Chuck Todd on rebuilding trust through local news

In the third episode of the State of Local News Podcast, host Tim Franklin—Professor, John M. Mutz Chair in Local News, and founding director of the Medill Local News Initiative—speaks with veteran journalist and podcaster Chuck Todd.

They discuss the erosion of trust in national media and how it ties into the decline of local news. Todd shares insights from his recent conversations with local news entrepreneurs, exploring emerging business models, the role of community ownership, and why local journalism must return to being service-oriented and deeply embedded in communities. The conversation also touches on policy solutions, the importance of covering everyday community life—from high school sports to local governance—and how local reporting can strengthen democracy, particularly in the run-up to elections.

This Q&A transcript captures their conversation on growth, product strategy and the evolving future of news. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

• 

  Hello everybody, and welcome to episode three of the Medill State of Local News podcast. It's great to have you with us today. I'm your host, Tim Franklin. I'm the John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill, which is home of the Local News Initiative. My guest today is one of the nation's most prominent journalists and a popular podcaster these days, Chuck Todd. Welcome to the podcast. Great to have you with us. Happy to be here.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Happy to be here. Happy Day after Local News Day.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  That's right!

  Tim Franklin

• 

  I think there's something to be said about creating awareness campaigns for local news. And it really said, "Hey, we probably need to do this more often.”

  Chuck Todd

• 

  For sure.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  It just needs some attention.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah. And we're going to get to that. The reason you're in town is because we're raising visibility of local news here in Illinois. So we're going to talk about that. So how does it feel to be interviewed by someone else on a podcast?

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Well, these days with the podcast world, you get used to it, right?

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah- Everybody's got a podcast.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  It's all home and away, as I always say. Am I the visitor or am I the home team? Am I hosting or am I answering?

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Right. Well, Chuck, you need little introduction, especially to our audience. As most of you know, Chuck was the longtime anchor for NBC's “Meet the Press,” left Meet the Press last year. And you now host the popular Chuck Toddcast. And I should mention that we're recording today shortly before we both go on stage at the Illinois Local News Summit here in Chicago. We've got 400 people here for the summit, including Governor J.B. Pritzker, the CEOs of several of the nation's big foundations, media executives and other dignitaries to talk about the local news crisis and potential solutions to the local news crisis. And in the interest of full disclosure, speaking of Medill podcasts, I should point out that you're now partnering with my colleague, J.A. Adande at Medill on a new podcast called “Dynastic.”

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Yeah. It's sports history, basically.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  But we do a deep dive on one iconic franchise every month. Our first one was the Dodgers. And it's a lot of fun. I mean, he brings the sports credibility and I'm there being the idiot fan. So it's fun.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah. I put myself in that category as well.

  So you've spent most of your career in national news, you were editor-in-chief of a “Hotline” before going to NBC. And since you left Meet the Press, you've spent a lot of time evangelizing about the importance of local news. And leading up to Local News Day, as you mentioned, you conducted a series of shows on the podcast in which you interviewed entrepreneurs and leaders in local news.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  The different models. Yeah, exactly. There's a variety of models in local news. I think we've all decided there isn't one answer yet, and I don't know if there ever is only going to be one answer.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Right. Right. So let's talk about those models. But first I wanted to ask, why local news? Why are you now so invested in local news?

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Well, look, when I left Meet the Press, let's not pretend that the national news media's position in American society was quite high, right?

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Right.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  And obviously we'd lost trust. And to me, the question was, why did we lose trust? How did we lose trust? And I've come to the conclusion that national media never had trust. And I don't mean that in some sort of disparaging way of national media. It was never intended to be the trustworthy entity. The trust for national media was derivative. It came through local. I experienced this more acutely than most national journalists. Meet the Press was one of only two NBC programs that the local affiliates could decide the time slot. Me and Seth Meyers were the thing where there wasn't a mandatory time slot. It was a window. So I had to have good relations with my local news directors. And so I spent a lot of time with the affiliates more so than Lester (Holt) did, or Savannah (Gutherie) and Hoda (Kotb) and Craig (Melvin).

  Not that they wouldn't want to, but it was a little bit more of a necessity for Meet the Press. And I can't tell you how often I'd be in an airport or whatever and people would say, "I love you and Julie on Sundays." Or, "I love you and Jack on Sundays." And I'd take me a second and go, "Oh, right."

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Talking about the local anchors.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Correct. Yeah. Right. And the average viewer never saw us as different. They didn't know that we may have worked for different companies, that our healthcare was different. In some cases, it was an owned and operated affiliate that the actual network owned, but in most cases it was not. It might have been a station owned by Nexstar or Tegna or Gannett or Sinclair or whatever. And you realize that it was that personal connection. And one of the jokes I still use, depending on the audience, I have different punchlines and I'll just leave it at that, which is a man named Craig decided classifieds ought to be free, yada, yada, yada. We ended up in the situation that we're here at the moment. And it turned out that was an incredibly important revenue stream for essentially every news organization that wasn't one of the five biggest news organizations in America.

  And so we gutted local news. And with it, we de- tethered people from where they got news, where trust was earned. And it goes to a friend of mine, you probably know this gentleman, Richard Gingras.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Oh sure.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Right. He has this great observation that I echo all the time. He ran the Google News Initiative. He's now part of an interesting little startup in Canada called Village Media. But Richard said the worst thing that happened to journalism was “All the President's Men.” And his thesis was that, well, everybody wanted to be Bob Woodward. And it's true. Our generation probably did.

  There are two pieces of nonfiction culture that were very important in my life. One was all of those Woodward books, “Final Days” and All the President’s Men, more the books and then the movie, too. And the other one was Richard Ben Kramer. And it created an entire generation of reporters that gravitated to the national. But local journalism is service journalism. National journalism is civics journalism, and there's a difference, right? We're the vegetables. Local is vegetables,

  Where do I find cheaper chicken? How do I make your life better? How do I help you out? When the news stopped being helpful to people, they certainly didn't trust it anymore.

  And I think, so I know I'm giving a long and little windy answer here, but that's why we're not going to rescue trust in the national media until we repair and fix and repopulate local news. By the way, that's really the problem in our politics today. It's not local enough. Everything's too national. Our news media's too nationalized. We have too many reporters in Washington, not enough everywhere else. We have too many politicians in Washington. We don't worry about our state legislatures enough and our city council's enough.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah, for sure.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  . And I actually think the two are correlated. If all the political news is national, well, then all the politicians want to be national.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Right. Yeah. And I agree with Richard's comment. I talk a lot about this. Public service journalism, because of Woodward and (Carl) Bernstein, I think became defined as simply accountability, watchdog journalism. And that's really important. I'm not saying that it's not. But public service journalism in local news also means covering high school sports and covering local events and covering entertainment. I mean, stuff that people really care about and that's relevant to them.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  It's the stuff that they cut out and put on the refrigerator. They still want to do that. There's a little bit of that, but it is the stuff that allows you to understand what the hell's going on in your community. And what's interesting to me is local news has been gutted and you'd think, oh, nobody wants it. Well, when you talk to people, they miss it. And they all say ... I always ask, "Well, where do you get your information?" "Well, I got a listserve I follow here and then I do this over here and this Facebook page and my friend down the street. "And you're just going, " What the hell have we done? "Right. And I live in Arlington, Virginia, and we can't get any coverage.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  So during the series of podcasts that I mentioned that you did on local news, you had an analogy, I think it may have been in one of your first ones with Montana Free Press, and you equated local news to craft beer. And so I was doing my walk around campus, I was listening to it, and I thought that's a powerful analogy.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  What was funny is how there was this period of time where we thought, look, back in the 17th and 18th century, every town had its own brewer. Somebody made the beer. And then of course, like anything, you nationalized it and all. And then we gave everybody the tools to figure out, well, you don't have to drink Budweiser or Miller or Coors, go back. And so we're back to that.

  It turns out people prefer something unique and local. They want that experience. They want to know that Atlanta has a taste that's different from Memphis, that’s

  different from Bozeman. And I think it was one of those things, I'm like, there's this pride in craft beer.

  I think we can get this pride back in local news.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah. I'm going to use that analogy when I'm out talking to folks with full credit to you of course. No, no, no. Okay. Please. So basically, by making that analogy, are you saying that the era of chain ownership of local news just doesn't work anymore?

  Tim Franklin

• 

  I'm not going to say it's not going to work. Look, scale is scale. There's always, you need some, but I have a vision that is a little bit more UPI than AP. I do think we need to network all of the local news together and we need to come together. There's a lot of ways we can scale if you do this, but within reason.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  And the original UPI, United Press International, sort of the wire service that predated AP, it was actually a cooperative. AP is a not- for-profit, but UPI was a cooperative.

