Welcome to Forum 360.

With its global outlook and local view.

I'm Ardith Keck.

We now have a new homegrown news outlet called, Signal Akron.

We are talking with Susan Zake, Who is Editor in Chief of Signal Akron.

Some of you at home may have been receiving emails from Susan and Signal Akron, and are curious about who they are.

I am.

So let's talk with Susan and learn more.

I recently learned that there is a Signal, Ohio.

- That's correct.

So where did the Signal Group come from?

So the Signal Group was an idea that started percolating about five years ago.

Largely in the Cleveland area.

Some research was done sponsored by the American Journalism Project.

And several foundations in the area were involved in trying to figure out how to solve news deserts in mostly urban areas to start with.

From that early research, they did some focus groups had some community conversations to talk to local people about what's missing in your ability to get local news, and what they found out was that most people in their neighborhoods, so at their neighborhood level felt like they didn't really know what was going on in their own community anymore.

Some of that was because of cuts to news operations, shifts in budget that we've all watched over the years.

Different priorities for kind of local news agencies.

But what came from that was Signal Cleveland, which was the first outlet in a larger group called Signal Ohio.

And then a year later, Signal Akron was launched.

So we're the second newsroom in what is becoming a chain of statewide newsrooms in Ohio.

And we launched in December of 2023.

- So where are the others in in Ohio?

- So Signal Cleveland was the first.

They're about a year ahead of us so they've already had their second anniversary.

We have a newsroom in Cincinnati.

Well, it's actually it's a documenters organization in Cincinnati.

That will soon launch a newsroom this year.

And then we have a statehouse bureau in Columbus, that just added its third reporter.

- Are there other Signals in the nation?

- No Signal, we're actually unique in some ways.

We're the one of the few statewide news organizations that has been launched as nonprofits.

So we're a nonprofit, independent news organization.

That's still growing.

We're one of the fastest growing nonprofits in news in the country.

But their Signal in Ohio is the only Signal original.

- Whose funding it?

- So funding to begin with starter funding is largely philanthropy.

But, as we move forward more and more, we are looking to people who like what we deliver as far as the news content goes to become subscribers and supporters.

We're looking for you know, larger donors.

I always call it the NPR model, where we're looking for people who like what we provide and feel like it's important enough for them to reach into their pocket and help sustain us.

- And I get emails from you.

How do you get emails?

- So we do several things.

We have started kind of at an organic level, when I first started in the fall of 2023 and we started a weekly newsletter at that point, asked people to share it.

Had tabling at events to get people to sign up.

We were also recruiting for documenters at that point and I'll explain what that is in a minute.

So it really has been organic both kind of grassroots effort where we reach out to people and say, “Hey, would you like our newsletter?” I literally go to events and hand out my card and say, “Hey, we do free newsletters if you like what we do.” You know, if somebody shared a newsletter, here's how to go sign up.

We also have an acquisition strategy which any online news outlet would have.

So we are on social, we do some paid promotion.

So there’s really an audience strategy behind what we do to try and keep building, and finding people who like the news that we provide.

- How many reporters do you have?

- I have six reporters.

We have two editors, so it's me and Gary Estwick, our managing editor and then we have Kevin Dooley, who runs our documenters operation.

So we have a government reporter who also does quite a bit of public safety reporting.

We have a culture and arts reporter.

Which is unfortunately becoming more and more unique in the news landscape because that tended to be one of the first areas cut as budgets diminished at those operations.

So theres a, I would call it a renaissance especially in the nonprofit world of trying to get more arts and culture reporting back into newsrooms.

So we have Brittany Mosley in that role, who I think in defining her beat has really paid more attention to underrepresented communities and maybe some of the more avant garde kinds of art that are out there.

There's just really interesting stories that she's reported on in the last year and a half that I think are unique to Signal.

We have Reegan Saunders, who is our community and service reporter.

And service reporting is what I call high utility reporting.

It's how to get things done.

You know, how to help you get things done.

Its, how does a government program work?

How do you apply for things?

Where can you get help?

And so it's fairly I would say always helpful.

Utility reporting.

