By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

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Was Henry Kissinger a war criminal? More than 20 years ago, Christopher Hitchens submitted his brief

Nixon and Kissinger in the Oval Office. 1973 photo by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Somehow Henry Kissinger made it to 100 without getting shipped off to The Hague. When word came down Wednesday evening that the Nixon-era secretary of state had died, many were predicting that the media would slobber all over him. I see little evidence of that today, with The New York Times and The Washington Post featuring Kissinger’s ugly side as well as his accomplishments. Rolling Stone headlined its Kissinger obit, written by Spencer Ackerman, “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved By America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies”— shades of the magazine’s classic Richard Nixon obit by Hunter S. Thompson, “He Was a Crook.”

More than 20 years ago, the late journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote a two-part essay for Harper’s that was later expanded into a book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” Hitchens argued that the former secretary of state had committed war crimes in Cambodia, Chile and elsewhere and should be brought to trial. It wasn’t a novel argument even then, but Hitchens pulled together the strands in a compelling manner, even if he didn’t quite make the case that Kissinger should be arrested and sent to the Netherlands.

I wrote a lengthy overview of Hitchens’ case against Kissinger for The Boston Phoenix on March 8, 2001. If you’re looking for an antidote to the tributes coming Kissinger’s way, I hope you’ll find this worth your time.

Kissinger accused

Journalist Christopher Hitchens reminds us once again of the horrors that Henry wrought in Chile, Cambodia, Vietnam and elsewhere

By Dan Kennedy | The Boston Phoenix | March 8, 2001

Henry Kissinger may be the only living American who is casually described — at least in certain liberal and leftish circles — as a “war criminal.” In his heyday, during the Nixon and Ford years, Kissinger was a media superstar, the man behind the opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union. He even won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Vietnam War. But those triumphs have long since been supplanted in the public’s memory by a darker vision.

To the extent that Kissinger is thought of at all these days, it is for his leading role in the secret bombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam War and in the removal and subsequent murder of Chilean president Salvador Allende, a socialist who had the temerity to win a democratic election. Kissinger biographies, most notably Seymour Hersh’s “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House” (Summit Books, 1983) and Walter Isaacson’s “Kissinger: A Biography” (Simon & Schuster, 1992), long ago laid bare most of the details of those and other foreign misadventures.

Now comes Christopher Hitchens with a new, devastating portrayal of Kissinger. There’s no insult in observing that Hitchens offers little new information. Hitchens’ journalistic specialties are synthesis and polemicism, not investigative reporting. In a two-part, 40,000-word essay published in the February and March issues of Harper’s, Hitchens makes his purpose clear: to examine Kissinger’s career anew, and thus to show that the now-elderly diplomat committed war crimes — that Kissinger, in Hitchens’ view, knew about and in some cases actively helped plan terrible acts of assassination and mass killings, for which he may yet be called to account.

Remembering 9/11

I posted this on Threads a little while ago. And here’s the piece that I wrote for the Phoenix.

Greater Boston arts and local news get a boost from three new nonprofit projects

There’s good news about local news in Greater Boston today on three fronts. I’ll start with an attempt to revive arts reviews — at one time a staple of mainstream and alternative publications, but now relegated to niche outlets like The Arts Fuse, a high-quality website edited by Boston University professor and former Boston Phoenix arts writer Bill Marx.

Recently Paul Bass, the executive director of the nonprofit Online Journalism Project in New Haven, Connecticut, launched a grant-funded project called the Independent Review Crew (link now fixed). Freelancers in seven parts of the country are writing about music, theater and other in-person cultural events. Boston is among those seven, and freelance writer-photographer Sasha Patkin is weighing in with her take on everything from concerts to sand sculpture.

You can read Patkin’s work on the Review Crew’s website — and, this week, her reviews started running on Universal Hub as well, which gives her a much wider audience. Here’s her first contribution.

Bass is the founder of the New Haven Independent, started in 2005 as part of the first wave of nonprofit community websites. The Online Journalism Project is the nonprofit umbrella that publishes the Indy and a sister site in New Haven’s northwest suburbs; it also oversees a low-power radio station in New Haven, WNHH-LP. Before 2005, Bass was a fixture at the now-defunct New Haven Advocate, an alt-weekly that, like the Phoenix, led with local arts and was filled with reviews. The Review Crew is his bid to revive the long lost art, if you will, of arts reviewing.

Other places that are part of The Review Crew: New Haven; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Troy/Albany, New York; Oakland, California; Hartford, Connecticut; and Northwest Arkansas (the Fayetteville metro area is home to about 576,000 people).

I’ve got all kinds of disclosures I need to share here. I gave Bass some guidance before he launched The Review Crew — not that he needed any. The Indy was the main subject of my 2013 book “The Wired City,” and I’ve got a lengthy update in “What Works in Community News,” the forthcoming book that Ellen Clegg and I have written. I also suggested Universal Hub to Bass as an additional outlet for The Review Crew; I’ve known Gaffin for years, and at one time I made a little money through a blogging network he set up. Gaffin was a recent guest on the “What Works” podcast.

In other words, I would wish Paul the best of luck in any case, but this time I’ve got a bit more of a stake in it.

***

The Phoenix was not the city’s last alt-weekly. For nearly a decade after the Phoenix shut down in 2013, DigBoston continued on with a mix of news and arts coverage. Unfortunately, the Dig, which struggled mightily during COVID, finally ended its run earlier this year. But Dig editors Chris Faraone and Jason Pramas are now morphing the paper into something else — HorizonMass, a statewide online news outlet. Pramas will serve as editor-in-chief and Faraone as editor-at-large, with a host of contributors.

HorizonMass will publish as part of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, founded by Faraone and Pramas some years back to funnel long-form investigative coverage to a number of media outlets, including the Dig. HorizonMass will also have a significant student presence, Pramas writes, noting that the project’s tagline is “Independent, student-driven journalism in the public interest.” Pramas adds:

With interns working with us as reporters, designers, marketers, and (for the first time) editors, together with our ever-growing crew of professional freelance writers, we can continue to do our part to train the next generation of journalists while covering more Bay State happenings than ever before. We hope you enjoy our initial offerings and support our efforts with whatever donations you can afford.

***

Mark Pothier, a top editor at The Boston Globe, is leaving the paper to become the editor and CEO of the Plymouth Independent, a well-funded fledgling nonprofit. Pothier, a longtime Plymouth resident and former musician with the band Ministry, is already listed on the Independent’s masthead. Among the project’s advisers is Boston Globe journalist (and my former Northeastern colleague) Walter Robinson, also a Plymouth resident, who was instrumental in the launch of the New Bedford Light. Robby talked about the Plymouth Independent and other topics in a recent appearance on the “What Works” podcast.

Pothier started working at the Globe in 2001, but before that he was the executive editor of a group of papers that included the Old Colony Memorial, now part of the Gannett chain. When Gannett shifted its Eastern Massachusetts weeklies to regional coverage in the spring of 2022, the Memorial was one of just three that was allowed to continue covering local news — so it looks like Plymouth resident are about to be treated to something of a news war.

Leave a comment.

The Boston Globe announces it will seek to fill a void by hiring a media reporter

The Boston Globe is hiring a media reporter, a position that has gone vacant for many years. It sounds like a great job, though so broad you have to wonder who could possibly keep up with so much:

Part tech beat, part culture writing, part buzzy local scoops, this job calls for a journalist who’s eager and able to explore the many ways that media shapes modern life, in Boston and beyond. They will cover our region’s advertising and publishing industries and keep an eye on the bold-faced names of local TV, yes. But they’ll also dive into the endless evolution of social media, debates over digital privacy, and the roiling challenges of misinformation in all its forms, from Twitter and Threads to TikTok and new platforms using artificial intelligence.

The Globe has not had a full-time media reporter since Mark Jurkowitz, who left in 2005 and took over the media column at The Boston Phoenix after I left for Northeastern. Mark, who had also been my predecessor at the Phoenix, is now at the Pew Research Center.

This is good news, as we really have a dearth of media reporting in Boston. That dearth has been especially acute since GBH-TV canceled “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney” in the summer of 2021, but there really hasn’t been much in terms of in-depth reporting since the Phoenix closed in 2013. The Globe has taken a couple of stabs at it but did not make a full commitment until now.

The Portland Phoenix, revived in 2019, makes its final flight

Media Nation is back. It’s not quite where I want it to be yet, but it’s good enough to resume posting. Look for more improvements in the days to come.

Unfortunately, I’m here to report some sad news. The Portland Phoenix, the last of the Phoenix newspapers where I worked for many years, has ceased publication. Editor Marian McCue’s farewell editorial begins:

It was easy to have a sense of optimism in the spring of 2019. It was a different time, when former Forecaster publisher Karen Wood and I hatched a plan to launch a new version of the Portland Phoenix, which had folded in February of that year. We wanted to build a strong and independent news alternative to the media monopoly that controlled the Press Herald and many of Maine’s newspapers.

Our timing was not great. Five months after the launch, the pandemic struck with a vengeance. Few alive had seen such a cataclysmic event, much was unknown and everybody was fearful. The advertising relationships we had suddenly vanished. We tried to keep going, but the advertising was not there.

The flagship Boston Phoenix closed in 2013. At one time there were Phoenix papers in Providence, Portland, Worcester as well as Stuff magazine, Stuff@Nite and an alternative rock radio station, WFNX. The Portland Phoenix staggered on under new ownership until 2019, and was then relaunched by McCue and Wood. The new Portland Phoenix was redesigned and built a reputation for quality journalism. In the end, it wasn’t enough.

I hope someone else will give it a try. Portland is a medium-size, semi-isolated city with a strong arts community — exactly the sort of place where an alt-weekly can still find a niche. And let’s not forget that Portland recently got some very good news, as the state’s largest daily, the Portland Press Herald, and most of its affiliated papers will be acquired by the nonprofit National Trust for Local News.

Al Giordano, 1959-2023

Al Giordano (via Facebook)

On Monday evening I received some sad news: Al Giordano, who was the political columnist at The Boston Phoenix in the mid-1990s, had died in Mexico, where he’d made his home for many years. The cause was lung cancer, according to retired Boston Globe editor Matt Storin, who was Al’s uncle.

For a time, I was Al’s editor at the Phoenix, so I had the honor of working with him directly. He was difficult and brilliant, a unique voice that we needed then and need even more now. Later I followed his journalism at NarcoNews.com, which covered the misguided U.S. war on drugs from the Mexican point of view. He kept up his political punditry as well, and trust me when I tell you that it was good stuff. He and I stayed in touch sporadically, and he had a standing invitation to speak to my students on one of his periodic forays to the States; sadly, we were never able to make that happen. Al was 64 at the time of his death.

Al wrote a vibrant 4,000-word essay about the importance of the Phoenix shortly after it folded in 2013. You can (and should) read it here. Below is a tribute to Al written by his friends at the Fund for Authentic Journalism, another one of Al’s projects. I don’t believe it’s still in existence, but if I find out otherwise, I’ll let  you know. The tribute, by the way, was published in a friends-only post on Facebook, but his board has given people permission to share it publicly.

***

Al Giordano, 1959-2023
(En español abajo)

Al Giordano passed away Monday evening, July 10, in Mexico. He was at home, in his own bed, with friends at his side, as a hard rain came down on the land.

Al was a gifted journalist and organizer with a keen mind and the courage of his convictions. Those talents, and a lot of hard work and lived experience, allowed Al to seemingly see around the corners of history to place himself at the headwaters of seismic world change.

Al did this repeatedly over the decades, in the U.S., Latin America and beyond, often at great personal risk, but never without a sharp sense of strategy aimed at the goal. He was the John Reed of our era. He was there when the world shook to tell us why it was shaking.

Al was an active participant in some of the most consequential moments of political and social change of the last 50 years as an organizer, a journalist or an advisor. As a young organizer in the 1970s, he helped freeze the expansion of the nuclear power industry as part of the “Clamshell Alliance,” which staged successful anti-nuclear demonstrations at the then-proposed Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. The campaign overcame great odds and ignited a “No Nukes” movement that inspired similar alliances and actions against proposed and existing nuclear power plants nationwide.

Al went on to work on John Kerry’s first Senate campaign, before becoming legendary organizer Abbie Hoffman’s apprentice in the trenches — working on organizing campaigns in Pennsylvania, Nicaragua and elsewhere. He was among the first U.S.-born journalists to document the Zapatista Army for National Liberation’s 1994 indigenous uprising.

To support that effort and to document the failed U.S. War on Drugs in Mexico and throughout Latin America, Al created the online newspaper Narco News. The trailblazing news service scored a historic victory for online press freedom in the United States when Citibank unsuccessfully sued Al in a New York court over his drug war coverage. In its ruling, the court established precedent extending the same freedom of speech protections to online journalists as enjoyed by traditional print media.

For over 14 years, and with the support and participation of dozens of collaborators, Al also ran a workshop for journalists and organizers to share strategies for the effective and strategic coverage of social movements, an effort that created effective networks with global reach among its participants, which remain active to this day. Al also garnered substantial attention for his prescient coverage of the “Obama paradigm shift” in the runup to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, and he created an online manual for nonviolent revolution after his in-country coverage of the uprising against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Al’s death is a shock in the sense that he left us far too soon. But Al had been dealing with ongoing health issues for some time, even after beating back cancer several years ago. Death is never comforting, but it is relief for those enduring serious, chronic health problems. The journey, which includes both emotional and physical pain, is the hard part.

Al lived life hard and fast. That’s how it came at him. But every moment of it mattered to Al, as did winning the good fight. He literally changed the world with his organizing and journalism work. The list of his great accomplishments is long, and his impressive legacy only now launched on a journey of its own.

Even Al couldn’t outrun the reaper. None of us can. But damn, he gave life one hell of a good ride.

Al died on his own terms, still speaking his truth to power and working to organize other people to do the same, so that an even bigger truth rises. His work will live on far past his critics’ last gasps.

All we can do now is use our grief as inspiration for doing what Al would surely want us to continue doing — living authentically and in pursuit of a better world for all. We should also definitely find some time now to honor Al’s life in a manner that works for each of us, to celebrate what Al has left behind for us to build upon.

We all have to keep pushing forward for as long as time permits. Al once said as much, “Authenticity is not the easiest path in life, but it’s the only path that leads forward.”

Al Giordano ¡Presente!

Friends of Al
And the board of directors of the Fund for Authentic Journalism
Doug Wilson, President
Bill Conroy, Treasurer
Wendy Foxmyn, Fund Administrator

———————-

Al Giordano, 1960-2023

Al Giordano falleció la pasada noche del lunes 10 de julio en México. Estaba en su casa, en su propia cama, con amigos a su lado, mientras una fuerte lluvia caía sobre la tierra.

Al fue un periodista y organizador talentoso, con una mente acuciosa y el coraje de sus convicciones. Esas habilidades, junto con mucho trabajo arduo y experiencia vivida, permitieron que Al aparentemente vislumbrase los giros de la historia para situarse en la cabecera de transformaciones mundiales de gran impacto.

Al hizo esto en repetidas ocasiones a lo largo de las décadas, en los Estados Unidos, América Latina y más allá, a menudo enfrentando grandes riesgos personales, pero nunca sin un agudo sentido de la estrategia dirigido al objetivo. Fue el John Reed de nuestra era. Estuvo presente cuando el mundo tembló para contarnos por qué temblaba.

Al participó activamente en algunos de los momentos más trascendentales de cambio político y social de los últimos 50 años, ya sea como organizador, periodista o asesor. Como joven organizador en la década de 1970, ayudó a frenar la expansión de la industria de la energía nuclear como parte de la “Alianza Clamshell”, que llevó a cabo exitosas manifestaciones antinucleares en la entonces propuesta planta de energía nuclear de Seabrook en Nuevo Hampshire. La campaña superó grandes obstáculos e impulsó un movimiento “No Nukes” que inspiró alianzas y acciones similares contra plantas de energía nuclear propuestas y existentes en todo el país.

Posteriormente, Al trabajó en la primera campaña al Senado de John Kerry, antes de convertirse en el aprendiz del legendario organizador Abbie Hoffman en las trincheras, trabajando en campañas de organización en Pensilvania, Nicaragua y otros lugares. Fue uno de los primeros periodistas nacidos en Estados Unidos en documentar el levantamiento indígena del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) en 1994.

Para apoyar ese esfuerzo y documentar la fallida “Guerra Contra las Drogas” de Estados Unidos en México y toda Latinoamérica, Al creó el periódico en línea Narco News. Este innovador servicio de noticias obtuvo una histórica victoria para la libertad de prensa en línea en Estados Unidos cuando Citibank demandó infructuosamente a Al en un tribunal de Nueva York por su cobertura de la guerra contra las drogas. En su fallo, el tribunal sentó un precedente que otorga a los periodistas en línea las mismas protecciones de libertad de expresión que disfruta la prensa impresa tradicional.

Durante más de 14 años, y con el apoyo y la participación de docenas de colaboradores, Al también dirigió un taller para periodistas y organizadores con el fin de compartir estrategias para la cobertura efectiva y estratégica de los movimientos sociales; un esfuerzo que creó redes efectivas con alcance global entre sus participantes, que siguen activas hasta el día de hoy. Al también obtuvo una atención considerable por su presciente cobertura del “cambio de paradigma de Obama” en la antesala de las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos de 2008, y creó un manual en línea para la revolución no violenta después de su cobertura presencial del levantamiento contra el dictador egipcio Hosni Mubarak en 2011.

La muerte de Al es impactante en el sentido de que nos dejó demasiado pronto. Sin embargo, Al llevaba un tiempo lidiando con problemas de salud persistentes, incluso después de haber vencido el cáncer hace varios años atrás. La muerte nunca es reconfortante, pero sí es un alivio para aquellos que sufren problemas de salud graves y crónicos. El viaje, que incluye tanto dolor emocional como físico, es la parte difícil.

Al vivió la vida intensa y rápidamente. Así fue como se le presentó. Pero cada momento fue importante para Al, al igual que ganar la buena batalla. Literalmente cambió el mundo con su trabajo de organización y periodismo. La lista de sus grandes logros es extensa, y su impresionante legado apenas comienza a emprender su propio viaje.

Ni siquiera Al pudo burlar a la parca. Nadie puede. Pero vaya que le dio a la vida un paseo impresionante.

Al murió en sus propios términos, aún diciendo su verdad al poder y trabajando para organizar a otras personas para que hagan lo mismo, para que surja una verdad aún más grande. Su obra vivirá mucho más allá de los últimos suspiros de sus detractores.

Lo único que podemos hacer ahora es tomar parte de nuestra tristeza y canalizarla en lo que Al seguramente querría que continuáramos haciendo: vivir auténticamente y buscar un mundo mejor para todos. Definitivamente también deberíamos encontrar algo de tiempo ahora para honrar la vida de Al, de la manera que funcione para cada uno, para celebrar lo que Al nos ha dejado para construir.

Tenemos que seguir empujando hacia adelante mientras el tiempo lo permita. Al alguna vez dijo: “La autenticidad no es el camino más fácil en la vida, pero es el único camino que conduce hacia adelante”.

Al Giordano ¡Presente!

Amigos de Al
Y la junta directiva
del Fondo para el Periodismo Auténtico
Doug Wilson, Presidente
Bill Conroy, Tesorero
Wendy Foxmyn, Administradora del Fondo

How our weak public records law is enabling a cover-up of school sports harassment

Photo (cc) 2016 by NAVFAC

Sports builds character, we are told over and over again. And yet Massachusetts has been hit with multiple cases of racist, homophobic harassment aimed at high school athletes.

🗽The New England Muzzles🗽

The leading journalist tracking those cases is Bob Hohler of The Boston Globe, who’s reported on horrifying cases in Danvers, Woburn, Duxbury and elsewhere. Yet his efforts to dig deeper have been improperly thwarted by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. According to Hohler, the MIAA has refused to turn over incident reports in response to a public records request even though the secretary of state’s office has ruled that those records are, indeed, public. Hohler writes:

Details of the alleged misconduct remain untold because the MIAA denied the Globe’s request for copies of the incident reports. The denial follows a ruling by the Secretary of State’s office in November that the MIAA, despite the organization’s objections, is a public entity subject to the state’s public records law.

MIAA executive director Bob Baldwin told Hohler that his organization has chosen to ignore the public’s right to know because officials don’t want to discourage schools from reporting incidents of harassment. Yet the lesson of past incidents is that reforms often don’t occur without exposure. For instance, it was only after Hohler reported that Danvers officials had failed to respond to a “toxic team culture” on the boys’ varsity hockey team that the attorney general’s office investigated and local leaders agreed to a series of reforms centered around policies and training. Hohler’s reporting was also followed by several departures, including the retirement of School Supt. Lisa Dana.

