Journalism doesn’t need to go backwards. It needs to get better.

On By Dan KennedyIn Media
A return to the journalism of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams would not be good for democracy.

The latest celebrant at the altar of DIY media consumption is the writer Antonio García Martínez. In a piece for Wired.com headlined “Journalism Isn’t Dying. It’s Returning to Its Roots,” Martínez observes that the current economic travails of journalism and the accompanying decline of objectivity are simply a reversion to the norm — that partisan, financially perilous propagandizing would be far more recognizable to founders such as Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams than the establishment press that dominated American society during the second half of the 20th century.

This is all true, but it is also beside the point. We’ve lost a lot. At its best, the mainstream press held (and still holds) government and other large institutions to account in a fair and unbiased manner. If we lose that entirely, then we’ll lose one of our most fundamental tools for governing ourselves.

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Elizabeth Warren and that Washington Post story

On By Dan KennedyIn Media, Politics

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Jeff Bezos just made good on an unusual promise about body parts and wringers

On By Dan KennedyIn The Return of the Moguls
Photo via Wikimedia Commons

This seems rather prescient given the events of the past few days. Here’s what Jeff Bezos told Washington Post staffers in 2013, shortly after it was announced he’d buy the paper. From “The Return of the Moguls”:

In his message to Washington Post staff members the day that the purchase was announced, Bezos alluded to an infamous moment during Watergate when Nixon henchman John Mitchell barked at Bernstein that “Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer” if a particularly damaging story were published. Bezos wrote, “While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.” As we shall see, it was not long before Bezos would be put to the test.

The first quote is from Katharine Graham’s autobiography, “Personal History”; the second is from a Post account of the sale.

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Trump’s SOTU speech was a cynical exercise in pretend bipartisanship

On By Dan KennedyIn Media, Politics
Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi in happier times. 2017 photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Was President Trump’s bipartisan outreach in his State of the Union address Tuesday night a cynical attempt to recast himself as something he fundamentally is not? Or was it an even more cynical attempt to be seen as bipartisan while winking and nodding to his hardcore supporters? As Lily Tomlin once observed, “No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.” I thought it was clear that Trump was pursuing the latter course. So take this as my attempt to stay ahead of the Tomlin curve.

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Jack Driscoll, former Globe editor and distinguished Northeastern alum, dies

On By Dan KennedyIn Media

Very sad news tonight as The Boston Globe is reporting that one of its former editors, Jack Driscoll, has died. Among other things, Mr. Driscoll was among the most distinguished journalism graduates of Northeastern University — back before we had a formal journalism program.

Mr. Driscoll retired from the Globe in 1993 and had a long, productive retirement at the MIT Media Lab and as a pioneering citizen journalist. Kevin Cullen has the details.

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Book review: Jill Abramson paints a cloudy picture for journalism and democracy

On By Dan KennedyIn Media
Jill Abramson. Photo (cc) 2015 via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s easy to imagine how Jill Abramson’s new book might have turned out differently. In “Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts,” the veteran journalist follows the fortunes of four media organizations. BuzzFeed and Vice are young, energetic, willing to break rules and try new things. The New York Times and The Washington Post are stodgy, sclerotic giants trying to grope their way toward a digital future. We all know how that’s going to turn out. Right?

Well, something unexpected happened on the way to the old-media boneyard.

Read the rest at The Boston Globe. And talk about this review on Facebook.

A malign force from Nixon to Trump: Revisiting the Roger Stone biopic

On By Dan KennedyIn Media, Politics
Roger Stone. Illustration (cc) by DonkeyHotey.

In rewatching the Netflix documentary “Get Me Roger Stone” this week, I was reminded of how crucial Stone was to the entire Trump political enterprise — starting in the late 1980s, when Trump visited New Hampshire at Stone’s instigation.

“The Trump candidacy was a pure Roger Stone production,” says Jeffrey Toobin, who wrote a profile of Stone for The New Yorker and is one of the principal talking heads in the 2017 film, directed by Dylan Bank and Daniel DiMauro.

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Flipping the deal: Alden hedge fund may be looking to sell Digital First to Gannett

On By Dan KennedyIn Media

Recently we learned that the worst of the bottom-feeding newspaper chains, Digital First Media, was seeking to acquire Gannett Co., which owns USA Today and about 100 other publications. Now the New York Post is reporting that the deal could flip the other way: Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that owns Digital First, might sell to Gannett instead.

On a 1-10 scale of whether this is good news or bad news, I’d give it a 5.1. As I argued in a recent column for WGBHNews.org, anything is better than Digital First. No doubt Gannett ownership would be a marginal improvement for Gannett’s three Massachusetts papers — the Boston Herald, The Sun of Lowell and the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg.

But Gannett virtually invented the business model for chain newspapers of cutting journalism to the bone while driving up profit margins for the benefit of Wall Street. Just last week Gannett tore through another round of cuts at its newsrooms across the country. So let’s not get too excited.

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Three Northeastern students contributed to the Globe’s Valedictorians Project

On By Dan KennedyIn Media

Last weekend I spent an hour or so with The Boston Globe’s amazing Valedictorians Project, which tracked more than 100 Boston valedictorians from about a dozen years ago to see how they are doing today. Like all great digital presentations, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would prefer the print version. The integration of videos and data, as well as the ability to access short bios of every valedictorian, really make the digital version stand out.

Of course, there’s a lot of important reporting here, too. There is much to contemplate, but what struck me more than anything was the cultural shock that many of these young people experienced when they made the transition from the Boston Public Schools to college. We all need to do better.

I could go on and on, but I’ll close with this: Two of our students in the School of Journalism at Northeastern were among those providing research assistance: Zipporah Osei and Patrick Strohecker. A third Northeastern student, Alexander Lim, is with the newly renamed Khoury College of Computer and Information Sciences. Congratulations to all!

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Making sense of the BuzzFeed bombshell — and what, if anything, went wrong

On By Dan KennedyIn Media

BuzzFeed News reports that “two federal law enforcement officials” have seen evidence that President Trump “directed” his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie under oath when he testified before Congress about a Trump Tower project in Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller takes the unusual step of having his spokesman denounce the story as “not accurate.” BuzzFeed’s reporters and their editor vociferously insist that they and their unnamed sources are standing behind their account.

Within 24 hours last week, what looked like a serious threat to the Trump presidency had collapsed into one big honking mess. Nor does it appear that we’re any closer to resolution.

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