Editors of small news sites on winning Pulitzer Prizes and the future of local reporting

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• Amna Nawaz:

  The Pulitzer Prize is one of journalism's most prestigious awards. And this year's winners include some familiar names, like The New York Times, Associated Press and The Washington Post.

  But it was also a big year for some small newsrooms, including some new digital outlets with just a handful of reporters covering stories in their local communities.

  Stephanie Sy has our look.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Across the country, fewer and fewer Americans have access to high-quality local news coverage. Last year, an average of 2.5 local papers closed up shop each week. And, today, more than half of U.S. counties have either no local news source or only one remaining outlet.

  But new digital-only enterprises are increasingly filling the gap.

  For more, we're joined by editors from two of this year's Pulitzer-winning community newsrooms.

  Ken Doctor is the CEO and founder of Lookout Santa Cruz in California, which won for their breaking news coverage of devastating floods. And Andrew Fan, executive director of the Invisible Institute in Chicago, which took home two Pulitzers for reports related to race and policing.

  Gentlemen, thank you for joining the "NewsHour," and congratulations on this prestigious award.

  How did you do it? Both of your newsrooms are small, digital-only outlets. You each have just a handful of employees.

  Ken, starting with you, your outlet, Lookout Santa Cruz, less than 5 years old, what did it take and what does this recognition mean to you and your colleagues?

  Ken Doctor, CEO and Founder, Lookout Santa Cruz: So it means the world to us.

  We are just almost 3.5 years old just at this point. We were ready to cover these storms, but we didn't expect these storms. This is January 2023. Nine atmospheric storms rolled through Santa Cruz, and it was just horrendous, roads closed and everything, communications out.

  We found being digital, of course, was a real benefit to us and to the readers. So we could connect without newsprint, without ink. We could use the Internet. We could use text messaging, and we used every means that we could to reach those readers.

  And it really has cemented our relationship around local news with these readers for an outlet as new as ours.

• Stephanie Sy:

  And, Andrew, what about the reaction in your newsroom? You won two Pulitzers. One was for a podcast looking at a hate crime that occurred in the '90s, the other about how systemic racism affects missing Black women and girls.

  What was the reaction when you found out about this win?

• Andrew Fan, COO, Invisible Institute:

  Well, I think our newsroom was in pandemonium for a good couple of hours.

  (Cheering and applause)

• Andrew Fan:

  We only — there are only 12 of us. We only have just about a dozen staffers, so I think it was really an incredible moment.

  I think to have two teams recognized at the same time, I think none of us saw that coming. So we all crammed into our one-room office and were pretty over the moon.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Ken, I want to go back to you and your coverage of those horrible floods in Santa Cruz last year. You went for breaking news coverage, and you said you only had some 10 employees, I believe.

  How did you manage to cover a catastrophic weather event with such a small staff? What was your strategy going in, or was it sort of just fly by the seat of your pants and wing it?

• Ken Doctor:

  Well, it's 10 in the newsroom, 15 overall, and the people on the community and business side, they pitched in as well, so that we're using — we're using Instagram. We're using text message.

  And we deployed ourselves throughout the county. So we have mountains. We have coast. We had flooding on the levees in South County agricultural area. We just deployed people to all of those areas and then stayed in touch with each other and got the news out as quickly as possible.

  And it's a skilled staff. While it's small, we have about 150 years of experience among us and about half of people had really good experience in Santa Cruz County.

• Stephanie Sy:

  I do want to ask Andrew, a very different type of reporting, but also very skilled staff. I understand that the series of reports you did on missing Black women and girls started with a data scientist that you have on staff who grew up on the South Side of Chicago.

  Tell me about how that led to this coverage.

• Andrew Fan:

  Yes, absolutely.

  So that's Trina Reynolds-Tyler, our director of data, and she's been at the Invisible Institute since 2016. Part of what makes our newsroom different is that we're not all journalists. We have people who are data scientists, who are community engagement experts, who are civil rights lawyers.

  So, in the case of Trina's investigation done alongside City Bureau, another Chicago-based nonprofit, the real focus emerged out of our interest in looking at data and understanding, with every complaint filed in Chicago, we had tens and tens and thousands of these police complaints.

  But what Trina and others on the team really understood was underneath every one of those complaints was an individual story about someone's bad interaction with the police department.

• Stephanie Sy:

  How do you see yourself playing in the local news landscape? Are you helping to fill a void, or are you catering to a completely different niche?

• Ken Doctor:

  So for us, and I think the commonality — and we're different kinds of news organs, but the commonality is the engagement with the populace.

  And I know Invisible Institute has talked about that. That's hugely — a huge, important part to us, this story and everything that we do. For us, we are a replacement for a daily newspaper. We depend on reader revenue and membership and in advertising, but we're delivering the news digitally the same bedrock local news people depended on print for, but the print had disappeared.

• Stephanie Sy:

  How do you, Andrew, see your role in the local news landscape, especially because you have a much tighter focus on criminal justice?

• Andrew Fan:

  Well, first off, I strongly agree with what Ken said. I think that through line with both of our organizations is an intense focus on engaging with our community, building relationships and trust over time. And I think that's been a huge part of our long-form investigative reporting, even though it looks fairly different.

  I think the other thing I would say is that almost all of our — all of our investigations are done with partners or are done with collaborators. So, even though we're bringing a particular focus in the criminal justice system, we love to work with local news outlets, daily newspapers, people like Ken's outlet that are covering communities on the regular.

  And we think we work really well alongside them.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Does the fact that both of you won Pulitzers give you optimism that we may be seeing a resurgence in local news, in terrific local news, award-winning work?

• Ken Doctor:

  It's happening.

  And it just needs to be covered more. And people need to realize that we need to move on from criticizing the hedge funds that bought up newspapers to competing with them and putting them out of business.

• Andrew Fan:

  I agree with Ken.

  And I think one thing we're seeing in Chicago is the way that you could have an entire ecosystem of newer nonprofit digital outlets that are covering communities alongside each other. We know that we work alongside a community of peers in nonprofit media. And we're really excited to be part of this movement right now.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Andrew Fan with the Invisible Institute in Chicago and Ken Doctor with Lookout Santa Cruz, thank you both, and congratulations.

• Ken Doctor:

  Thank you.

• Andrew Fan:

  Thanks.

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