Episode 124: Jon Keller

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.)  

Dan and Ellen talk with Clay Wirestone the opinion editor of the Kansas Reflector. His first book 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.  

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 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.

Dan and Ellen talk with Emily Sweeney of The Boston Globe. As the Globe's first social video journalist, Emily broke through the clutter on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram with her Boston accent and her collection of track suits. Not to mention her skills as a reporter.  There's a Northeastern connection, as well. Sweeney played on NU's championship-winning Division 1 women's ice hockey team.  Dan has a Quick Take about NJ Spotlight News, a website and a newscast that covers politics and public policy in New Jersey. It's also featured in "What Works in Community News." Spotlight was in danger of being seriously downsized after Donald Trump and the Republican Congress zeroed out funding for public media. The state of New Jersey, facing a budget crisis, cut its public media subsidy as well. Now, though, it looks like there's good news to report.  Ellen's Quick Take is on a comprehensive investigation into a Trump donor named Tim Barnard. Barnard Construction has received billions in taxpayer dollars to build the border wall in the Southwest. The story was reported by the nonprofit High Country News in Colorado and republished by another nonprofit news site, AZ Luminaria in Arizona. It's a strong example of how a national story can be localized and, in doing so, pack a real punch.  

Dan and Ellen talk with Professor Carlene Hempel at Northeastern and her student Sydney Woogerd. This spring, Carlene brought a team of student journalists to Asheville, North Carolina, for a week-long intensive reporting trip that focused on the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The result: a digital multimedia investigation called Caught in the Current: Helene Recovery in Asheville and Beyond. Put simply, this is a stunning project, with podcasts, videos, photos and text. There's a great soundtrack. We'll drop a link in the show notes. Carlene has been a journalism professor at Northeastern University for more than 20 years. She specializes in teaching long-form narrative writing as well as creating on-site, pop-up newsrooms domestically and abroad for her courses. Her 2025 reporting class and resulting magazine about the 10-year anniversary of Flint, Michigan's water crisis won two national reporting awards.  Sydney is studying journalism and international affairs at Northeastern University with a focus on multimedia storytelling. She serves as co-photo director for The Avenue Magazine, a student-led fashion publication, where she directs visual strategy and creates editorial content. She has also contributed to The Huntington News and Artistry Magazine as a writer and photographer documenting community stories across Boston. Sydney served as the project's photo editor. Dan has a Quick Take about the recent What Works webinar for local-news publishers, journalists and volunteers. Ellen shares five lessons learned from watching how the projects that were subjects of the book, "What Works in Community News," have evolved.  

Dan and Ellen talk with Ron Mitchell, publisher and editor of the Bay State Banner. In 2023, Mitchell and Andre Stark, both seasoned television news journalists, purchased the Banner, a newspaper covering the Black community in Boston. The Banner was started in 1965 by Melvin Miller. The print weekly is legendary for covering stories that were ignored by other publications. Stories about the Black and Latino communities in the Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan. Mitchell and Stark are expanding its digital footprint. During his 27 years at WBZ, Mitchell created news coverage focused on racism in elementary school textbooks in 2014, and a series chronicling an 11-year lawsuit that culminated in an $11 million dollar award to a Black firefighter in Brookline. Dan and Ellen also talk with Sanjana Mishra, a Northeastern journalism and criminal justice graduate. She's worked in local news, communications and social media. She took two courses with Dan last semester and somehow lived to tell the tale. She wrote a final paper called "How private equity and corporate ownership are killing local journalism and American democracy," an in-depth examination of how Alden Global Capital and USA Today Co. — known as Gannett until recently — have hollowed out newsrooms in a never-ending quest for higher profits. Ellen has a Quick Take on North Star Stories, a daily radio broadcast on local news carried by AMPERS, a network of 17 community FM stations across Minnesota. It's by community, for community, and it's funded partly by donors and partly by the state. Dan has a Quick Take about the latest on The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which announced earlier this year that it was shutting down in the face of mounting losses. What's happened since is mostly good — but it comes with a sour aftertaste.  

Dan talks with Joe Kriesberg, the publisher of CommonWealth Beacon, and Laura Colarusso, the editor. CommonWealth Beacon is a digital nonprofit that's part of the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, better known as MassINC, and Joe is the CEO. CommonWealth Beacon covers politics and public policy at the state level, and has increasingly been branching out into local coverage as well. And it happens to be celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Joe has been with MassINC since 2023 and has overseen the expansion of CommonWealth Beacon's staff and mission. Before that, he was president and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, where he was a leading advocate for affordable housing. He brings decades of nonprofit management experience and an extensive background of working with news organizations. He has raised millions of dollars for mission-driven organizations. Laura is an award-winning editor and reporter who combines digital media expertise with a commitment to old-school reporting. Before coming to CommonWealth Beacon, she was the editor of Nieman Reports, a magazine and website published by Harvard's Nieman Foundation that covers issues related to journalism. She has also worked as the digital managing editor at GBH News and the digital opinion editor at The Boston Globe, and is a frequent contributor to the Washington Monthly. Dan has a Quick Take on the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, published recently by the international organization Reporters Without Borders. It shows that the United States has fallen to 64th, coming in just behind Botswana and just ahead of Panama. Also, an important announcement: Our annual What Works webinar will take place on Thursday, May 21. It's a free, all-day event aimed at enhancing skills in audience development, ethical and effective uses for AI, and how to plan a successful event. You can register at our website, whatworks.news. Just look for the "What Works Webinar 2026" tab at the top of the page. (Ellen is off the air this week but editing behind the scenes.)  

Dan and Ellen talk with Rachel White, CEO of the Associated Press Fund for Journalism. Rachel joined the nonprofit AP Foundation in 2024, after a 10-year run with The Guardian, the one-time print newspaper in the UK that has become a global digital powerhouse. In 2016, White became president of  theguardian.org, a nonprofit organization she founded that raises tax-deductible funds to support The Guardian's journalism. The AP Foundation has a similar mission, but is laser-focused on state and local news outlets all over the US. The AP Fund is expanding. Fifty news organizations have just joined, for a total of 100 newsrooms. News outlets get help with reach and strategy to achieve financial stability. Dan has a Quick Take on Local News Day, which is on April 9 and billed as "a national day of action connecting communities with trusted local news." Ellen's Quick Take is on an opinion column apocalypse in Fargo, North Dakota. The Fargo Forum, a locally owned news outlet, has forced out three long-running columnists. Why? Take a wild guess. Here's one headline on a recent column by journalist Jim Shaw: "Our local leaders oppose free and fair elections." He's now an ex-columnist. A big hat-tip to Alex Ip, a Gen Z publisher and editor at the xylom.com, which explores how communities are influenced and shaped by science. Alex broke this news about Fargo on social media.  

Dan and Ellen talk with Zuri Berry, the executive editor of The Banner in Montgomery County, Maryland. He's also a Boston Globe colleague of Ellen's from days of yore. Zuri is one of those journalists who's done a little bit of everything. We're talking reporter, columnist, video producer, digital editor, radio host, audio editor — over more than two decades in this business. And he's got an MBA from the McColl School of Business at Queens University of Charlotte on top of all that, which is a combination you don't always see in a newsroom leader. He was deputy managing editor at the Boston Herald, and managing editor for two NPR member stations. The accolades speak for themselves — he was part of the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning team for breaking news coverage of the 2013 Marathon bombings. At The Banner, he supported last year's Pulitzer-winning series on Baltimore's overdose crisis. Dan has a Quick Take for later on in the podcast about a journalist who's run afoul of ICE and who faces deportation to Colombia. Estefany Rodríguez, a reporter for a Spanish-language newspaper called Nashville Noticias in Tennessee, was arrested by ICE even though her lawyers say she entered the U.S. legally. It may be a case of retaliation, as Rodriguez has reported on ICE activities in the Nashville area.  After the podcast was recorded, Rodríguez was released on $10,000 bond, but she is still fighting to remain in the U.S. Ellen has a Quick Take is about a small newspaper in Wyoming that ditched its police blotter — and almost nobody misses it. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle made the change after taking a course at the Poynter Institute on deepening crime coverage. Dropping the blotter gave the staff more time to do actual reporting. 

On this episode, Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy talk with Barbara "Bob" Allen, an LA-based journalist, trainer and consultant who founded CollegeJournalism.org in 2025. The site provides resources and news for journalism educators and student media advisers across the country. Allen is also the editor of the Student Press Report, a brand-new national news desk covering the state of the college press. The debut piece — "Cash-starved and censored, America's student press is in crisis" — lays out the financial and free-press challenges facing campus newsrooms. Allen also writes the weekly College Journalism Newsletter. Allen brings decades of experience mentoring student journalists. She was adviser to the student newspaper at Oklahoma State University and most recently served as director of college programming at the Poynter Institute in Florida. She holds a master's degree from the University of Missouri, home to both a campus paper — The Maneater — and the Columbia Missourian, a lab newspaper covering the city of Columbia. Allen has also led an ambitious project to map every college newspaper in the country, in collaboration with the University of Vermont's Center for Community News. That effort found more than 1,100 college newspapers, with 766 located in or adjacent to counties with little or no local news access. Dan's Quick Take stays close to home. The Huntington News, Northeastern's independent student newspaper, just celebrated its 100th anniversary. Ellen's Quick Take is about a three-bedroom, three-bath condo in Provincetown. The Local Journalism Project, a nonprofit that partners with the Provincetown Independent, raised money from more than 100 donors to buy the condo to house reporters. Ed Miller, editor and co-founder of the Indie, told Mike Blinder of Editor & Publisher that housing was a major barrier to attracting staff to his well-regarded newspaper on the Outer Cape.