That's an internal word, so I'm trying to think how to describe it.

But question and answers, explainers.

We just refreshed is probably the best word, how to get help with your gas bill.

You know, where can you go for those kinds of programs?

So lots and lots of reporting that people find useful and helpful.

And Reegan also helps with government reporting because there's more than one person can do typically on most of the beats that we cover.

So they have a lot of responsibility for city council.

And what comes out of city council that we think is important to either individual neighborhoods or the city at large.

We also have Arielle Kass, who has a beat we call the Economics of Akron.

Arielle started as our education reporter, has a deep set of skills in business reporting.

Worked for Crain's in Detroit at one point.

And so we decided that she would better serve our readers by covering development, housing, small business, consumer reporting, things that affect a lot of everyday people.

And so she's been about six months in that beat and we're still kind of you know, tweaking the edges of it.

But I think she's starting to find her voice.

- Do you have an education person?

- We have an education person who works like crazy.

It used to be in what I call the good old days, not so much the good old days that you would have several education reporters.

We have one.

And our focus is Akron Public Schools because we think that - A lot going on there.

- A lot going on, it's a very busy beat.

But we also think it's vitally important to the health of the city.

You know, the students who graduate from Akron Public Schools become the workers and the employees in Akron.

They populate Kent State and the University of Akron.

So it's the starting place.

So we pay.

When I was hired for this job, I thought it was the most important beat that we would have.

And I think that's turned out to be true.

And it's still incredibly busy, so sometimes Arielle still goes back to help because she has you know, the knowledge base.

But Andrew Kiper is our education reporter right now and has been very, very busy the last couple of weeks unfortunately.

- Are you still growing?

- We are growing.

We are growing at a very nice steady pace.

So the fun thing for me in a way, one way anecdotally I can tell we're growing is when I'm out in the community and people see my press badge or recognize me, which is really embarrassing.

From the newsletter, from my picture at the bottom of the newsletter they'll say, “Oh you're from Signal.” And pretty universally, it's we really like what you're doing.

And so I hand out my card and I said you know, ask your friends to sign up.

And so that's not the only way we grow but it's been fairly steady.

And we've hit all the goals that we've set for ourselves in the last year.

- How do your reporters get their news?

- So the way most reporters get it, I mean, some of it is through.

There are lots of ways I guess, is the the answer.

We get press releases.

One of the things we try to do is we think of ourselves as the outlet of choice, not the outlet of record.

So with nine people, there's no way we can cover every single thing that happens in the city of Akron.

And we are pretty tightly adhering to the city limits.

But we do go outside occasionally for things we think are important or especially interesting to people who live in the city.

I think it's my daily job to figure out where do we place those resources.

So we do get a lot of press releases and we're pretty judicious about which of those we cover.

We are institutionally sourced which is kind of normal.

Like, we talk to the mayor's office, we talk to the police chief or you know, the police spokesperson.

We talk with the communications person for the Akron Public Schools or members of the school board regularly.

So those I would say are institutional sources, but we also have which is what I call our secret sauce.

Which is documenters, and documenters are just regular people that we train and pay to go to as many as ten public meetings a week.

That spread both the city and the county.

So we're in Summit County and the city with documenters.

They surface all kinds of news and information that comes out of those meetings that are always reported in their notes, which are published on the Akron page, at documenters.org.

And those are available for anyone to use.

Those are Creative Commons.

So we want that information out there and we want people to take advantage of it and we want people to share it and use it.

But what we do internally in our newsroom is we look for what I would just call the the local news items that are important.

We think in those neighborhoods and we elevate them into what we call documenters briefs.

We elevate them into stories told by the reporters.

So it's what I would call it a goldmine of information about what's happening in individual neighborhoods in Akron.

And so anytime you see on our website something that says in the byline, it says “by documenters” and then it'll have an individual byline as well.

That's a documenter’s brief, and that's just a beautiful little gem of local news that you won't find anywhere else.

No one covers the community at that level anymore the way we do.

And those are incredibly popular with our readers.

- It sounds as though from what you're saying, that your Akron residents have been very positive to what you're doing.

