Dan is flying solo this week because Ellen is recovering from knee-replacement surgery. But fear not — she's behind the scenes making sure this episode gets recorded properly, and she edited what you are listening to. She'll be back on the air soon.

Our guest is Rick Goldsmith, a veteran filmmaker who has taken a close look at the state of corporate journalism in America. His documentary "Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink" tells the story of Alden Global Capital, the secretive hedge fund that has bought up many of our greatest newspapers and stripped them of their real estate and slashed their newsrooms. He focuses on one of Alden's papers, The Denver Post, and the rise of The Colorado Sun, a digital startup begun by former Post journalists. The story of what happened in Colorado is also one that Ellen and I tell in our book, "What Works in Community News."

The reason we're having Rick on now is that you'll be able to watch "Stripped for Parts" through December 31st for free on the PBS app, which you can access through Apple TV, Roku, Google Play and most smart TVs.

Dan has a Quick Take about Jay Rosen, who retired earlier this year from New York University and is now taking on a new challenge. Jay is probably best known to his younger followers as an incisive media critic. But his true passion, going back to the 1990s, is finding ways to involve members of the public in the production of journalism. Now he's doing it again — and it could have implications for local news.

Dan and Ellen talk with Tracy Baim, a Chicago-based journalist who directed the recently published LGBTQ+ Media Mapping Project, which tracks LGBTQ news outlets across the country.

The LGBTQ+ Media Mapping Project was created in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, the Local Media Foundation, News Is Out and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. The project surfaced 107 LGBTQ media outlets in total, 80 of which responded to the survey. According to the accompanying report: "While they may have few similarities, there are several common denominators: Most are in need of additional resources to better cover their communities, and most are facing strong headwinds as advertising and sponsors reverse course, pulling back from diverse marketing efforts."

She's also the executive director of Press Forward Chicago, the local arm of a national philanthropic effort to address the community news crisis.

Dan has a Quick Take about the state of Kansas, where authorities have banned print newspapers, a ban that affects some 9,000 inmates in 20 correctional facilities.

Ellen's Quick Take is on a column in the Minnesota Star Tribune written by Steve Grove, the CEO and publisher. He writes about the "stabilizing power of quality journalism" and announces a new team in the newsroom devoted to investigative reporting. But he also announces the outsourcing of the Strib's print product, which means job losses.

Dan and Ellen are back from summer break and talk with Bill Marx, the editor-in-chief of the Arts Fuse. For four decades, he has written about arts and culture for print, broadcast and online outlets. He has regularly reviewed theater for the public station WBUR and the Boston Globe. He is a founder of Viva La Book Review, a new organization that aims to foster thoughtful, well-crafted book criticism in community news media across the country.

Bill created and edited WBUR Online Arts, a cultural webzine that in 2004 won an Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism. Until recently, he taught a class on writing arts criticism at Boston University.

Dan has a Quick Take about the funding crisis in public media and how that relates to the need to fund reliable sources of local news and information. It's not just a matter of your local public television and radio station needing more support from its audience than ever before. It's also a matter of the limits of philanthropy. Can we find the money to support hyperlocal nonprofits too?

Ellen dives into a recent update from Joshua Benton at NiemanLab on The Republican in Springfield and the MassLive website, which has become a web traffic powerhouse as it expands. A previous podcast discussion with MassLive's president, Joshua Macht, and editor Ronnie Ramos can be found here.