In my latest for the Guardian, I examine friend of Media Nation Harvey Silverglate‘s new book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.” And I point out that the themes Silverglate explores can be seen in some dubious prosecutions of recent vintage — including that of former Massachusetts House speaker Sal DiMasi, now fighting for the right to be represented by the lawyer of his choice.
Month: November 2009 Page 2 of 4
I like it when politicians have direct, unfiltered access to the public. The media have plenty of opportunities to posit themselves between candidates and voters. If a pol lies, twists or omits relevant facts and there’s no one from the Fourth Estate to call him or her on it, well, so be it. There will always be another opportunity.
That said, I don’t think the Boston Globe did enough to make sure that the four Democratic candidates for U.S. senator actually wrote their own op-eds in Sunday’s paper. If words are appearing under the bylines of (in fair-and-balanced alphabetical order) Mike Capuano, Martha Coakley, Alan Khazei and Steve Pagliuca, I’d like some assurance that they were written by the candidates, not those of some paid spinner.
But when I asked editorial-page editor Peter Canellos what precautions the Globe had taken, he replied by e-mail that he had checked with op-ed editor Marjorie Pritchard and, essentially, none had been taken. “I spoke to Marjorie, and the answer is that we simply requested that they write pieces for the op-ed page,” Canellos told me. “There were no further restrictions imposed on them.”
Granted, short of some sort of forensic investigation, it would be impossible for a newspaper to make sure candidate op-eds were actually written by the candidates. But I think the candidates should have been asked directly to write their own statements, with no assistance from staffers other than editing. That way, they’d have been put on notice that if they didn’t, then they were cheating.
I realize that I’m holding a candidate’s written words to a higher standard than I am spoken words. But the role of speechwriters is well-established, and the very fact that a candidate has to speak the words changes the equation. A ghostwritten op-ed, in contrast, might never even be seen by the candidate — we simply have no way of knowing.
Besides, when a newspaper such as the Globe solicits op-eds, it is taking responsibility for what it publishes in a way that’s entirely different from running a story about a candidate’s speech.
It’s time to banish the ghosts from the op-ed page. Who you gonna call?
An additional thought: Several of the commenters make the point that ghostwritten op-eds are a long-established practice throughout the newspaper business. So let me clarify. Yes, I know that. Not reading obviously ghostwritten op-eds is an equally established practice. It’s time for a change, don’t you think?
What's Next for News?
View more presentations from Dan Kennedy.
I’ll be speaking later today at a conference of the Northeast Massachusetts Regional Library System, which Mrs. Media Nation reliably informs me is pronounced NIM-rils. The event is being held at Nevins Memorial Library in Methuen.
My topic will be a familiar one — reinventing journalism in the post-newspaper age — but I hope to add a few wrinkles to it based on some recent developments at the Boston Globe, and on the time I’ve been spending with the folks from the New Haven Independent.
I’ve posted the slideshow I’ll be using. For some reason, a few odd breaks crept in when it was converted from PowerPoint to SlideShare. But you’ll get the idea.
Tomorrow I head back to the Merrimack Valley for a panel discussion on how blogging on newspaper Web sites has affected the news cycle — and how that can create challenges in breaking-news situations.
The panel, part of a conference being held by the New England Society of Newspaper Editors (NEZ-nee? I’ll have to get back to you on that), will be held at the Eagle-Tribune in North Andover.
What is the Boston Globe now charging if you want to get home delivery of the Sunday paper plus GlobeReader? When I called the subscription department yesterday, I got an answer that was so confusing I chose not to report it. But now it looks like rozzie02131 has figured it out.
The answer: $5 a week after an introductory offer. That’s an increase of nearly 43 percent over the old price of $3.50. But the new GlobeReader is a lot better. And it still works out to half the cost of seven-day home delivery.
Interestingly, the Globe appears to have turned its pricing model upside-down. Previously, you got GlobeReader for free if you were a Sunday subscriber. Now — given that GlobeReader by itself costs $5 a week — you get the Sunday paper for free if you sign up for GlobeReader.
In my latest for the Guardian, I look back at several notorious killings inspired by religion (including the 1994 abortion-clinic attacks in Boston) — and wonder why such incidents receive so much more attention when the murderer is a Muslim.
The Boston Globe is taking its GlobeReader product in a different direction, and I’m not sure it makes a lot of sense.
First, the good news: it’s gotten better. GlobeReader now includes a feature that lets you copy or e-mail a link, just like the parent company’s Times Reader. It’s also added the crossword puzzle, comics, a weather map and TV listings.
Now for the not-so-good. Previously GlobeReader was free to all print subscribers, including those who took home delivery only on Sundays. Moreover, you couldn’t have it for any price unless you were at least a Sunday subscriber. Given that the Globe reportedly earns some two-thirds of its revenues from the Sunday edition, the strategy seemed like a reasonably smart way of preserving the Sunday paper.
The new GlobeReader, by contrast, is available without any home delivery at all. The cost: $4.98 a week. But if you want to get it for free, you need to take home delivery of the print edition seven days a week. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay something. (I called a very polite clerk at the Globe who struggled to explain what the cost of GlobeReader would be for Sunday subscribers. It was nominal, but it wasn’t free.)