  It really was sharing and it was trading. It's a hybrid model where you have local ownership that is working, maybe there are operational resources that could be shared. I've tried to go at this in different ways and the latest way I'm trying to build is to basically create an ad network that people would join. And then from there, you might be able to create a larger network. But it's not that it's over, but I do think we're going to enter a period where there's low trust in corporate owned anything.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Right. Yeah.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  So I just think independent is going to be a halo. You don't want to lose that, but there is opportunity that comes with scale. And there's network effects, but if you can do it in a way that it's easy to say win-win, and that's why I'd like to start with ad dollars.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  In our data, about a third of all newspapers are owned by the 10 largest chains in the country. And I think one of the mistakes that was made was pulling editors, reporters out of local markets and centralizing a lot of the coverage.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Look, I'm going to pick on Gannett here for a minute because when I first dove into this, I've learned from a lot of people how Gannett?

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Now USA Today Company, by the way, they've rebranded.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  The USA Today

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Company, right? Yeah.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  And they tried to buy a paper out and it was really important to them to know that all of the papers were more valuable together than they were selling them separately. They owned something like two South Dakota papers, but they didn't have a single editor in South Dakota. The editor of the South Dakota, Gannett-owned, now USA Today-owned, (paper) was based in Minneapolis. It was regional oversight and it was just like, what are we doing?

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah. Not a local brewery.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Exactly! Not a local brewery.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  So after you've now done, four, five, six of these interviews with local news entrepreneurs, and you've talked to Montana Free Press, Sahan Journal, Deep South Today, the Salt Lake Tribune. (What struck you)?

  Chuck Todd

  The Salt Lake Tribune is the most interesting one to me because it's 150 years old, it’s a legacy publication, and it has a similar origin story of the Baltimore Banner, where they’ve got basically a wealthy individual. The Huntsman in this case. In Baltimore, it's another gentleman's name, Stewart Bainum, who basically said, look, I'm going to give you a five-year runway or a 10-year runway and then turn yourself into a nonprofit. And they rescued Salt Lake. Now, look, this is the real challenge, right? Some of these legacy news organizations have contractual obligations that are really costly, and there are arguments to be made like what's happening with The Washington Post, and then there's a startup that looks like that's coming from Robert Albritton, who's the son of the former owner of the Old Washington Star. And his opportunity, and he said it to me, he says, "Look, I don't have to print 92,000 copies every day." The Washington Post does. It's in a collective bargaining agreement and this is an issue around the country. So it's very difficult to flip a legacy into an independent and to get some of the flexibility that you kind of need to sort of reimagine what local news is. And I don't say this to disparage unionization. This is not what that's meant to be. It’s just legacy obligations domake transformation more difficult.

  Right. Yeah. I don't think there's any question about that. What has been your takeaway when you look back at all these interviews that you've done? What models have you found to have promise? What encourages you? What gives you reason for optimism?

  Tim Franklin

• 

  What encourages me is that nobody's ruling anything out. And I think you can't. It's the same answer that most politicians should give when they say, "What's our energy solution? All of it! "Can't kick the oil habit, probably need to look at nukes. Renewables are good. We are always going to need energy, so let's do it all. You cannot rely on donors alone. You cannot rely on philanthropy alone because guess what? You got to protect yourself. So you've got to have these various models, whether it's events, advertising, I think you can bring back classifieds. I think there's a way to do this.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Interesting.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Okay. Especially if you develop a community again. I mean, just look at how the Facebook marketplace works. It works actually because of its localization of it.How did newspapers lose autos, real estate?!It's beyond me the amount of mistakes that were made there, but hey, but it's the membership model. Yes, philanthropy matters, especially if you're trying to jumpstart it early. The perfect model, I always say, is the Green Bay Packers, right? The perfect model is community-owned and a cooperative because the profits can be shared with the employees and the owners. If the community owns it, then you at least ground it in the community and it's harder for it to go belly up.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah, that's a great point. So a friend of mine, a guy named Tom Stites, former senior editor at the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times started this thing called the Banyan Project, which is trying to build co-ops, local news co-ops around the country. And for those who don't know or aren't familiar with them, the basic idea is that the community buys shares or interests in the local news organization, and then they form a board and this board basically oversees the local news outlet. And it's a way both to get an infusion of revenue into a local news organization, but it also gives the community, literally, a vested stake.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Look, I do think the local news should be representative of the community. It really should. And so look, Itake the issue of religion. If the media universe was centered in Topeka, Kansas, I promise you the coverage of religion would be different.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah. One of the most undercovered areas, I think.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  It just would be different.

  New York is a very secular place. Washington's a very secular place, so religion is covered differently, but different communities are going to cover faith issues differently. They're going to cover certain cultural issues differently, and they shouldn't be lectured by a corporation in some headquarters somewhere else. That's where your co-op can be more effective. And it is also why local news is less polarizing, nine times out of 10, because usually it is more reflective of the community as a whole. You want to talk about adding trust to the readership?

