A Local News Ownership Horror Story; X’s AI Bot Keeps Bringing Up ‘White Genocide’–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: May 15, 2025

Indy Digest: May 15, 2025

Today, I am going to tell you a story that painfully illustrates the challenges of today’s local news business—especially when people who are not community-minded are making the decisions.

The story starts in 2021, in the Denver area, when a family that owned a local newspaper group decided it was time to retire, and handed off their newspapers to a nonprofit. As Colorado Community Media reported then:

Colorado Community Media, the company that produces two dozen newspapers around the Denver-area suburbs, has been acquired by a local and national partnership with the goal of building a sustainable business model for local news, its ownership announced on May 3.

Jerry and Ann Healey, the couple who built the company over the past decade, sold the network of papers that now spans eight counties and dozens of communities to a joint partnership between the National Trust for Local News, or NTLN, and The Colorado Sun. …

With the Healeys looking toward retirement and hoping to leave the company in good hands, publisher Jerry Healey said the deal was the best he could have hoped for.

“We were looking for new owners who understand the purpose of community newspapers,” Jerry said. “Someone who believed in our mission to tell stories that matter in our communities, not just in sending profits back East. They have the heart and vision for what could be a way to preserve and grow local papers everywhere, not just ours.” …

The acquisition charts a new path forward for family-owned legacy newspapers, said Larry Ryckman, the editor and co-founder of the Colorado Sun.

“This is a cool opportunity to demonstrate to Colorado and the country that we can find a way to keep local journalism in local hands,” Ryckman said.

Nice, right? In theory, yes—but this story does not have a happy ending. Far from it.

Earlier this week, Colorado Community Media announced the National Trust for Local News had turned around and sold it to a for-profit company. As the headline euphemistically put it, “National Trust for Local News announces partnership with Times Media Group.” The lede:

The National Trust for Local News today announced a restructuring of its Colorado operations — known as Colorado Community Media — that centers on a partnership with Times Media Group.

The National Trust will transfer ownership of 21 local publications concentrated in metro Denver to Times Media Group (TMG), a community news publisher based in Tempe, Arizona, whose owner has personal roots in Colorado.

In other words: A family handed off their newspapers to a nonprofit to assure the newspapers were kept in local hands, and not sold off to a profit-hungry company that would do bad things to the newspapers. Four years later, the nonprofit then sold those newspapers to one of the worst newspaper companies I’ve ever encountered.

I could rant about how terrible Times Media Group is, because it bought and then unceremoniously killed off one newspaper I loved from afar (San Diego CityBeat), and has withered a newspaper I edited for a decade down to near nothing (Tucson Weekly). But instead, I’ll hand things off to Nieman Lab reporter Sarah Scire:

Most of the Times Media Group’s growth has come through acquisitions of local media groups, but when the company launched a new free weekly, the Queen Creek Tribune, (Times Media Group founder Steve) Strickbine promised the Arizona town (population 68,000) that “a full-time reporter will report on town happenings, ranging from public safety and education news, to local events and obituaries.”

Three years later, the Queen Creek Tribune masthead does not list any dedicated local reporters. Instead, “the news department” is listed as (Arizona-based Christina) Fuoco-Karasinski as executive editor, a photojournalist who contributes to 19 different publications in the Phoenix area, and a circulation director. Of the five stories on the Queen Creek Tribune homepage on Tuesday, four appear with “Tribune Staff” bylines and one, on a local musical performance, is bylined by the executive editor.

Another Times Media Group newspaper, the Ventura County Reporter, had 11 local employees when it was acquired in 2019. One employee departed immediately and questions about his replacement were rebuffed. Today, the masthead lists the editorial department as the Arizona-based Fuoco-Karasinski (with her last name misspelled), a freelance arts reporter, and one columnist. Of the five other names listed on the Ventura County Reporter masthead, at least three are based in Arizona.

More recently, in July 2024, the Times Media Group acquired the southern California-based Century Group Media and its four weekly community newspapers. Days later, the Times Media Group laid off several of the Century Group’s 26-person staff, including three of the four weekly editors, and limited spending on freelance articles.

The situation—along with four Alden-owned dailies that print matching issues across cities like San Bernardino and Riverside—prompted California State University media studies professor T.C. Corrigan to dub the Inland Empire region a “news mirage.”

Of course, I am not privy to the finances of the National Trust for Local News, or Colorado Community Media. I don’t know all of the challenges they were facing. But I do know that it’s unbelievably wrong for a nonprofit to sell off newspapers it was tasked with protecting—to a company that’s repeatedly proven itself to be a very, very bad steward of local news.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• State Farm has gotten the emergency rate increase it requested from the state. Our partners at Calmatters report: “State Farm can raise homeowner and other rates starting next month, becoming the first insurance company to win approval to do so on an emergency interim basis in California. The state’s largest insurer made the unprecedented request for emergency rate hikes earlier this year, after it said it was in financial distress and expected more than $7 billion in claims because of the Los Angeles County fires in January.  The state Insurance Department staff recommended approval of the company’s request, but Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara asked the company for more information about its finances. He also asked whether the insurer could turn to its parent company, State Farm Mutual, for help. Lara then conditionally approved but punted the official decision to a judge, who oversaw a three-day public hearing last month to consider the proposed agreement between the department and the insurer. … Lara, who as commissioner has the last word, adopted the ruling today. The decision means State Farm can raise its rates an average 17% for homeowners, 15% for renters and condominiums and 38% for rental dwellings starting June 1.”

