E127: Rewind - Local News Network

In this episode, Jerry Zremski of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism takes center stage for an in-depth conversation on the current state of local journalism. Jerry shares his unique insights on covering politics and policy from the nation's capital, delving into the intricacies of reporting on Western New York issues from Washington, D.C. He discusses the challenges of maintaining local relevance in a national landscape and offers a candid perspective on the evolving media environment. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of local news and national policy, as well as the future of regional journalism in an increasingly digital world. 

Transcript

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Welcome everyone. We are here today with Jerry Zremski of the local news network, which is housed in the University of Maryland College Park, Philip Merrill College of Journalism. I feel like I always have to take a deep breath because that's a handful. So welcome to the program, Jerry. Thank you, Rebecca. I'm very happy to be here. Great. Well, and I wanted to invite you onto the program because the local news network is doing some really interesting things. I think kind of continuing in the fine tradition of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism to really be unique and innovative. Other programs of the college include the Capital News Service Bureau and the D .C. News Bureau and all and lots of very interesting. programs to turn out fine journalists. So tell us a little bit more about your program, which is only what, two years old now? Two years old, yes. We started the local news network here at the University of Maryland two years ago, thanks to a very generous donation from two philanthropists who had a concern about what's happening with local news. Obviously, many people across the country have that concern these days. And we tried to do something here that would be good for the state of Maryland. And the vision was basically to start something of a journalism collaborative, but it really evolved into something different. What we've ended up doing is taking our sophomore news writing class, the second news writing class that our students do, and turning that into a bit of a supercharged newsroom that can do the kind of journalism that pretty much no one news outlet in the state could really do on its Every semester in this class, we have anywhere from 55 to 90 students who can do things like do background checks on political candidates. They can do things like interview childcare providers in every county of the state. And so that's what we've really done. We've utilized this course to be both a learning experience for the students but to also turn out journalism that I think has been pretty beneficial statewide. So what kind of journalism have you been doing? I mean, I feel like, number one, that's huge to have 50 to 90 students focused on one topic for 13 weeks. You can go really deep and you have then the ability to cover the entire state or the region, whatever you're choosing to do. So tell us about some of the projects that you've recently put in the can. Okay, sure. We tend to do one project per semester, although I think in the next year we're going to go a little bit above that. Our first project was a school board voter guide two years ago in which we surveyed all the school board candidates in the state, got responses from more than 100 of them, and ran their responses. In addition to that, we had our students do background checks on all of these candidates. What we found were about a dozen who had tax liens, which was a pretty interesting story. And most notably of all, we will found one candidate down in Charles County who had, she was basically a family's values candidate who stole her mom's ID and a lot of stuff from Target. So that was a pretty important story for voters in Charles County one of my students was able to do. That was our first project. Parts were published all across the state. We also did enterprise stories attended to that. And those enterprise stories were published in the Frederick News Post, the Salisbury Daily Times. One even was published by the Washington Post. So that was a good project right off the gate. We're going to reprise that project again this fall. So news outlets around the state can look forward to Then our second project was called Contracting Out, which took a look at school district spending across the state on a county by county basis. After that, we did a deep dive into the blueprint for Maryland's future, the statewide education plan. And then most recently, we did a series called Child Care Missing in Maryland, which took a county by county look at the decline in availability of child care. all across the state. Those are really impactful projects. I'm interested, you started out sort of in the school world and honestly, when we look at voter guides and things like that, oftentimes those school boards kind of get short shrift. They haven't really been considered at sort of high stakes elections in many senses, but that is where school boards have an awful lot of power because they decide in some ways what's taught, what won't be taught. that's where some of the banned books fights have come home to roost. So was it the timeliness or what attracted you to the school projects? Because I'm sure you're doing a lot of FOIA requests, so you need to have it be available out in the world, but also important. So tell me how you're choosing these projects. Well, it really depends on the individual project. The way the school board project came about was When I took this job, the first thing I did two years ago was start meeting with people, talking with people on the phone or even paying visits. So I paid a visit out to the APG Chesapeake headquarters on the Eastern shore. And one of their editors, Eli Wohlenhaus, told me that those papers, which are scattered all around the eastern shore largely and in southern Maryland, had all of these school board races to cover and didn't have the means to do it. So I took that idea back here. I mentioned it to our associate dean at the time, Rafael Lorente, and he said, "Why don't we do a voter guide for the whole state?" And so we did, and we did it on the fly. It was a very, very rushed process, but it was also a very rewarding process because that voting guide was one of the most read projects ever on the Capital News Service website. Yeah, it is. And what was particularly telling about the need for this project was that we detected a huge uptick in readership of the voter guide on election day. We can only surmise that people were standing in line waiting to vote thinking, gosh, I got to vote for the school board. I don't know who these people Well, they clicked, they Googled, they found our voter guide, and I think it probably helped people as they made their decisions. 100%, I think we've all been in the line to vote and realizing, I didn't realize such and like the sheriff is up for contention and you think, okay, I have no idea about these two, but I don't wanna make the wrong choice. And as school boards have become more politicized, I think that people are more concerned about what the stances are on those school board candidates. So it sounds like it was certainly a strong enough showing that you're gonna do it again. this fall, are you going to add to expand the focus beyond school boards? Because it could be a huge, huge task. It could be a huge, huge task and to be frank, just covering the school board races themselves, that's enough. And we note that other races tend to get covered. So there's not quite the crying need that there is for school board races where you have so many candidates in so many elections. So we are going to be doing that again. Now to finish answering your previous question about how we pick our projects, it's really depended It's been different every semester. So our second project contracted out. Derek Willis, who's on the faculty here at Merrill College and is one of the real creators of data journalism, suggested that project and then worked with us to clean up the data and to acquire the data that was supposedly required to be submitted online by law, but that wasn't in many cases. Then our next project, the behind the blueprint That was my idea. I just took a look at what news coverage was like throughout the state. I read as many papers as I can, or at least glance at them every day. And I noted that there's this gigantic, multi -billion dollar education reform plan that's exceedingly difficult to cover on the local level because it's so complex. So we chose to try to break that down to try to do a summary for every school district and then to do major stories about the components of the blueprint. Our last project kind of had twofold ideas behind it. First of all, I had a meeting, I made the rounds of community foundations across the state last year and An executive at a community foundation in Anne Arundel County noted to me the dramatic shortage of childcare availability there. Meanwhile, I had a brilliant student who has just graduated and moved on to her first job, who separately suggested this as a project and said, look, I'm going to put in an MPIA request to get data. on childcare availability in every county of the state. And I said, I think that's a great idea. So we just ran with it. That's how that series came about. Well, it all sort of, it fits in together because you need projects that you can, that have that large scale that you can do PIA requests on that does have publicly available data. And I'd like to kind of better understand how you use those 50 to 90 students and what they're doing. Is this more data -driven reporting where you're kind of showing facts and figures or you are going into into communities and interviewing or a combination. It really depends on the project. As I mentioned, the first project, the school board project, we had students look at the court records of every candidate, which is a nice learning experience for them. On our second project, Contract It Out, we gave the students reams of data and asked them to sort it and find notable expenses in each county. So for example, one student found a school district that spent $25 ,000 at a local jewelry store, which was quite interesting. found that Prince George's County had spent, I believe, more than $75 ,000 at a local Italian restaurant. So there were little things like that our students found. The next semester on the project on the blueprint, we had students basically take a look at the county plans summarize what the state had said in reviewing those county plans and just kind of write a quick summary. And on the childcare project, we had all the data, we supplied the data to the students. They had kind of a template to fill out for, you know, putting the grant. We had a graphic, of course, but we also had pros and we had them plug the data into the pros and then do an interview. And that's how we ended up in the end. interviewing a child care provider in every county of the state. So yeah, it really depends on the project, but the goal is to get those students in that sophomore journalism class involved in reporting these projects. Meanwhile, for the first two years, students in the same class have written the enterprise stories that go along with the projects. That's going to change in the fall because I'm doing an upper level course in more advanced reporting and solutions journalism. And those students will be writing the enterprise stories from now on. I think that it may make it a little easier because there'll be students a little bit more advanced. They'll largely be juniors doing the enterprise stories rather than sophomores. So that's exciting too. That's a good way of really starting a new class that will contribute to these projects. Well, it sounds like, you you'll get perhaps a more polished finished project if you are spreading the load a little bit among a couple classes. And just to put in context, know, you're having sophomores kind of do this for second level coursework. They really are like this is truly a learning experience for them as well. And so for some, this may be the first time they're filing a FOIA request. This might be, you know, the first time they're doing kind of this data analysis. So can you talk to me a little bit about sort of what you're trying to get those students to, like how it fits in the context of turning out polished journalists? I mean, we're very fortunate in Maryland to have such an illustrious College of Journalism, top 10, I believe. And so how, contextualize this program for the arc of the student experience for me. Sure, that's a great question. And what we're really trying to do here is get students doing real reporting and learning skills that will help them further on down the road. And that's why, for example, this idea of having them background the candidates and look at the court records