  That adds trust to the readership.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  We interviewed you at the Medilla Local News Initiative last year, and you talked about one thing that you're excited about as potentially helping local news organizations, and that's covering high school sports and youth sports. And actually, we're now seeing this in some ways. I interviewed Steve Grove, who's the CEO at the Minnesota Star Tribune. They have a huge high school sports initiative.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Well, trhe Star Trib is really pivoting really well.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  They are. And Steve's a very savvy leader, former Google executive. And David Hoffmann, who is now the majority owner of Lee Enterprises, has also talked about high school sports as being one of the pillars of their strategy.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  There’s a ton of money here. I'll just be ... What's the great line from the Bonnie and Clyde people? Why do you rob banks? That’s where the money is?

  I mean, part of my focus on youth sports is, one, it is community, but two, Red America and Blue America both want to see their kids play.

  So that's one thing. But the other part of it is, athletics being a ticket to paying for college is not a 1% issue anymore. It's now a 15 to 20% issue. I got a friend of mine whose kid's getting NIL money to play beach volleyball at the University of Central Arkansas and you're like, I know what you're going to say. Really? Central Arkansas? Yes. Central Arkansas. Beach volleyball is a division one sport in about 40 to 50 universities and central Arkansas happens to be one of them. And here's something else I learned. Most of the people that are participating in the Olympics beach volleyball, no matter the country they're in, go to college in one of these universities here in the United States that has these things. So the point is, I think the Caitlin Clark effect is going to balance out the genders in youth sports.

  Even though our population is flat lining, youth sports participation is growing because of girls. But guess who the parents of these youth sports people are? Millennials.

  Who's in the heart of the demo advertising demo right now? I mean, just look at it purely transactionally. The advertiser, the advertising demographic that advertisers want now are the people who spend money. Who's spending money? Thirty-five to-50 (year olds).

  They're the parents who use sports. I just aged out of the demo. It's terrible.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah. That's okay. We won't talk about that.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Yeah, exactly. It's really uncomfortable when you know that they're using '70s rock music and it's code further going after me.

  But that's the other reason that you do use sports is it brings in an advertiser that every small business person really wants to be talking to. So it's glue for a community. First of all, connecting with ... How else do you get kids to even care that, oh, there's something mentioned by name? How cool is that? Yeah. And it's the right demographic that you need to build. We all know part of the problem in TV news is it's too old. The demographic's too old. And so it's not the best advertising demographic. Well, get younger. Well, the average millennial parent is doing youth sports, so make their life easier, help cover it. A good local news organization can be the platform that hosts all the games live for the ... It's so easy to stream this stuff now. There's also a way that you can be, you as the local news entrepreneur can be the home for the live events of every sports league in your community.

  .

  And guess what? I promise you local businesses will underwrite it. The local car dealership would love to be associated with you. It is a safe space. S

  In fact, I had one person who was just like, "You drop the local news part. I like what you're thinking here." And I'm like, "Yeah, but the whole point is to actually fix this. " Don't get me wrong, I love youth sports. That's not my passion. My passion is to fix the community news aspect of it.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Well, speaking of fixing community news, I really wanted to get your take on the idea of public policy supporting local news. So you've spent your entire adult life in media and also covering politics. So you have the inside look at both institutions. We're going to talk about this at the Illinois Local News Summit today. How do you feel about that and where do you think we're going with that?

  Tim Franklin

• 

  So look, I appreciate the good intention here. I think there's a fine line for government to subsidize news. I think it does ... There's a fine line there. If the government wants to give tax breaks to local businesses that advertise in local entities, that makes a lot of sense to me. You’re trying to support a local economy.

  I like that.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Yeah. And the government subsidizes other industries.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  That's exactly right. There's plenty of industries that get subsidized that way. ... That to me makes a lot of sense. Government paying for employees, I think there's ... I worry about that a little bit because of the perception, right? We already have enough perception problems in media. So that's where I get a little bit concerned ... But look, it's genuine. I think there's plenty of legislators that want to fix it (and ask), "Hey, what can we do to help?" Look, don't get rid of legal notices. That's a subsidy for local news organizations.

  I think this tax break for local businesses to discourage them from using the Google ad network and encouraging them to use local entities, I think that is a net positive because again, it goes to the same thing, giving a tax break to a company that wants to move a business to the community. Nobody would blink an eye at that. So

  I just think they have to be carefully designed because you don't want to feel like you're going to start relying on government because that does ... It opens the door. Look, take the debate about the vices that we keep legalizing. Okay? If the state goes into business with casinos, how hard are they going to regulate them? The government needs that revenue. Sure. They've chosen, why are we like obsessing over the vices? Why are we legalizing all our vices? Because politicians don't have the guts to raise taxes. So instead they're like, "Well, let's try the sin taxes." But what you've done is you've put government in business with cannabis growers, with casino operators and all this, and you're the regulator. Can you do both? Are you going to be trusted to do both? So that's the marriage I'm worried about. You don't want to get too close.