In other words, the Globe has given me a choice that it doesn’t want me to make. Several months ago, we switched to Sunday-only delivery, supplemented by GlobeReader the other six days. If we stick with Sundays-only, we’ll pay extra for GlobeReader. We could resume seven-day print delivery — but we’ve already decided we can’t afford $50 a month. Or we could pay $21 or $22 a month for GlobeReader access only. That couldn’t possibly be good for the Globe, since GlobeReader is practically ad-free.
(Conversely, this may make sense as we move into what may prove to be the post-advertising age. With no printing or distribution costs, GlobeReader is pure revenue.)
I should note, too, that the New York Times has long made Times Reader available for free to Sunday-only subscribers like us. Perhaps that’s going to change as well.
It strikes me that the new strategy, rather than shoring up the Sunday edition, will simply encourage customers to sign up for GlobeReader seven days a week — or read the paper for free at Boston.com. Although we hear from time to time that that may be coming to an end as well.
Like all newspapers, the first imperative for the Globe is to survive, and to make enough money to support a robust journalistic mission. I’m not sure this is the way to do it. But I guess we’ll find out.
Rupert Murdoch
News executives love to rail against Google as a parasite that steals their content. Yet none dares to insert a simple piece of code that would make their sites invisible to Google’s search engine.
Until now. Rupert Murdoch, the biggest, baddest media mogul of them all, says he’s moving ahead with plans to start charging for content across the News Corp. mediascape. And he adds that when the moment arrives, he will indeed block Google from indexing his content.
Murdoch even goes so far as to say that he’ll eventually mount a legal challenge to the doctrine of fair use, which allows third parties to use small snippets of copyrighted material without permission for certain purposes, including education and criticism — and, in Google’s view, search indexing.
Publishers have long had a love-hate relationship with Google and Google News. On the one hand, Google News, for many people, has established itself as a substitute front page, making newspaper home pages all but irrelevant. On the other hand, many newspaper.coms receive much of their traffic from Google.
Now Murdoch has adjusted the equation to pure hate.
Two predictions:
First, he may enjoy some success in shoring up WSJ.com, by far his highest-quality outlet, which is already partly subscription-based. But if he thinks people will pay for online access to the sagging New York Post or even a successful operation like Fox News, then he’s going to learn a bitter lesson.
Second, by essentially killing his Web sites, he may well succeed in shoring up print circulation. That’s a short-term strategy, but it may be exactly what he’s got in mind.
Photo of Murdoch at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davis is (cc) by the World Economic Forum, and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
I am trying to conserve electrons this morning. So instead of engaging in lengthy bloviation, let me refer you to two excellent posts by the Outraged Liberal on Gov. Deval Patrick’s misplaced priorities.
One is on the Patrick administration’s desire to use our tax dollars to build a bridge connecting two of Patriots owner Bob Kraft’s wildly profitable enterprises while simultaneously cutting funds for the homeless. The other is on the sickening hackorama Patrick has been fostering at his transportation department.
I will only disagree with Mr. O.L. to this extent: Patrick has now been governor for nearly three years. Yet Mr. O.L. still refers to the governor’s actions as “screw-ups” and questions “whether anyone in the Corner Office is paying attention.”
No. At this late date, the only reasonable conclusion is that this is who Patrick is.
And don’t miss the original Boston Globe stories, to which Mr. O.L. helpfully links.
Jay Fitzgerald has a great post on the Muslim-terrorism meme that’s being flogged by some on the right following the Fort Hood tragedy. He writes:
Here’s a challenge to conservatives: What specifically would they do to prevent these types of attacks in the future? It’s put up or shut up time.
And Fitzgerald wrote that before today’s non-Muslim terrorism attack in Orlando.
Let’s be clear: Nidal Malik Hasan may well have been motivated by religion. But does it matter? We have a history of mass murders in this country because, sometimes, tragically, someone just goes off. Religion is a symptom, not a cause.
In today’s New York Post, the novelist Ralph Peters begins his commentary thusly:
On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting “Allahu Akbar!” committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11.
You know what? I didn’t even bother to keep reading. Thirteen people died in the Fort Hood attack. Thirty-two were slaughtered at Virginia Tech in 2007. Then again, the Virginia Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho, wasn’t a Muslim.
Rather than looking for a group to blame, we’d be better off celebrating the heroism of Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who shot Hasan, stopped his killing spree, and was injured while so doing. Patrik Jonsson has a terrific story in the Christian Science Monitor on how Munley applied the lessons learned at Virginia Tech.
In short: Move in and start shooting.
Picture this
By Dan Kennedy
On November 9, 2009
In Technology
Back when Media Nation was hosted by Blogger.com, many commenters used icons — avatars — with their posts. That seems to have all but disappeared now that I’m using WordPress.
So I just want to point out that avatars are ridiculously simple with Gravatar. Just sign up, do it and your avatar will automatically appear.
It took me a while because I was using two different e-mail addresses. What’s your excuse?