Rebuild Local News Adds an Industry Leader and a Labor Leader to Senior Team
Rebuild Local News has added two respected leaders to our senior team: Susan Patterson Plank, the former Executive Director of the Iowa Newspaper Association, will be Director of Campaigns and Partnerships and Matt Pearce, the former President of Media Guild of the West, will be our Director of Policy.
Patterson Plank, an experienced industry executive, will lead our efforts to form broad coalitions to drive passage of smart, First-Amendment-friendly laws to strengthen local news. As head of the Iowa Newspaper Association, she led several public policy efforts. She has also been Vice President of Public Notice Transformation at Gannett and has held several leadership positions at the Des Moines Register, including vice president of marketing and vice president, online. She has been a board member for America’s Newspapers, the News Association Managers (an alliance of state press associations) and the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.
This new role will enable Rebuild Local News to expand the number of states it works in, building off the recent successes in New York, Illinois, California and other states.
Pearce, the former President of Media Guild of the West (and current Senior Policy Advisor to Rebuild) will become our permanent Director of Policy. The Media Guild of the West is one of the fastest-growing unions of The NewsGuild-CWA, representing journalists in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas. A former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, Pearce contributed to the paper’s 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of racist comments by Los Angeles city officials. He received the Sí Se Puede Award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the President’s Award from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2024 for his press freedom advocacy.
This role is primarily to devise public policies that will help local news survive and innovate – increasing the number of local reporters – while still preserving editorial independence.
Steven Waldman, the president and founder of Rebuild Local News, said, “The fact that a labor union leader and a leader of news publishers are joining together is not only a vote of confidence in Rebuild’s nonpartisan approach but a reminder that all parts of the local news world need to work together toward the common goal making ensuring that there are more local reporters to provide better coverage of communities.”
Susan Patterson Plank, Director of Campaigns and Partnerships, said, “The beauty of Rebuild Local News is that it is business model and platform agnostic, offering a shared space for all who believe in the power of journalism. I am grateful to be involved in this critical work and look forward to collaborating with partners from across the country.”
Matt Pearce, Director of Policy, said: “News deserts and ‘ghost newspapers’ are a public policy choice: The United States trails most of the world’s democracies on how little we spend on public-interest journalism. But we don’t have to choose to lose whole generations of journalists, who will no longer make that extra call, knock on that extra door, or find that extra document while pursuing the truth. I’m proud to work with Rebuild Local News to help our communities choose a different – and better – future for local journalism.”
Complementing these hires, Rebuild Local News recently added former Senator Steve Glazer of California – author of two major local news bills there – as a Senior Advisor, and added Bill McKenzie of the Bush Institute to the advisory board.
Rebuild Local News is the leading nonpartisan, nonprofit coalition developing and advancing effective public policies designed to strengthen community news and information. Our broad-based organization brings together the largest alliance of local publishers and labor unions, civic organizations and newsrooms representing both rural and urban communities. Together, these 50 organizations represent over 3,000 newsrooms and 15,000 journalists working together to revive local news.
