Guest Post: Who Wants Better Local News Coverage?

A stack of papers at the old Chicago Tribune printing press. (Photo: Chicago Tribune)

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OPINION

By Bernard Schoenburg

Based on encounters I have across Springfield, I’d say a whole bunch of people want better local news. They see that the number of reporters covering local events has gone down here, just as it has in cities and towns across the country.

But in addition to agreeing that the local reporting scene has suffered greatly by cutbacks, I often share a ray of hope.

Sometime in the first quarter of this new year, an announcement should be made outlining how a five-year, $500 million national philanthropic program called Press Forward will translate into some reporting power in and around the capital city.

“I’m hopeful that whatever we announce here in the coming months will be a way to say ‘OK, we’re putting the brakes on the decline, and we’re going to be able to hire maybe two or three new reporters to cover … this area, whatever the mechanism is,’” said John Stremsterfer, president and CEO of the Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln.

Money to hire these new reporters will come from the Patrick F. Coburn Press Forward Endowment Fund at the Springfield-based foundation. Coburn, who died in 2022 at age 81, left an unrestricted $1.7 million to the foundation. Of that, $1 million was put into the dedicated fund for local journalism, and the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation’s president, John Palfrey, traveled to Springfield in November 2023 to announce that his group would match the $1 million.

Earnings from an endowed fund of $2 million for now means about $80,000 to $100,000 in estimated earnings can be spent each year, Stremsterfer said.

Stacy Reed, chief program officer for the community foundation, said that knowing of Coburn’s news industry legacy, she was following developments about local news. She was watching a Spring 2023 Knight Media Forum discussion, and she heard an official of the MacArthur Foundation talking about the issue.

That official, Kristen Mack, a MacArthur vice president, talked by phone with Reed, and soon met with Stremsterfer in Chicago.

“She kind of laid out to me what became known as Press Forward when I met with her one on one,” Stremsterfer said. “And she goes, ‘Well, do you want to be part of the coalition of the … enthusiastic?”

That, Stremsterfer said, is how his central Illinois foundation became home to one of six original Press Forward chapters, and one of the first 20 foundations – and the only community foundation – to join the Press Forward effort at that point. Other community foundations have since joined.

Being among initial Press Forward backers, with the likes of Carnegie, Joyce and Knight foundations, was “amazing,” Stremsterfer said, for the local organization he runs, which covers an eight-county region.

He believes in the goal of improving local coverage. And he hopes major foundations continue the Press Forward effort beyond its initial five years. He also encourages those groups to work through community foundations with endowment funds legally locked into spending on local media, to have lasting impact.

“I think it matters … not to get too much on a high horse, for the future of our democracy in a country that seems more divided than at any time … since maybe the Civil War,” Stremsterfer said. Lack of local news coverage, he said, “can help create further political divides in our community.”

What people need, he added, is “just basic information for people to have, information to make decisions upon in towns of our size and smaller. It’s just a big, big problem. And if we don’t fix that, I don’t know what happens.”

The foundation covers the counties of Sangamon, Logan, Menard, Cass, Morgan, Macoupin, Montgomery and Christian. The Coburn fund endowment can be spent in that region, but if it gets into the territories outside Springfield is yet to be determined, Stremsterfer said.

The foundation is working with a group called the American Journalism Project, which has studied the media landscape of the region and will recommend the next step. In some places across the country, that organization has recommended creation of new not-for-profit news outlets. It doesn’t appear that will be the case in Springfield, Stremsterfer and Reed said, with expansion of an existing media outlet more likely.

“We need more local news coverage, period,” Stremsterfer said. “I think that’s true in every one of our eight counties.” He said the model of local news media being a money maker has been “broken by the internet.”

“So can philanthropy step in and try to provide, through a not-for-profit mechanism, a way to build back local coverage?” he asked. “That, to me, is the whole bet here.”

Full disclosure: after I retired from The State Journal-Register four years ago, Stremsterfer asked and I agreed to serve on the advisory council to the community foundation. It is a volunteer position, and I have enjoyed being involved in discussions that we all hope will lead to improved local coverage.

In Illinois, there is another Press Forward chapter. It is in Chicago and is housed at the Chicago Community Trust. In May it announced $1.6 million in grants for 13 local news organizations, including South Side Weekly, Windy City Times, and Invisible Institute.

Meanwhile, other efforts to enhance journalism across the state have been in the works.

Growing out of a local journalism task force shotgunned by state Sen. Steve Stadelman, D-Rockford, the state is implementing a local journalism sustainability tax incentive program. It will provide up to $5 million a year for five years in tax credits to news organizations. Given on a first-come, first served basis, eligible organizations can receive $15,000 in tax credits each for a limited number of qualified journalists employed, and an additional $10,000 in tax credits each for newly created positions.

Information on the program and a digital application is available on the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity website.

According to Jeff Rogers, executive director of the Illinois Press Foundation, that group as well as the Illinois Press Association, Illinois Broadcasters Association, Medill School of Journalism and others got a Joyce Foundation grant to help local news organizations throughout the state apply for the grants.

Rogers is reachable at jrogers@illinoispress.org, and the press association’s president and CEO, Don Craven, is at dcraven@illinoispress.org.

Rogers is also founding editor of Capitol News Illinois, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

As news outlets across the state have cut back on Statehouse news coverage in recent years, CNI has filled gaps. According to Rogers, CNI now has 11 full-time positions, including a likely replacement soon for a southern Illinois staffer who recently left. The total includes two people in audience development, working on things such as web development and fundraising; and nine journalists – four at the Statehouse, two in Chicago and three in southern Illinois.

After the current grant season, Rogers expects to hire five more people in 2025, including one broadcast and one print reporter, two editors, and a person focused on revenue and audience development.

Rogers also said he thinks the Springfield-based Press Forward enhances what CNI is doing.

“We are talking with the Land of Lincoln Foundation folks about determining ways that CNI, the Illinois Press Foundation and Illinois Press Association can further help local news outlets,” Rogers said. “I think there’s a real opportunity for the Springfield chapter to help local news outlets in the eight-county region, and because CNI already has a relationship with those outlets, we feel we’re in a good position to assist.”

I have an employee directory that shows the SJ-R newsroom had 70 editorial employees, including reporters, editors, designers and even a cartoonist, in 1999. Today, though they are a hard-working crew, there are less than 10 SJ-R editorial employees based in Springfield.

Pat Coburn hired me in 1990 when he was managing editor of the newspaper, and I think in his 10 years as publisher of the paper, still owned then by the Copley family, he helped make it a fair, nonpartisan marketplace for ideas and a strong community voice. I think Coburn would be proud of the new local journalism effort being carried forward in his name.

Bernard Schoenburg, an Evanston native who started his journalism journey at the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois in Champaign, worked for The Pantagraph of Bloomington, the Associated Press in Chicago and The State Journal-Register in Springfield. He was political reporter and columnist for the SJ-R for 28 of his 30 years there, ending with his retirement in 2020. He can be reached at bernard.schoenburg@gmail.com.