to see if there's anything interesting there is so important, because that will help out if they go down the road and they're a reporter at the Frederick News Post and they want to background a candidate, local candidate there, they're going to know how to do it. If they're going to be covering the courts on the Eastern Shore, they will know how to do it because we have started them down the path of getting comfortable looking at court records. Similarly, we do this with data. So on the project on school contracts, the idea that we just gave them this data and said, Go to it, there may be a story there. It gave them some sense of how data journalists work. And that was a very basic data journalism effort there. We have other, you know, more sophisticated classes in data journalism that we hope that we will get our students interested in because really that's a skill that everyone needs in this day and age. It kind of feels like a survey course, like you're getting a little taste of all these different things and then could maybe awaken a passion for investigative journalism or data visualization or something like that. But at least they'll have a passing familiarity after this course. Is that kind of the goal? Yes, that's exactly the goal. In a lot of ways, the course is a beat reporting course. And what we do beyond the projects that you see publicly is every student is required to get five clips during the semester and they can get the clips in multiple ways. They can go to college publications if they're involved in that, or they can work for College Park Here and Now or Southern Maryland News any local paper in the state that will take their contributions. And what I try to do every semester, I survey all the students in this reporting class and ask them where they're from among a number of other questions. And what I try to do is get them reporting for news outlets in their home community if they happen to be from Maryland. And so that's kind of another added benefit of this course and the way it's structured. We're supporting the Maryland news ecosystem through the volunteer efforts of students. And those stories, they generally do not appear on the Capital News Service website. They will appear on Southern Maryland News or in the Greenbelt News Review and so forth. Now, I think that's, I want to talk a little bit about your relationship with local news outlets because that is so incredibly critical. But I also love what you're doing to just remind students that there's a local news outlet wherever they live. have, we, the press association runs an internship program and I local news network has some intern placements as well. And for those who get the internship, they're always asking, well, like, how can I, how can I get an internship? How can I get my start? And always say, do you know what your local newspaper is? And oftentimes, I think this, this kind of shows up the critical, like the, the, the crux of the problem. Many of those students don't realize that they have a local newspaper, but that local newspaper is covering everything that matters to that community. Local news is not the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, you know, only it is, you know, Southern Maryland news, or it's the greater only paper. It's the Frederick News Post or the Hancock News or whatever the case might be. And so knowing what's out there is critical. And each of those local news outlets need more resources and are often very open to having students from their community. intern there. So I love that you're connecting those pieces. And it also must help in the microcosm of, of, in the, I guess, the ecosystem of local news. So tell me a little bit about how you've developed relationships and how those professional newsrooms work with Sure. Basically what I did when I started out, like I said two years ago, make a round of calls, round of meetings with various editors in the state to see what they had to say. I get the sense that early on, they didn't know quite what I was going to be doing and I didn't quite know what I was doing. But we figured it out pretty quickly. And so now I generally hear from them I hear, well, I send out emails to the editors whenever it's pertinent for me to do so. I don't do anything such as a weekly email or anything like that, because I'm afraid I don't want to overwhelm people. But whenever there's anything significant, I let editors know it's coming. I take suggestions from them. so for example, one editor, when we sent out our childcare series, said, can you please, I have been just doing it as CNS has always done, which just as sending the story as text in an email, an editor said, can you send that as a Word document too? So of course I did that. So it's like little things like that that we kind of exchange ideas on. In terms of the substance of our projects, interestingly, the only one that's really been generated from the news ecosystem itself was the first one when we really found out there was that need for that school board voter guide. So it sounds like you're working to get, and those news outlets can post and publish any of that work from the products of, do they have to publish it all or can they publish pieces? How does that They can use whatever they would like. Like, so for example, on the childcare series, some of the stories ran in more publications than others. And I can understand that. The first story was kind of an overview of the shortage. And of course, a lot of news outlets would want to do that. I got a call from one editor saying, could we localize that story? Could we take an anecdote that you have in this story from our county and reconstruct the lead and build it around that anecdote instead of the one you have. And I said, absolutely fine. Of course, that's what we're here for. And what they can also do is either run the data that we publish, the county summary, they can either run that as a separate. as a little blurb account accompanying the enterprise story, or they can just incorporate it into the enterprise story. It's really, we're doing this for the news ecosystem of the state of Maryland, and we don't charge for it either. just, all you have to do is let me know that you're a local news outlet somewhere in the state, and you'll be on my mailing list, and you can use any of our That's terrific. And that's such a wonderful way to help support local newsrooms. in the context of, you now have a new dean, Dean Laurenti, who has been fantastic and of course has