers are all smaller than they were during the heyday of the 1970s and ’80s. Although the for-profit papers are privately owned and do not publish financial results, I’ve learned through years of reporting that the generous profit margins that once characterized newspapers have all but disappeared. Still, these papers have maintained substantial staffs and are their regions’ leading, though not sole, news providers.

Common themes

It’s hard to identify specific reasons why these papers have succeeded, but a few themes emerge.

The Boston Globe and The Minnesota Star Tribune, for instance, have both expanded into other geographic areas. The Globe has moved into Rhode Island and New Hampshire – with more to come in 2026.

Similarly, the Strib, as The Minnesota Star Tribune is known, now covers news across Minnesota, well beyond its base in the Twin Cities.

The Globe has also balanced experimentation with attention to the basics.

Not long after John and Linda Henry bought the Globe in 2013, they started a separate digital publication called Crux, which covered the Catholic Church. It failed to attract advertisers, and the Globe spun it off; Crux continues under different ownership.

Meanwhile, another Globe-owned startup, Stat, which covers health and medicine, grew into a successful venture during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As for the basics, the Globe charges a premium for its journalism – as much as $36 a month for a digital-only subscription. And though paid digital circulation has stalled over the past year at about 260,000, that’s considerably more than most papers in its weight class.

The Star Tribune, owned by sports mogul Glen Taylor, unveiled a new, paywall-free breaking-news blog in the midst of the sometimes deadly immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The paper also offers unlimited gift links, so that paid subscribers can share stories with others, as well as a family subscription plan.
And it has a nonprofit fund to which donors can make tax-deductible contributions to support the paper’s journalism.

By the way, the idea of setting up a separate nonprofit arm was pioneered by The Seattle Times, although it has become increasingly common.

The Seattle Times recently handed off management of the paper to Ryan Blethen, who represents the fifth generation of his family to serve as publisher. In contrast to formerly family-owned papers such as the Courier Journal of Louisville, Kentucky, and The Des Moines Register, whose large families forced their sale two generations ago, The Seattle Times has actually become more independent: In 2024, the Times bought out Chatham Asset Management, a private equity firm that had controlled 49.5% of the paper.

Chatham also owns the McClatchy chain of newspapers, which includes well-known dailies such as the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star and The Sacramento Bee.

Nonprofit ownership

In addition to the for-profit model, two other ownership structures have shown promise.

In 2016, H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest donated The Philadelphia Inquirer, which he and a partner had bought just two years earlier, to a nonprofit that was renamed the Lenfest Institute following his death in 2018.

The Inquirer itself is a for-profit public benefit corporation, a designation that eases the standard corporate requirement that it maximize earnings, while the nonprofit helps support journalism at the Inquirer and other news organizations.

The paper has thrived under the new arrangement, with the publisher, Elizabeth Hughes, writing recently that the model could be used to revive the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on the opposite end of Pennsylvania.

The Post-Gazette’s owners, citing mounting losses, have announced that the paper will shut down in May.

And though The Salt Lake Tribune is the first – and, still, the only – metro daily to embrace a pure nonprofit model, it stands as an intriguing idea that could be emulated elsewhere.

Billionaire owner Paul Huntsman converted the paper to a nonprofit in 2019 after buying it from Alden three years earlier. Executive editor Lauren Gustus said recently that the Tribune is expanding both the size of its news staff and its coverage area, and it’s dropping its paywall in favor of voluntary payments. That’s similar to how nonprofit public radio and television stations support themselves.

A poster boy for decline

The past two decades have not been kind to the newspaper business. More than 3,500 U.S. papers have closed in that period, according to the most recent State of Local News report from Northwestern University’s Medill School. By destroying The Washington Post, the very institution he had previously done so much to build up, Jeff Bezos has transformed himself into the poster boy for that decline.

Yet here and there, in communities across the country, newspapers are reinventing themselves.

There are no easy fixes. But perseverance, innovation and a relentless focus on serving the public are the keys to success, regardless of ownership structure or geography. Bezos could learn from these models.

Dan Kennedy is the co-leader of the What Works: The Future of Local News project at Northeastern University. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of CommonWealth Beacon, a digital news outlet that covers state politics and public policy in Massachusetts. Kennedy is also on the board of the Local Journalism Project, the nonprofit arm of The Provincetown Independent, which is organized as a for-profit public benefit corporation.

– ref. As Jeff Bezos dismantles The Washington Post, 5 regional papers chart a course for survival – https://theconversation.com/as-jeff-bezos-dismantles-the-washington-post-5-regional-papers-chart-a-course-for-survival-275289