Editor and Publisher Reports

There are hundreds of Evan Brandts in our industry today, doing their jobs alone or in a greatly reduced newsroom, working the same beats covered by tens or hundreds more just a few years ago. It’s easy to cite the reasons for the growth of what many today call "ghost papers," where a community is being underserved in local news coverage. Some blame it on the unregulated "Big Tech" industry that monetizes content while also absorbing local advertising revenues that rightly belong to the news publisher. Others call it evolution, where "survival of the fittest" is tested as legacy media adapts to a multimedia culture. And many blame the corporate greed of hedge funds, which found a quick way to generate short-term profits, by buying up local newspapers and selling off their assets, with little regard for the mission to their local communities — providing that independent, constitutionally-mandated "check on power."  Before his April 2022 appearance on "60 Minutes," odds are you never even heard of Evan Brandt