big shoes to fill with Lucy Doglish stepping down from that role. But how does the Local News Network fit into his priorities and the priorities of the college? I love that it's not this esoteric, theoretical, class where you're like, okay, well, you're going to do a, you know, you're going to file FOIA requests that then don't matter. So I love the practicality of it, but how does this, does this fit philosophically in into what the college is trying to do? Absolutely, our new dean, semi new dean, Rafael Lorente likes to talk about Merrill College as having kind of a teaching hospital approach to journalism instruction. That is, we believe that young journalists learn to become professional journalists by doing journalism. And that's why we have all these different outlets in which students can indeed get experience. And That's one way we fit in. The other way we fit in is that we are very, so far we've been quite data driven and we do realize the importance of data journalism here at Merrill College. And by doing the kind of projects that we're doing, we're helping getting students comfortable with data stories. We're getting them comfortable with filing MPIA requests. So I think it fits in perfectly with what Raphael is trying to do Absolutely. So now what's next? I know you've got the new semester coming up and it is going to be a hot news cycle between all the elections and just the issues facing the country and also Maryland. So what are you focusing on? Well, We have three projects planned for the coming year instead of just two. One, again, is the school board voter guide and an accompanying series of enterprise stories. Another is a project that one of our star students is very much interested in environmental journalism will be launching, and that's a statewide look at climate change. A very, very complex, very, very important story that our students are very much focused on. I have a lot of students who are very interested in the topic. So what we will do there is we will have a county by county look at projections for temperature increase, precipitation change, et cetera, et cetera, and a series of enterprise stories. That's going to probably be something that will start in the fall semester and spill into the spring. The stories will appear as they're ready over a period of months. And then our third project, which will take place over the course of the entire academic year, stems from the fact that I received a grant from Solutions Journalism Network to do a project on youth mental health here in the state of Maryland. It's a very important project, a very important issue, and an extremely complex story to try to report. And so I'm just now beginning the planning of my new course, which is called Enterprise Reporting and Solutions Journalism. The students in that class will turn out the enterprise stories. We're also probably going to be doing a series of community meetings across the state to get together with people who are familiar with this issue. get together with others who would like to discuss it, be it teachers or parents. So that's something I'll be planning in the next month as That sounds fascinating, that intersection, know, journalism sort of as the idea of the proverbial town square, your local newspaper or news site nowadays really is sort of that place where all the ideas come together. And I love that you're doing that kind of in a physical space, in doing those community meetings to bring people together, not necessarily to agree, but to talk about a topic of importance. So I think mental health, that'll be a very interesting journey. Have you done something like that before? Sort of that listening tour community meeting idea? No, I have not. This will be new and I'm spending some time this week talking to other journalists from around the country who have done this, just so that I do this in a good way. Now, when we do do this, it will be of no cost to anyone who partners with us, since I did get a grant to fund renting the hall or whatever we have to do. But I'm looking largely to partner with news organizations or community foundations to do this. I do think it's important that we not just land on the Eastern shore as the local news network and expect people to turn out. I think that we need to be partners with the community on this. And a lot of what this will be is source development. This will steer us to people who can help us as we do these stories. They can tell us what's happening, what's going right. and what's not going right on this issue in various corners of the state. So that's kind of the goal of So that sounds really interesting. look forward to reading that. And I love that you're also doing climate change. mean, especially legislatively, know, the two biggest things of the past couple of years have been the blueprint print for education and climate change. And so taking a step, not necessarily back, but just an evaluative step to say, are all the counties in these super ambitious goals? When sometimes I think one of the real concerns with the climate action plan is the ability of the infrastructure to live up to the values of the climate action plan. So it'll be very interesting to take a statewide look because there isn't really an entity that has a statewide jurisdiction. So the local news network really is filling a very interesting void. I sure hope so. And the signs that I've gotten so far have been that we are, because our stories are getting republished, and that's really the goal. So if our listeners wanted to read your stories or learn more about it, where do they go? they, is it just, what do they Google these days to find you? They should go to the Capital News Service website, cnsmaryland .org, and look for the tab that says local. And if you click on that, you will see all of our work to date. Terrific. Well, I feel like there's more to come. What would you like to share with us as we kind of close out and wind down? Sure, I would just like to say that for any citizen who's interested in any of the issues I've discussed or any editor or news producer who's interested in any of these issues I've discussed, if you've not met me yet, please drop me a line at jzremski at umd .edu. I would be very happy to discuss any of this with Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us today, Jerry. I really appreciate it and look forward to seeing the triple crown of stories that you guys are going to produce in this next academic year. Best of thank you very much Rebecca.