Dan and Ellen talk with Jennifer Peter, who was named editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project in September of 2025. The Marshall Project is a national nonprofit that covers issues related to criminal justice. She's only the third editor in 10 years, replacing Susan Chira, a former New York Times editor. Peter started her career as a reporter, working for 12 years at newspapers in Idaho, Connecticut and Virginia before joining The Associated Press in Boston. From the AP, she moved to The Globe, where she rose quickly through the ranks. She was regional editor, politics editor, and city editor. As metro editor, she oversaw The Globe's Boston Marathon bombing coverage, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News.

In 2018 she was promoted to managing editor, the number-two position in the newsroom. In our conversation, Peter tells us about The Marshall Project's mission, including its foray into local news in Cleveland, St. Louis and Jackson, Mississippi.

A production note: Dan is at Northeastern, but Ellen is beaming in from a studio at Brookline Interactive Group, which handles multimedia for the town of Brookline. BIG, as it is known locally, is also host to a class of Brandeis students who travel to Brookline to report and write stories for Brookline.News, the nonprofit newsroom Ellen is part of. BIG provides audio and video of Brookline civic meetings and also works with Brookline public school students on multimedia projects.

Dan has a Quick Take about yet another newspaper that's gone out of business, although this one has an unusual twist. The devastating wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles area last January have claimed the Palisadian-Post, a twice-monthly newspaper that had been publishing since 1928. The problem is that many of the residents were forced to leave, and though rebuilding is under way, the community hasn't come close to recovering.

One of Dan's Northeastern students, Abbie O'Connor, is from the Pacific Palisades — her home is still standing. She wrote several times in my opinion journalism class during the semester about how the Palisades were affected by the fire. Among other things, an enormous number of Palisades residents moved to Manhattan Beach, re-creating the sense of community they had in their former homes.

Abbie's final project was an enterprise story on racial and economic disparities in the rebuilding resources that are being made available to the mostly white, affluent residents of the Pacific Palisades and the lower-income, historically Black community of Altadena.

Ellen's Quick Take is about Brian McGrory returning as editor of The Boston Globe in January. McGrory left in early 2023 to become chair of Boston University's journalism department. He'll replace Nancy Barnes, who announced last week that she'd be stepping aside.

Dan and Ellen talk with Chris Fitzsimon, publisher and CEO of The States Newsroom, the nation's largest nonprofit news organization covering state government. Chris is also the host of a new podcast called Stories from The States. Recent topics on his pod include the impact of Medicaid cuts, ICE detention, and redistricting.

Fitzsimon knows his way around state politics. From 2004 to 2017, he directed a team of seven journalists at the NC Policy Watch, which he founded. He also hosted a weekly radio show and wrote a syndicated column on North Carolina politics and government.

From 1991 to 1994, he was the spokesperson, speechwriter and policy adviser for the North Carolina speaker of the House. Before that, he was a television news reporter covering politics and government.

Dan has a Quick Take about The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. In 2019, the Tribune became the first legacy daily newspaper to become a nonprofit. Unlike a few notable hybrids like The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Tampa Bay Times, which are for-profit papers owned by nonprofit foundations, the Salt Lake paper is a true nonprofit, just like your local public television or radio station. And the Tribune has been notably successful.

Ellen's Quick Take is on an investigation by SpotlightPA into the director of the Penn State Cancer Institute. The news outlet, which is a nonprofit that provides reporting to more than 90 outlets throughout Pennsylvania, uncovered damaging clinical practices and a toxic work environment. After the story ran last month, the director resigned.

Dan and Ellen talk with Todd Landfried, co-founder and CEO of N2 Media Holdings. As consumers cut the cord on cable TV, he hopes to develop a sustainable model for local news production. We know from our research here at What Works that local television news is still highly trusted. His mission: to reinvent local news for the streaming era.

Ellen is back and fully bionic after a short hiatus for knee replacement surgery.

Dan has a Quick Take about a finding in a recent report by LION Publishers that gets into how to think about raising money. LION, as most of our listeners know, stands for Local Independent Online News. Anyway, its latest sustainability report found that startup news organizations can't just hope that revenues are something that are going to materialize. Fundraising takes dedicated employees, as Dan will explain.

Ellen's Quick Take is on an alt-weekly in Seattle called The Stranger that has become an influential political force. This summer, 47 candidates for local office paid a call on the newsroom in order to seek an editorial endorsement. And they brought snacks!