From ithacajournal.com - The Ithaca Journal next month will begin delivering the newspaper to subscribers via the U.S. Postal Service.

Beginning Monday, Dec. 13, delivery of the newspaper will be at the same time as daily mail service.

The last date Journal subscribers will have the newspaper delivered by a carrier to their homes will be Saturday, Dec. 11. The Journal publishes Monday through Saturday and does not print a Sunday edition.

Labor shortages have impacted newspaper deliveries across the country, and this move is expected to ensure consistency in delivery for Journal subscribers.

Gannett New York State Editor Michael Kilian affirmed The Journal's commitment to serving the community.

From lockportjournal.com - opinion piece by Jim Shultz, founder and executive director of the Democracy Center - What would you say if someone told you to drive down Transit Road, at top speed, with your kids in the car, but you had to wear a blindfold? This is what it is like when a community loses its local newspaper, and why we should appreciate, here in Lockport, that we still have a solid daily delivering the news to us.

Since 2004 in the United States, more than 1,800 community newspapers have shut down permanently, leaving their towns to survive in what has been correctly dubbed "news deserts." Local governments tax people and spend their money with virtually no public scrutiny. How local police operate is hidden from public view. When elections roll around, there are no reporters asking candidates about their plans and publishing their answers for voters to see and judge. Local polluters have no one looking over their shoulder.

And along with the loss of all that is the loss of all the good news of the events and people that help bind a community together: How our high school sports teams are faring, what new business just opened, what local nonprofits are doing to lift up people’s lives in ways where we might help.

Now imagine that someone asks you to drive at top speed down Transit Road, but this time instead of a blindfold you have to wear a pair of glasses that only make things so blurry you can’t tell one thing from another. That’s also a bad idea. This is what it means when community newspapers disappear and our only source of local news becomes the wild west rumor mill of Facebook and other social media. In place of carefully vetted news and reporting, what we are left with is dangerous make-believe.

Lockport — make that all of Niagara County — is deeply fortunate to have a still-strong local newspaper, the Union-Sun & Journal. This year the paper marks its remarkable 200th anniversary, making it one of the oldest papers in New York state. More

From poynter.org - America’s largest newspaper company grew digital subscriptions 46% from a year ago and reduced $91 million in debt.

Gannett is making progress on growing paid digital subscriptions — now 1.5 million across the chain — and diversifying its USA Today sports offerings with a premium app and a link allowing gamblers to place bets.

Those were highlights of the company’s third-quarter financial report Friday as it held revenue at $800 million, even compared to the same period a year ago, and posted a modest profit.

The digital subscription total represented 46% growth from the same period a year ago. Digital revenue grew less — 26.6% — indicating that Gannett is for now relying on discounted introductory offers, especially at USA Today, which only this year put in a paywall for premium content.

CEO Mike Reed has set a goal of 10 million paying subscribers within the next five years, arguing that number is reasonable given a market of 179 million unique visitors per month.

The company has refinanced and paid down the debt it took on to finance the Gannett-GateHouse merger two years ago. More

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Click here for a copy of the Gannett Co. press release.

From Report for America and CNN.com -Steven Waldman of Report for America says the Build Back Better Act would provide payroll tax credits for local newsrooms to support struggling papers. "On the ground, people know this is a very non-partisan issue," he says. The decline of local news "affects every community in America."

Click here to view a short video clip.

From editorandpublisher.com - U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) spoke on the Senate floor to urge her Senate colleagues to support the local journalism provisions in the Build Back Better reconciliation package. Several provisions of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act authored by Senator Cantwell were included in the draft text of the Build Back Better reconciliation package. This legislation would help financially support local newspapers, broadcasters and online media through tax credits to incentivize hiring and retaining journalists.

“Journalistic standards, local newspapers and broadcasters play a critical role in holding our elected officials accountable, shining a spotlight on important news and challenging the issues of our community to come to light,” Senator Cantwell said. “The Local Journalism Sustainability Act is essential to maintaining that trust, that diversity of voices and that local perspective. The tax incentives in this bill will help local newspapers and digital-only news journalists, and broadcast newsrooms remain financially viable to retain and hire local base journalists to cover local news stories.”

Since 2004, over 1,800 communities have lost their local newspapers. Since the COVID pandemic began, 37,000 journalists have lost their jobs, been furloughed, or had their pay cut. More

From niemanlab.org - Research tells us that our democracy relies on healthy local journalism, but we know the industry is ailing. Closures, layoffs, and cutbacks in local news — common before the pandemic, thanks to collapsing ad revenue — have only accelerated. Some in Congress, it seems, would like to do something to help.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act was introduced this summer and has drawn bipartisan support in the House, along with a flurry of positive coverage from some of the news organizations that stand to benefit. Even many of its detractors in journalism (we’ll get to their well-founded criticism in a minute) would like to see it passed, with some modifications.

It’s worth mentioning in an age of rising hate, harassment, and violence against members of the media across the political spectrum, local news organizations are more trusted than their national counterparts, especially on the right. (Republicans are nearly twice as likely to at least somewhat trust local news outlets than national ones, 66% to 35%. The size of that gap has tripled since 2016, making local outlets one of the last parts of the news ecosystem broadly trusted across the political spectrum.) The bill, undoubtedly shaped by that partisan divide, is narrowly tailored to benefit local news organizations. More

From poynter.org - The publisher of The Oglethorpe Echo planned to shut the paper down so he could retire. A phone call to the college saved it.

Ralph Maxwell had a mind to stop the presses.

His friend Dink NeSmith had other ideas.

For 40 years, Maxwell had been the editor and publisher of The Oglethorpe Echo, a 2,200-circulation weekly newspaper just east of Athens, not too far from the University of Georgia. In September, Maxwell planned to shut down the paper so he could retire.

NeSmith, a resident of Oglethorpe County who had just stepped down from his role as CEO of Community Newspapers Inc., couldn’t stand the thought of living in a place without a paper — or retiring.

“It’s a lightbulb that just came on one morning when Ralph said he was going to shut the paper down,” NeSmith said. “I just thought, ‘We can’t let this happen.’”

So NeSmith drove to the newspaper office as Maxwell was writing the story announcing the last paper in its 148-year run, and asked him to reconsider.

Then NeSmith called the dean of the journalism school at UGA.

Within 60 seconds, NeSmith said, they’d loosely agreed on a plan to let the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication take over the paper. More

11/16 - Webinar: Demystifying Digital Audio - America's Newspapers - Free for AN Members

11/16 - Do you understand how page experience will affect your overall search rankings, in addition to video? - America's Newspapers - Free for AN Members

11/16 - Trans in Sport - thoughtfully, accurately, and ethically report stories about gender and sports on the local level - Poynter NewsU - Free

11/17 - Redistricting and Elections (November 2021) - Poynter NewsU - Free

11/18 - The Days and Ways of Today’s Successful Seller - Louisana Press Association - FREE

11/18 - Reviving Newspapers in Digital News Deserts - America's Newspapers - Free for AN Members

12/3 - Advanced InDesign: Unlocking the Mysteries of Data Merge and Tables - Newspaper Academy - $69