More than anything, Hohler’s report on the MIAA this week underscores the inadequacies of the Massachusetts public records law. There are few consequences for officials who refuse to comply with the law, even when they ignore a direct ruling to turn over public documents, as the MIAA is reportedly doing with Hohler and the Globe.

According to Hohler, the MIAA “has received 50 reports involving discrimination, harassment, or bullying — nearly one a week on average while school has been in session — since the organization began requiring its 380 member schools to file discriminatory incident reports starting with the winter season in late 2021.” The public deserves to know more about those reports.

The future of the New England Muzzle Awards

This is the time of year when I would be putting the finishing touches on the New England Muzzle Awards, an annual Fourth of July feature that highlights outrages against freedom of speech in the six New England states. From 1998 through 2012, the Muzzles were published in The Boston Phoenix. After the Phoenix closed in 2013, they were hosted at GBH News.

The one constant over all those years had been my friend Peter Kadzis’ role as editor at both the Phoenix and GBH. Following Peter’s well-earned retirement, I’ve decided that last year’s 25th anniversary edition will be the last. I’ll still track the kinds of stories that I used to highlight in the Muzzles, and the MIAA story would have been a natural. But rather than an annual round-up, I’m going to write them up in real time for Media Nation. You’ll notice a weak attempt at a logo near the top of this post. I’ll try to come up with something better.

I also want to express my appreciation to GBH News for hosting the Muzzles during the final 10 years of their existence, and to civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, my friend and occasional collaborator, for coming up with the idea all those years ago.

In 1983, The Boston Phoenix endorsed Mel King in his historic run for mayor

Mel King was a giant. I remember his 1983 Boston mayoral campaign against Ray Flynn as though it were yesterday. Flynn defeated King. But King, the first Black candidate ever to make a serious bid for the office, remained a force until his death this week at the age of 94. GBH News has the story.

On the eve of the 1983 election, The Boston Phoenix endorsed King. You can read the entire piece here courtesy of the Phoenix archives at Northeastern University.

And here is how it closes:

On matters of human decency, of character, or of integrity, who could choose between Ray Flynn and Mel King? It is only in the consideration of other qualities — the strength of commitment over time, the wisdom that comes with experience, the consistency of values — that the dramatic differences between the candidates emerge. Given these differences, we’d anticipate the inauguration of Ray Flynn as Boston’s next mayor with hope. But we’d anticipate the inauguration of Mel King with enthusiasm.

Boston has still not elected its first Black mayor. The city now has its first person of color as mayor, Michelle Wu, who’s Asian American. But it is disheartening to contemplate that in a place with such a lamentably racist past, not a single African American has ever held the top elected position. Mel King came close — and inspired a generation of Bostonians.

The Boston Phoenix, 10 years on

Ten years ago this week, The Boston Phoenix published its final edition. I was on staff from 1991 to 2005 and continued as a contributor until the end. Its loss was a devastating blow to the city, to those of us who worked there, and especially to those who were suddenly left without jobs. Boston is a lesser place without the Phoenix.

A disappeared alt-weekly highlights the challenge of saving digital archives

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post has an amazing story (free link) about The Hook, an alternative-weekly that used to publish in Charlottesville, Virginia. Its online archives disappeared after they were sold to a mystery buyer. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the buyer was a litigious deep-pockets guy who wanted to make invisible The Hook’s reporting about a sexual-assault case he was involved in years earlier.

Keeping online archives active and usable is a real challenge. Though what happened to The Hook was pretty unusual, it’s not unheard-of for valuable digital resources simply to disappear. Fortunately, the defunct alt-weekly I worked for, The Boston Phoenix, is available online through Northeastern University and the Internet Archive. You can find the Phoenix here.

It’s even more of a problem when the resource was digital-only and there was no print component that can be saved on microfilm. For instance, Blue Mass Group, a progressive political website that was a big deal in Massachusetts at one time, has been seeking a new digital home as the last of the co-founders, Charley Blandy, prepares to leave. Charley writes: “Plans are afoot for the site to be thoroughly crawled and archived. It won’t just disappear. The site will stay up, at least for a while, but for the purpose of archiving, commenting and posting will be disabled on 12/31/22.”

These resources need to be saved.

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