Watch: Key Editor Updates Venture by Local News Non-Profit to "Reimagine the News Press"
B.J. Terhune, California Editor for Newswell, discusses strategy, staffing, and timing of the unprecedented project to transform the business assets of SB's bankrupt daily into a new media operation
In recent months, editors and executives of the non-profit journalism organization “Newswell” have heard from about 1,000 residents around Santa Barbara County about their desires for local news coverage of their communities.
The message, in a series of “listening sessions” and hundreds of online surveys, has been clear and consistent, according to B.J. Terhune, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who serves as Newswell’s Managing Editor for California.
“We've heard repeatedly, ‘we want more news, not less,’” she said.
A former Assistant Managing Editor for the L.A. Times, Terhune dropped by a conversation with Newsmakers TV on Friday, and provided an update on the Newswell effort to “reimagine,” as she put it, the historic but defunct Santa Barbara News-Press as a thriving, online news operation.
Affiliated with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, Newswell in January was gifted the business asset of the moribund newspaper - the copyright, digital domains and online archive, among other things - by strategic consultant Ben Romo, who led a local group that acquired the materials in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Now operating outlets in San Diego and Stockton, Newswell is committed to expanding, rebuilding and reinvigorating news reporting on local communities, at a time when seismic economic, technological and political changes have mauled the industry in general, and local media in particular, for a quarter century.
By providing business, financial, IT and other business support and functions, the group aims to nurture, build and sustain small, locally-focused, financially challenged editorial operations.
In Stockton and San Diego, Newswell took on struggling, but functioning enterprises; The Santa Barbara model represents a much different, and unprecedented, challenge.
“This is completely new in Santa Barbara, from taking, essentially, a dead site and bringing it back to life, and figuring out how to best do that,” Terhune said. “To appreciate the long history that it's had, to pay respect and homage to that, but also to look to the future and understand what the community wants from this new outlet.”
Not surprisingly, and understandably, the owners and operators of several existing local news outfits in Santa Barbara are looking with trepidation as Newswell has begun taking concrete steps that will change — gasp! - the local news landscape.
Terhune, however, said that in engaging with local news consumers, “we heard a lot of enthusiasm for the existing local news outlets that are here.
“This is not a news desert,” she said, “but what we want to do, is be additive to that journalism landscape. We want to fill the gaps, we want to provide the news that the listening sessions have revealed residents say they're not getting.
“And a lot of that is the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ type of journalism that helps them make sense of their world and their backyard. How bigger stories relate to the local landscape…that additional context, that additional content, those deeper dive pieces,” she added.
“One of the ways that we're going to be able to do that…is by offering all of our content for free, not only on our website, which will not have a paywall of course, but to all of the other local news organizations as well,” Terhune said. “They will be able to run our stories and provide that content to their readers because Newswell's goal is to really reach as many readers as possible to make sure that they are informed.”
Terhune said that the group is currently scouting office locations in Santa Barbara, will soon start a search for its first employee, a General Manager, and is aiming to launch sometime in fall. In the meantime, they also are planning several more listening sessions.
B.J. invited anyone interested in attending a session, or anyone interested in working for or writing for Newswell to contact her at: B.J.Terhune@asunewswell.org
Check out our conversation with B.J. Terhune via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify and other platforms, and on Soundcloud here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show weeknights at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
Further reading and viewing
“A New Start for Santa Barbara News-Press.” Ben Romo, Newsmakers.
“A Fresh Start.” B.J. Terhune, newspress.com.
When You De-Invest in Local News, the Rats Come Out to Play.” JR/Newsmakers.
“First Look at New News-Press.” JR/Newsmakers.
“Meet the Team - B.J. Terhune.” ASU Newswell.
Citizen McCaw: Who Owns the News? The documentary about meltdown of the News-Press.
Disclosure: Jerry is on the advisory board of Newswell’s Santa Barbara project.
This is not Stockton or San Diego. This is a new out of town competitor to the good local journalism we already have. Shouldn’t the mission statement start off with doing no harm to existing media outlets we already rely on?
Re: Newswell
How is the staff, the whole operation financed?