• A new book claims that President Joe Biden was deteriorating so severely that aides discussed having him use a wheelchair if elected to a second term. BBC reports: “Joe Biden’s aides have hit back at a new book that accuses a White House inner circle of covering up the former US president’s ‘physical deterioration’ during his ill-fated re-election campaign. According to the book, Original Sin, Biden’s condition during his 2024 presidential run was said to be so poor that aides discussed putting him in a wheelchair. A spokesperson for Biden, 82, said ‘evidence of aging is not evidence of mental incapacity’ and maintained the Democrat had been ‘a very effective president.’ The book, by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios, is due to be released on 20 May. … The authors write: ‘Biden’s physical deterioration—most apparent in his halting walk—had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election.’”

• The good news: Opioid overdose deaths in the country are falling. Bad news: Federal budget cuts could severely diminish the agencies that are partially responsible for this drop. The Washington Post says: “U.S. drug deaths plunged in 2024, according to federal data published Wednesday, offering hope that public health measures are paying off even as the toll remains high. Though there doesn’t seem to be a single variable to attribute to the gains, the drop in overdose deaths comes amid concerns that cuts to federal public health agencies and proposals to cut Medicaid could undercut progress. An estimated 80,391 people died from drugs in 2024, a decrease of nearly 27 percent from the previous year, according to provisional state data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths from synthetic opioids—chiefly fentanyl, which has fueled the overdose crisis during the past decade—played a role in the majority of drug deaths but tumbled by nearly 28,000 fatalities, the estimates show. The progress comes after drug deaths, which had been rising for more than a decade, soared to staggering levels during the coronavirus pandemic, surpassing 100,000 each year starting in 2021. The CDC said the 2024 death toll represents the lowest level since 2019, before the pandemic.”

• A shocking amount of store-bought rice contains high levels of arsenic and cadmium. CNN explains: “Samples of store-bought rice from more than 100 different brands purchased in the United States contained dangerously high levels of arsenic and cadmium, according to a new report shared first with CNN. ‘Even at low levels, both arsenic and cadmium have been linked to serious health harms, including diabetes, developmental delays, reproductive toxicity and heart disease,’ said coauthor Jane Houlihan, research director for Healthy Babies, Bright Futures. The organization, which is dedicated to reducing children’s exposure to toxic chemicals, produced the report. ‘Heavy metal contamination in young children is especially concerning, as early-life exposures are associated with reduced IQ and a range of cognitive and behavioral problems,’ Houlihan said. One in four samples of rice purchased from grocery and retail stores across the United States exceeded levels of inorganic arsenic set in 2021 by the US Food and Drug Administration for infant rice cereal, according to the report published Thursday.”

• A new dress code prompted about 2,000 unionized Starbucks baristas to go on strike. The Associated Press says: “More than 2,000 Starbucks baristas at 120 U.S. stores have gone on strike since Sunday to protest the new dress code, according to Starbucks Workers United, a union representing the coffee giant’s U.S. workers. Starbucks put new limits starting Monday on what its baristas can wear under their green aprons. The dress code requires employees at company-operated and licensed stores in the U.S. and Canada to wear a solid black shirt and khaki, black or blue denim bottoms. Under the previous dress code, baristas could wear a broader range of dark colors and patterned shirts. Starbucks said the new rules would make its green aprons stand out and create a sense of familiarity for customers as it tries to establish a warmer, more welcoming feeling in its stores.”

• And finally … Twitter/X’s AI feature had a disconcertingly weird glitch (?) earlier this week. Wired explains: “A chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence startup xAI appeared to be suffering from a glitch Wednesday when it repeatedly brought up white genocide in South Africa in response to user queries about unrelated topics on X. Grok, which competes with other chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is directly integrated into the social media platform that Musk also owns. … In response to topics ranging from streaming platform HBO Max’s name change to Medicaid cuts proposed by US lawmakers, the chatbot often seemed to initially stay on topic before veering back to white genocide in South Africa, completely unprompted. When asked to confirm the salary of Toronto Blue Jays player Max Scherzer, for example, the generative artificial intelligence chatbot launched into an explanation of white genocide and a controversial South African anti-apartheid song. It’s unclear what caused Grok to experience the issue. X and xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment from WIRED. Musk, who is originally from South Africa, has described internal factions within the South African government as ‘actively promoting white genocide.’”

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