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.
Dan talks with Jon Keller, who has been explaining Massachusetts politics to Boston broadcast audiences for nearly half a century. Jon returned to WBZ-TV just in time to cover a contentious governor's election. He brought his trademark quick thinking and level-headed approach to the recent debate between Maura Healey and Mike Minogue. Jon was a colleague of Dan's at The Boston Phoenix, where he wrote a political colum. His Keller @ Large show remains one of the longest-running political franchises in local television.
Boston Magazine twice named him "Best TV Political Analyst" and he's won a boatload of New England Emmys. In the Jurassic era, Jon wrote an opinion column for me at The Boston Globe, and today writes a column for the MASSterlist political newsletter.
Jon has also been caught in the Paramount media swirl, as well. WBZ-TV laid him off in October 2025 as part of Paramount's cuts. But WBZ brought him back as a special contributor in March of this year.
Dan has a Quick Take about turmoil at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. Editor Rob Curley, who's leading an effort to take the paper nonprofit, was placed on administrative leave recently for unspecified inappropriate behavior. Now a deeply reported article by two nonprofit news outlets have published a devastating story about what went wrong.
(Ellen couldn't make it on air for this episode, but she's editing behind the scenes and will be back soon.)
7 Oct 2026
Episode 123: Clay Wirestone
Dan and Ellen talk with Clay Wirestone the opinion editor of the Kansas Reflector. His first book (https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700643059/) was published Sept. 29. It's called, aptly enough, "Opinionated: Kansas Journalists who Proved Why Commentary Matters -- Then and Now." His second is set for 2028.
Wirestone seems to be on a first-name basis with Kansas opinion journalists past and present, and he profiles a number of them. Wirestone knows the state well: he graduated from the University of Kansas and lives in Lawrence with his husband. He also edited news at The Topeka Capital-Journal and spent more than a decade at New Hampshire's Concord Monitor, where he worked with Dan's Northeastern colleague Meg Heckman — a past guest on this podcast.
Dan has a Quick Take about yet another new book — "Deserted: Life Without Local News in Rural America," by Nick Mathews. Dan reviewed it recently for The Arts Fuse. Mathews offers some interesting insights into what happens to community life when there's a shortage of reliable news and information.
Ellen's Quick Take is on an excellent Substack post by media observer Dick Tofel on the recent massacre at McClatchy. It's like a slasher movie and the slasher has come for newspapers that were great in their heyday.
20 Sept 2026
Episode 122: Margaret Sullivan
Dan talks with Margaret Sullivan, who has spent the last decade or so doing the toughest of jobs: Telling the country's most powerful newsrooms what they're getting wrong. She was the fifth public editor of The New York Times, from 2012 to 2016. Somebody once called it the worst job in journalism, but she took it anyway. Then she went to The Washington Post as media columnist, where she covered the 2016 and 2020 elections, the Trump years, and January 6th. She left the Post in 2022, which, in hindsight, looks like excellent timing. (Ellen is ailing but did the editing and will be back behind the mic in the next episode.)
Sullivan writes a weekly column on media, politics and culture for The Guardian US, and she publishes a fearless Substack called American Crisis, where she calls out lapses in media coverage of rising authoritarianism. But she also has deep roots in local journalism. She was a summer intern at her hometown paper, The Buffalo News. She worked her way up to become its first woman editor-in-chief. So she knows firsthand what happens to a community when its newspaper is gutted.
Dan has a Quick Take that Yogi Berra would have called déjà vu all over again. The Block family, which owns The Blade newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, says it will shut down the paper if they can't find a buyer by the end of 2026. Now where have we heard that before? He also dives into the new impact report (https://theajp.org/impact/) from the American Journalism Project, a philanthropic organization that turns out to be one of the biggest funders of nonprofit news in the country. AJP makes the case that nonprofit news as a business model has moved past the experimental stage.
Who has been a guest on What Works: The Future of Local News
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Katherine Ann Rowlands
Stacy Feldman
Rahul Bhargava
Bill Forry
Linda Forry
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.9 / 5
14 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 62 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
93
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
77
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