  So how government helps here, I think, matters a lot.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  And so I was on the Illinois Local Journalism Task

  Force and we were very concerned about the independence of local news organizations. We tried to structure the incentive program so it's first-come, first-served. So the government plays no role. But I understand, believe me, I understand the anxiety.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  And I think that's the thing. As long as everybody's thinking about that problem, then

  Probably it's at least going to be designed in a way to distribute the money that doesn't look like it's playing favorites.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Before we go, one last question that I think also plays into your wheelhouse and I know it's something you think about a lot. The midterm elections are coming upon us quickly. There's a lot of anxiety about the midterms. The administration has talked about nationalizing the elections. We've seen ballots seized in Fulton County, Georgia. There also were some election records seized in Maricopa County, Arizona, but elections are administered at the local level. What should local news organizations be thinking about now in covering these midterm elections? And are you concerned with the hollowing out of local news organizations? Are we going to have the infrastructure to be the watchdogs?

  Tim Franklin

• 

  I'm worried about the lack of infrastructure, but the single most important thing local news reporters can do right now on the midterms is learn how the vote count is done in your community and how it is announced. It is different in various communities. You have some cities do what Milwaukee does, what Philadelphia does, what Atlanta does, which is it is all counted in one central location, right? The suburban and rural counties are not done that way. Do I wish there weren't two different systems that also happened to be a majority, one party is counted in one system, a majority of the other party? That's not healthy, right? But the single most important thing a local news reporter can do right now is just explain how it's done now. Don't be explaining it after the fact.

  Let me tell you how the vote is counted here. Most of these election administrators now, after going through what Trump, and I'm name checking him here on this because he has created this mess and this distrust of local election administrators, the smart ones are being very transparent. The smart ones are inviting reporters, inviting people to see this is how it works.

  You got to do these stories now. You cannot wait until the election week or even then because you've got to get people educated. T ... You know how you have one of these aha moments that makes you feel like an idiot?

  Chuck Todd

• 

  I’ve had a few of those.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  For me, it's realizing that the number one thing all reporters do: we're teachers. We’re educators. And that's always been the role. If you think of every story that you're writing as something that someone may be reading for the first time about that topic, you're going to do what? You're going to add more context. One of the mistakes, particularly political reporters, and I made this mistake a lot, is the assumption that people know how certain things work.

  And we don't do enough educating on the basics. I had somebody tell me, "Well, if you think that ... " You'll have reporters be there like, "Ah, the public doesn't even know there's nine Supreme Court justices." I'm like, "And how many times have you pointed out there are nine Supreme Court justices when you write about the Supreme Court?" Meanwhile, sports writers have known for years, you better explain how the playoffs work. You got to actually educate them about the system. We don't educate people about the system enough. We do for how the college football playoff works. We do for how Selection Sunday works. We don't for how the election for our politics works. Do these stories now, learn it. By the way, doing this now will source you up and make you better prepared to cover whatever attempts there are to mess with people's perception of what happened.

  So not only are you educating your public, you're also preparing yourself to cover election night better if you start doing these stories right now.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  I'm so glad you mentioned that because – and I covered politics at one point in my career and edited political coverage and I was guilty of this, too.

  We said, “Oh, those are process stories. Nobody cares about process. Let's write about the issues or the horse race.”t But it seems to me this is a year of all years where process matters.

  Tim Franklin

• 

  Explain to people how it works.

  .

  This is how the vote counting works. And if you're a state that has a lot of early voting, when do they count the early vote? If you're a state that doesn't have a lot of early vote, what happens to absentee ballots? When do they get sent in? How long? Is it, are you a state that it's postmarked on Election Day or it has to arrive by Election Day? There are all sorts of variables. And the beauty of our system, the feature is that it's not national.

  It is why we have less corruption in our elections. It is the feature of our system. And so nationalizing is a nightmare. Nationalizing will lead to corruption because it becomes easier to hack one system rather than 50 or 3,000.

  Chuck Todd

• 

  Well, Chuck, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. It's really great to have you. Thanks for being here. And so I hope you'll join us next month for the State of Local News Podcast. You can find us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or YouTube or the Medill Local News Initiative website. Please look for us there. I want to thank our supporters of this podcast, the MacArthur Foundation, specifically. So thanks for joining us and we'll see you again next month.

  Tim Franklin

Subscribe to the State of Local News Podcast:

• RSS
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts