The world is a crazy place and, at times, seems to be spinning out of control. And then there are the dire predictions about our industry — the decline of newsrooms, the death of print and dwindling trust in media. You can say what you will about the decline in newsrooms and the death of print, but as long as there are people like the 250 Report for America corps members and the newsrooms that host them on our side, we can still win the battle.

If you’re reading this and your organization is still standing — congratulations! The worst of the pandemic, physically speaking, is behind you, and you’ve managed to navigate an unforeseeable global crisis for over two years. And your reward is an oncoming recession.

CherryRoad Media CEO and founder Jeremy Gulban started his business with specific goals and values in mind but without a specific set of plans. He wanted his technology company to support local journalism, and a huge opportunity gave him that chance. Today, CherryRoad Media owns 64 newspapers in 10 states.

Today, some 300 Report for America corps member journalists are working in more than 200 newsrooms (newspapers, radio, digital-only and TV) across the United States, Puerto Rico and Guam. The goal is to field 1,000 journalists within the next few years to reverse the trend of newsrooms closing or reducing their coverage.

Jennifer Kho loves that Chicago is a “two-newspaper town.” She’s the new executive editor at one of those two newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times. Kho hadn’t even fully moved from Los Angeles to Chicago when her newsroom faced the monumental and solemn challenge of reporting on the July 4th mass shooting in Highland Park. That day, a single shooter, with the aid of high-capacity weapons murdered seven people and injured dozens, terrorizing and traumatizing the community.

Small weekly and rural newspapers were already struggling before the pandemic. Many had to close family-operated, decades-old publications, creating news deserts. Once the pandemic hit, more of these newspapers closed — just when residents needed important information about how local government and community organizations were responding to the pandemic. Addressing this crisis and finding a solution have come from what some might consider an unlikely source — academia.

News is a stressful job — certainly for reporters and editors, but these days, also for anyone who works in the news business. There are formidable stressors associated with doing this work that weigh heavy and can potentially impact your staff's mental health and ability to manage it. Here are some resources to help your journalists strike a healthy work-life balance, recover from burnout — or better yet, prevent it.

Newspapers were once at the heart of local communities – a vital way Americans found out about their neighbors and shared information. But now, as newspapers shut down across the country, the malignant spread of misinformation and disinformation take their place. A report from Medill called “The State of Local News 2022” finds that a fifth of the population lives in a news desert or a community at risk of becoming one.

What’s your subtitle? Job or organizational titles can be ambiguous and broad, but narrowing your focus to candid subtitles is highly beneficial. Subtitles condense, recapitulate and prioritize your focus as a leader, providing unmistakable clarity and purpose behind every question asked, task you complete or initiative you carry out.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio, a journalist at The Uvalde Leader-News, is one of hundreds of mothers who have buried their children this year because of gun violence. Her daughter, Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, “Lexi,” died in her elementary school on May 24, 2022, one of 21 people to have their lives stolen that morning. None of their families, the community, nor the newsroom will ever be whole again.

Incidents of gun violence on school grounds may not always get widespread national press attention, but they are, increasingly, the types of crimes that local newsrooms reluctantly find themselves covering. Thrust into these grave moments of community crisis, journalists have to make quick decisions about how to fulfill their duty to inform the public while demonstrating exceptional restraint and caution in how they acquire information, approach sources and communicate with their audiences.

Businesses used to pay newspapers obscene amounts of money to run help-wanted ads; then, job seekers paid for access to where the employers were. But monopolies rarely last forever, and like with every other facet of life, the internet came in and disrupted the traditional dynamic. So, what’s the alternative to a dating app culture becoming the way we hire people?

Newspapers around the country are scrambling to keep enough rolls of newsprint in stock to make their print runs and they also are closely monitoring ink and printing plate supplies. And, it's only expected to get worse in Q3 and Q4, several publishers recently told E&P. As they perform a delicate dance to maintain the paper flow, they’re turning to alternative methods and outreach.

As a medium, video has the inherent power to tell a story in an imaginative and captivating way. But video can also be a source of revenue for news organizations. Adams Publishing Group did precisely that, leveraging the talent and resources already within the organization’s agency to create marketing videos for clients who may or not be advertisers with their news titles.

“We’re holding up a mirror to see how officers treat their own and what that means for the community when police victimize their fellow men and women in blue,” Samantha Max explains to listeners in “Behind the Blue Wall,” which earned the journalist the WBUR 2021 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. E&P spoke with Max after the award was announced to learn about her professional path in journalism and her award-winning work.

When sharing your financials with your team, try to not give people more information they need to perform their jobs. Isolate the things that are high-impact and they can control. For example, instead of issuing that 47-line sheet, offer routine updates with three items that they have the most control over on the revenue side and four items that they have the most control over on the expense side.

If you’ve received any business advice in the past, say, 50 years, I’m willing to bet that it came with the assumption that you wanted to expand. We hear that advice all the time — make it bigger and better, scale this area, try these new strategies for growth and similar ideas. But should growing always be the ultimate goal of every business venture?

There is something to be said for one particular philosophy from 1991’s “City Slickers.” The grizzled old ranch hand, Curly, relays the secret to life — to focus on “one thing. Just one thing.” As you're starting 2022, pick one single thing to focus on. If you can't pick one big thing, try to find four things you can give your attention to in 2022. Then, rank them in order of when you think you could reasonably roll them out during the year.

Managing is a constant juggling act, where you’re trying to get your organization, your team and yourself to the place you want them to be. And as you work on getting to that place, you’ll often find that that goal you’ve been working toward isn’t actually what you want.

We’re well past the halfway point for the year, and in many ways, it’s starting to feel like the new normal is setting in. It’s not quite what most of us were used to, but as new buying habits, new patterns, new products, and new services have changed everyone’s lives, we’re starting to see groves form as the baseline for “normal” shifts.

When was the last time you called your own phone system? If you don’t remember, now is the time to make that call. Literally, stop reading right now and call your own main number—not somebody’s office, call the one that rings to your auto attendant.

While managing different companies over the years, I learned a few tricks with onboarding new employees. One of my favorites could help a lot of people in the coming months.

It may seem impossible after dealing with the pandemic for so long, but we are finally on the cusp of the world reopening. There’s some variance depending on where you are, your vaccination rates, and other important factors, but the overall trend is that we're certainly inching closer to a post-pandemic world.

After more than 12 months of getting by in a pandemic, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all learned a lot. We’ve all but made it through one of the biggest business disruptions in contemporary history, and that has required a lot of adaptation and flexibility from all of us.

I recently had lunch with a friend of mine who’s an architect, and in our conversation about our lives, he told me that before he shows a client a first draft of his work, he gives them a disclaimer: “This is not the house you need. It’s the house you thought you wanted.”