MADISON, June 4, 2024 (Wisconsin Watch) — Richard Brown will become the director of engagement, growth and innovation Wisconsin Watch starting June 17.
Brown brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to help Wisconsin Watch serve audiences it isn’t yet reaching, boost engagement and lead regional growth initiatives, starting in Milwaukee and northeast Wisconsin.
This new role is funded by Wisconsin Watch donors and the American Journalism Project as part of a collaborative effort to rebuild Wisconsin’s local news ecosystem.
“I strongly believe that there is a growing desire for news media to establish a genuine and altruistic connection with the audience we serve,” Brown said. “This aligns with the interests of not just the future of news media, but also the integrity of our democracy. Wisconsin holds immense significance, and I’m confident that Wisconsin Watch provides the foundational platform to initiate this new era of engagement. I aim to help our audience navigate not just their daily lives but also the critical decisions shaping Wisconsin at both state and local levels.”
The local commerce business model that long supported for-profit newsrooms has been upended in the last two decades by smartphones, search engines, social networks and related services that have changed the ways people shop, advertise and get their news. Nearly 3,000 American newspapers have gone out of business since 2005, and 43,000 local news reporting and editing positions have been lost, according to the State of Local News report by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. About half our nation’s 3,143 counties have only one news outlet left, and more than 200 counties have none. Wisconsin has been hit especially hard, with most local news sources now owned by out-of-state chains slashing costs in line with falling advertising revenue.
This loss of local reporting is contributing to the fracturing of communities, to people not getting helpful information for navigating everyday life, to the spread of disinformation and to declining trust that we can actually find effective solutions to vexing problems, said Wisconsin Watch CEO George Stanley.
As a Wisconsin-based nonprofit with a mission of providing truthful, impactful local reporting – and sharing it freely with others – Wisconsin Watch is in the best position of any news outlet to rebuild our state’s local news ecosystem, Stanley said.
“We’re doing it in a collaborative fashion with local news and community partners, including the Northeast Wisconsin News Initiative in Green Bay and Appleton and our deepening cooperative venture with Neighborhood News Service in Milwaukee,” Stanley said. “Richard Brown will play a key role in building upon these partnerships to help fill remaining gaps in local news coverage. We’re going to make sure the stories that matter most get told – the ones most important to community life and effective representative government.”
A national media consultant who lives in the Milwaukee area, Brown has served as a contract coach for the News Revenue Hub’s Mission-Driven Advertising and Sponsorships Lab. In addition, he is a revenue sustainability coach for Local Independent Online News (LION), an Emerging News Leadership coach for The City University of New York (CUNY), a monthly columnist for Editor & Publisher magazine and a contributing writer for Digital Content Next. He has served as senior director of retention for The Daily Beast, overseeing retention, engagement and subscription management. Before that Brown held key positions leading digital engagement, sales and retention strategies for Gannett and the USA Today Network, for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and for LPi Liturgical Publications Inc.
Brown is a member of the Milwaukee Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and serves on the board of directors for the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation. Wisconsin Watch reports are available for use by all WNA member news outlets.
This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
