27 FEB 2023 · It's All Journalism host Michael O'Connell remembers Mandy Jenkins, a long-time friend of the podcast who died Sunday in her hometown of Zanesville, Ohio. To honor Mandy's memory, we're reposting the audio from our last interview with her from February 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

23 FEB 2023 · Jim Iovino, program director for the Scripps Journalism Journey Initiative, and Neal Bennett, senior talent acquisition partner at Scripps, tell It's All Journalism host Michael O'Connell about the project's mission to train experienced print reporters for broadcast careers. Keep up with the latest news about the It's All Journalism podcast, sign up for our weekly email newsletter. Also, listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, PodcastOne, Soundcloud, Audible, Amazon, or Stitcher.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

16 FEB 2023 · Independent journalist Emeri Burks interviewed 12 journalists as part of her masters degree work for the University of Missouri School of Journalism.The Donald J. Reynolds Journalism Institute recently published Burks' report about the media industry’s racial reckoning in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. Keep up with the latest news about the It's All Journalism podcast, sign up for our weekly email newsletter. Also, listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, PodcastOne, Soundcloud, Audible, Amazon, or Stitcher.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

14 FEB 2023 · Newsletters have become an essential tool for news outlets to share their stories and engage readers. But coming up with a successful newsletter strategy can be difficult.  How often should you send a newsletter? How many newsletters are too many? Should you send your newsletters to every subscriber or split your mailing list into different groups? What constitutes a breaking news alert? To find answers to those questions, Better News podcast host Michael O'Connell talks to Cameron Songer, the newsletter editor at the San Antonio Express News. Recently, Songer and Randi Stevenson, the Express News' executive producer, wrote a report for the Better News initiative about how the Express News streamlined its newsletter process and found a way to funnel more people to its digital site. Read the full report. The Better News podcast is a partnership between It’s All Journalism and the American Press Institute to a) showcase innovative/experimental ideas that emerge from the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and b) share replicable strategies and tactics that benefit the news industry as a whole. Sign up for the Better News newsletter to receive news about the latest resources, case studies, and insights. For more news about the It’s All Journalism podcast and future episodes of Better News, sign up for the weekly IAJ newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

9 FEB 2023 · Cristi Hegranes talks to It's All Journalism host Michael O'Connell about how Global Press is working to increase the number of local women journalists in some of the world’s least covered places to tell stories that are rarely heard. Keep up with the latest news about the It's All Journalism podcast, sign up for our weekly email newsletter. Also, listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, PodcastOne, Soundcloud, Audible, Amazon, or Stitcher.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2 FEB 2023 · Alex Pan is one of the founders of Storipress, a new publishing platform that’s being billed as the alternative Wordpress that's designed for publications and media. Pan talks to It's All Journalism host Michael O'Connell about how Storipress is sort of the love child of Squarespace, Trello, Google Docs and Substack. Keep up with the latest news about the It's All Journalism podcast, sign up for our weekly email newsletter. Also, listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, PodcastOne, Soundcloud, Audible, Amazon, or Stitcher.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

24 JAN 2023 · Anna Robertson, co-founder and chief content officer of The Cool Down, talks to It's All Journalism host Michael O'Connell about how the website is laser-focused on fighting pollution and filling the gaps that other news outlets leave out when covering climate. Keep up with the latest news about the It's All Journalism podcast, sign up for our weekly email newsletter. Also, listen, download and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, PodcastOne, Soundcloud, Audible, Amazon, or Stitcher.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

19 JAN 2023 · Way back when, it wasn’t uncommon for small towns to have their own newspapers, filled with the stories and goings-on that mattered to people who lived there.  Peter Rice has recreated that concept for the digital age and thinks this is the way more news outlets should operate.  “Local news should be like a friend you enjoy catching up with occasionally. It should not be a helicopter parent that won’t leave you alone, which is unfortunately the model ad-supported media have to use,” says Rice, editor of the Downtown Albuquerque News. “Newsletters are a kinder, gentler way to satisfy customers and make money.”  Rice started his publication, affectionately called DAN, in the summer of 2019 after being “infuriated or angered at some point” in the early 2000s about the decline of newspapers and “the almost self-immolation of the news business. I couldn’t escape the suspicion that the business was not as hard as the industry was making it look. It was very clear it had to change.”  While newspapers went online, keeping their content free and hoping advertisers would come with them, Rice thought there had to be a better way, especially because “the overhead of the news business was about to go way down. Distributing digital media is about 3 percent of the cost of the old model, which literally involved loggers and truckers.”  Why not just give people their local news, ask them to pay for it, and kick advertisers to the curb?  “If these papers could convert even a third or a half of their subscriber base, which was already in the habit of paying for news, if they could just get them to continue paying for news in a different format, in retrospect we could’ve avoided a lot of the carnage we’ve seen in American newsrooms and all these news deserts that have been so depressing and threatening of self-government in general,” he says.  And that’s how DAN started. ‘It’s. ‘It’s basically just a dead-simple business model that I thought they should’ve been using all along. It is the old-fashioned business model, it’s just very low overhead, because the technology takes out the printing and the ink and the distribution cost for the most part. What do you have when you have the old newspaper model with no advertising and no overhead? You’ve got readers paying money for news.” Keep up with the latest news about the It's All Journalism podcast, sign up for our weekly email newsletter. Also, listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, PodcastOne, Soundcloud, Audible, Amazon, or Stitcher.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

12 JAN 2023 · The Hearst Newspapers recently finished a year-long national investigation of how schools across the U.S. routinely restrain students or keep them in seclusion. It's All Journalism host Michael O'Connell talked to the team from the Times Union in Albany, New York about the investigation. Keep up with the latest news about the It's All Journalism podcast, sign up for our weekly email newsletter. Also, listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, PodcastOne, Soundcloud, or Stitcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10 JAN 2023 · The Oklahoman built a reputation as the state's newspaper of record by covering the Oklahoma City community for more than 100 years. However, with several changes in ownership in recent years leading to staff cuts and a decline in print readership, the paper's fortunes have reversed. Better News recently published a report written by The Oklahoman's business editor, David Dishman, on how the legacy newspaper has transformed itself from within and successfully shifted its focus away from print and toward growing its digital audience. Read the Report. Dishman talks to Better News podcast host Michael O'Connell about some of the strategies the paper employed to help a staff steeped in print traditions adopt a digital-first approach. One strategy even included playing softball and kickball to bring reporters together as a team. The Better News podcast is a partnership between It’s All Journalism and the American Press Institute to a) showcase innovative/experimental ideas that emerge from the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and b) share replicable strategies and tactics that benefit the news industry as a whole. Sign up for the Better News newsletter to receive news about the latest resources, case studies, and insights. For more news about the It’s All Journalism podcast and future episodes of Better News, sign up for the weekly IAJ newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices