(Image courtesy of Maxmann on Pixabay.com)

 It’s no secret traditional newspapers and magazines are hurting. Both the mainstream and opinion outlets have been awash with stories about staff cutbacks or publications closing their doors or all but doing so. Is American journalism facing, as a recent Atlantic story said, an “existential moment”?

The news about the news might not be as unrelievedly bad as described.

Some news outlets are not only surviving but also growing.

Consider Berkleyside, the online daily for the city of Berkeley, California, and The Dallas Express, its Texas counterpart. The former leans progressive, while the latter leans conservative. Yet each is, in its way, a success story.

Meat-and-potatoes reporting

Founded in 2009, Berkeleyside does what any self-respecting newspaper does. The publication covers city hall, the cops, local businesses, schools,  arts, and more.

Last week, Berkeleyside had a story that dug into the political contributions to candidates for a state Senate race, another that shows a city department plans to escort elderly women near crime-ridden areas, and a profile of a fourteen-year-old Afghan student.

It might be tempting to dismiss the paper’s meat-and-potatoes reporting, but it would be a mistake. Growing up in nearby Walnut Creek from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, I was an avid reader of not only The Contra Costa Times, where, as I mentioned, I worked as a paperboy for four-and-a-half years, but also The San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Oakland Tribune. I don’t recall those papers ever covering Berkeley in depth.

Berkeleyside covers its city as well as or better than the two local Bay Area papers I worked as a reporter in 1996 and 1997, the supposed halcyon days before most Americans had Internet access. Indeed, the publication is branching out to Richmond, where it plans to hire an editor and a reporter.

To be sure, Berkeley is unique. It has the feel of both a small town and a large city. Nearly three in four Berkeley residents have earned a bachelor’s- or an advanced degree, a rate nearly double the national average.

Berkleyside said it makes money from donations and voluntary subscriptions. Indeed, in 2021 the outlet noted 131 people give $1,000 or more a year.

Follow the leaders and readers

Is the paper’s success replicable?

Perhaps its funding sources are not. Oaklandside, the paper’s sister publication, had 133,000 subscribers in 2021, three times fewer subscribers than Berkleyside’s 519,000.

The Dallas Express is subsidized the old-fashioned way: through a rich local businessman with a financial stake in the city’s civic health.

Another difference: The Dallas Express covers the culture wars more often than Berkleyside. The paper ran several stories about drag queens, the sexual identity of the woman who shot up the church of nondenominational Christian pastor Joel Osteen, and the divorce of the city’s mayor after an alleged sexual affair with a city staffer.

Other than those two differences, the papers are similar. They highlight stories on crime, schools, city hall, and arts.

Compare the two paper’s missions. Berkleyside’s is “to break news, build community, and serve our readers.” The Dallas Express is the following: “We believe that news should be reported dispassionately to place emphasis on facts over all else.”

Those goals are as traditional as they come.