- The response I get out in the community is overwhelmingly positive.

The numbers that we have as far as audience go and they’re increasing I think shows that what we're providing informationally is welcome in the community.

And I was trying to think of another.

I was out at a protest a couple weeks ago and I was walking.

I had my phone out and I was walking down shooting video and the protesters were lining Market Street, and I heard all of a sudden they said, “She's from Signal.” And I just went, “Oh my.” And, “We love The Signal!” So that's the response I get almost always.

Now I'm sure that the people we're trying to hold accountable may not like us as much.

But what's gratifying is there's an acknowledgment in the community of public servants you know, public employees, governance, people who work for the city, people who work for the schools that we are providing a service that is needed.

And we try to be as clear eyed and nonpartisan and neutral as we can be in everything we do.

- With me today is Susan Zake, who is Editor in Chief of a new news outlet called, Signal Akron.

And I'm appreciative that she's here.

What about Akron politicians?

- So I used to teach public policy.

I was a journalism professor at Kent State for a long time.

I don't really like the idea of newsrooms covering politics, although I understand that it's an undercurrent in a lot of things that we cover.

I like to cover policy.

I want to know when someone's running for office.

I want to know how will they handle policy?

I don't want to know about the politics.

I want to know what are your policies?

How will you run say, the city?

How will you be a city council?

How will you conduct yourself as a city council member?

If you're running for county council, what are the positions?

What do you think the priorities for the the county government are?

And so we try really hard to stay out of politics.

Part of that is because in this day and age, it's a very dividing influence.

And it's part of how we I think, stay above the fray in some ways is that we don't run letters to the editor.

We don't run opinion and we don't write editorials.

Because the American Journalism Project, one of our founding agencies or nonprofits sees those as dividing influences.

Because as soon as you put out an op-ed that someone disagrees with, they look at you as being biased or that you know, you're coming at things from a different perspective than what they have.

And so there are days where I say, “Wow I wish I could write an editorial.” But most of the time it's been I think a gift.

For us to stay out of those kinds of discussions and stick to what's important, which is policy.

How do people conduct themselves in public office?

What are their priorities in that office?

What are the programs that they're trying to fund and act?

How are they doing?

What's you know, after a year how's the program doing?

Is it doing what they thought it would do?

Just those kinds of markers, which I think is what people want to hear from us.

- So the reaction from politicians is okay?

- They in general I think they've been pretty gracious.

We always try to give them their say.

In some cases, we let them speak I think more openly in stories where they'll have you'll see a longer quote in our stories so that it's not our filter, it's them saying what they think is important.

Because I think a lot of times with I think one of the things we look at differently is journalism used to be a one way conversation where we put out information that we thought was important to the people consuming it.

We really like to see it as a circular conversation where we listen to our readers.

We invite our readers to weigh in constantly.

They can email me any time.

We have a very open conversation, say with the city government.

Folks in city government about what they're doing.

The other thing I would tell people is local politics people running for local office it’s much less political at that level.

It's city council, township trustees than it is at the federal level.

And I think if people spent more time acquainting themselves with their local government and what happens locally, I think they would feel like it's a lot less polarizing.

And there's still amazing differences to me.

Largely, Akron City Council is is all Democrat.

They're all Democrats.

But there are nuances within that body that have been fascinating for me to watch about you know, a range of issues that they discuss and what they think within that range.

So there's always going to be difference.

But it's way less political, way less controversial.

- So am I gathering that Signal Akron has been around for a year?

We celebrated our- I'm terrible at dates so forgive me.

We celebrated our anniversary in December of last year.

So we were a year old in December, so we're about a year and a half old.

Not quite a year and a half old now.

We launched December 5th, 2023.

- Do you respond to tips from citizens?

- Quite often.

As you can imagine, some of the tips aren't very well found.

But I try to at least respond and say whether or not we can look into whatever the person is asking us to.

We've developed in a very short amount of time an accountability reputation that we will look into things and hold people accountable.

So I get a lot of tips from people who have a problem and want help solving it.

And it's not always something we can do, but I try to at least respond, acknowledge that they reached out and let them know what's realistic or not.

- How does one give you tips?

- We have tips at signalakron.org and so that's fairly active.

We also have if someone wants to send a press release, we have news at signalakron.org.

They can always email me directly at susan@signalakron.org.

- Is it possible to have a subscription?

- So we don't really do subscriptions.

Our newsletters are all free.

Anyone can subscribe in the sense that they can sign up and receive our newsletters.

We have five newsletters four times a week.

We do Signals 3-3-0 which is our news newsletter.

That has most of the headlines of stories that we've already published.

Or published that morning.

We also on Tuesday have Akron Alive, which is our arts and culture newsletter.

Has things to do for the weekend coming up.

We’ll have the latest features that we've had on the arts community, feature stories about just interesting people in town.

But those are free So subscription wise, it's not like a magazine subscription where you're paying for it.

The newsletters come free.

We have memberships where you can choose to financially support us, and that's separate from those subscriptions.

And that's what over the long term, will build our sustainability and help us keep doing what we're doing.

- So, how do you- how do you get that newsletter?

- So if you go to signalakron.org.

That's our website, and up at the top you'll see two buttons.

One says donate, one says subscribe.

And if you click subscribe it will take you to a very simple page where you put your email in.

We ask for your zip code just to double check that we're hitting basically everyone in the city.

We like to make sure we're in every neighborhood in Akron.

And then you can say which if you want both newsletters, if you just want the arts and entertainment, if you just want the news, you can select from there.

And you can always unsubscribe if you feel like you're getting too much.

- Do you have a mission statement?

- We have a mission statement, and I won't quite get it right.

I won't quote it, but I can paraphrase it, and that's to provide news and information to everyone in Ohio.

Basically the news and information that people in Ohio need to live better lives.

- And do you, I hear that you report on arts and cultural organizations and institutions.

And what about sports?

- So we don't do sports in kind of the traditional sense of covering games.

So last year, and this was the brainchild of Gary Estwick, my managing editor.

And Gary used to be a sports reporter, he actually worked at the Beacon Journal for a short time as a sports reporter.

But we did something we called Inside the Huddle, and that was a ten week feature on the people who support high school football teams.

So the trainer, the security person at the football game, the academic coach, just all those different people that it takes to, it's kind of the village that it takes to put together a high school football team.

We plan to reinvent that a little bit and do not just football, but look at those support people who are kind of integral to high school sports.

But I don't think we'll ever just cover high school sports.

We'll do feature stories about athletes, coaches kind of you know, personality profiles.

But we won't I don't think ever, I won't say never, but I don't think we'll ever actually cover like a high school football game or a lacrosse game or a volleyball game or anything like that.

- That's good news.

- I'm a former athlete, so I love high school sports.

I think there are great things for kids, but it's it's one of those things where for us, the news and information that helps people be better residents is the public policy piece of it is more important now than that.

- And can you compare Signal Akron with the print newspaper, the Beacon Journal?

- So I worked at the Beacon for 20 years.

So I think we're very different in a lot of ways I think.

But they still cover a lot of things in a large area, they have more of a geographic footprint than we do.

The tone is different, is probably what I would say.

So we strive to be conversational, have that kind of community conversation.

And with documenters we are much more local.

We're really a community newsroom, the Beacon Journal is more of a larger scale.

They're owned by a corporation, so they have some things that they have to do that I don't have to do.

As a more community driven newsroom.

We are looking for ways to partner.

I don't like the idea that we compete, because I think we need as many voices in a community to inform people as we possibly can.

And so I think the addition of Signal into that landscape gives people more options.

Sometimes they have a story that we don't have you know, we'll have a story they don't have, so it's really a healthy thing to have both.

- Thank you Susan from Signal Akron.

We wish you well.

It's great to have more news.

Thank you our listeners and viewers for tuning in to Forum 360 with its global outlook and local view.

This is Ardith Keck from Forum 360.

Forum 360 is brought to you by John S. and James L Knight Foundation, The Akron Community Foundation Hudson Community Television, The Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center of Akron, Blue Green, Electric Impulse Communications, and Forum 360 supporters.