It has nothing to do with Ted Kennedy’s funeral or the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. But the most important piece of reporting I read this weekend was Patti Hartigan’s article in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine on government mandates that are turning kindergarten — kindergarten — into a high-stakes hell.
Year: 2009
The future of investigative reporting?
If you looked closely, you may have noticed that the cover story of the New York Times Magazine yesterday — a long, harrowing examination of accusations that the staff of a New Orleans hospital euthanized several patients following Hurricane Katrina — was a collaboration with ProPublica, a non-profit investigative-reporting foundation.
According to Zachary Seward of the Nieman Journalism Lab, the 13,000-word story may have cost as much as $400,000 (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration) to produce — a huge chunk for the Times, but in this case the paper spent nothing: a grant from the Kaiser Foundation paid for much of the reporting. It’s the sort of alternative funding model that may help to ensure the future of investigative journalism.
The story, by ProPublica’s Sheri Fink, is available not only on the Times’ Web site, but also at ProPublica.org. And starting Sept. 29, anyone can run it for free as long as proper attribution is provided.
Fink’s investigation centers on Dr. Anna Pou, a cancer specialist who may have killed several patients who, in her judgment, were near the end of their lives and could not be rescued. As with much good investigative reporting, the story is inconclusive, yet absolutely riveting in describing the despair that had settled over Memorial Medical Center — sweltering, without power and all but abandoned.
Implicit is that regardless of Pou’s actions, the real blame should be laid at the feet of incompetent government officials who abandoned New Orleans to its fate for days on end.
Reminder: Bloggers unite for Monti Scholars
The radio talk show “Pundit Review,” on WRKO (AM 680), will devote the 8 p.m. hour tonight to raise money for a scholarship fund in honor of SFC Jared C. Monti, killed while trying to save his comrades in Afghanistan. You can donate now by clicking here, or on the small graphic in the upper-right-hand corner of this blog. Here’s my earlier item explaining what it’s all about.
Monday update: Kevin Whalen, the host of “Pundit Review,” reports that the effort raised nearly $3,000. You can still give.
She’s changing the climate. Ask her how!
Greta Browne is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister who’s traveling the country in hopes of raising public awareness about global warming. By her own telling, the unconvinced remain unconvinced. And though she calls her journey a walk (OK, there is some walking involved), her actual mode of transportation is what she calls “a disgusting gas guzzler.”
I have some advice for Browne: Go home. And stay there.
Photo of Browne’s “gypsy wagon” is taken from her blog, For All the Grandchildren.
The Krauthammer compromise
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, a physician, suggests what sounds to me (admittedly no expert on this phenomenally complex subject) like a reasonable compromise that would deliver to President Obama the universal health-care bill he wants while overcoming most of the objections.
Here’s the problem. Krauthammer does not acknowledge the very real possibility that Republican leaders have settled on defeating health-care reform as a strategy for politically wounding Obama — the details be damned. I suspect that Obama could embrace the Krauthammer ideas in total, only to see the GOP move the goal posts on him. (Via Jay Fitzgerald.)
Optimism amid the newspaper gloom
Two pieces of news prompt this post. First, the Associated Press reports that newspaper advertising was down 29 percent in the second quarter of 2009, a devastating decline that is sure to renew questions as to how much longer the traditional newspaper business can hang on. Second, the Boston Globe’s main football writer, Mike Reiss, is leaving for a new ESPN Web site to be called ESPNBoston.
What do these two events have in common? They are further evidence that media organizations whose business models are relatively healthy have an opportunity to invade the turf traditionally occupied by newspapers. That doesn’t offer much hope for newspaper publishers. But it’s certainly cause for optimism among those who want to see journalism survive — and something worried journalism students should take solace from as well.
ESPNBoston, which has not yet launched, is not to be confused with the radio station of the same name — an also-ran with two bad signals, now reduced to spectator status in the sports-talk battle between WEEI (AM 850) and WBZ-FM (98.5). ESPNBoston, writes the Globe’s Chad Finn, is part of a strategy by the parent company to launch regional Web sites in the most sports-crazed parts of the country.
Disney-owned ESPN, among other things, operates wildly successful cable channels, publishes a magazine and produces a Web site that, according to Quantcast.com, attracts between 14 million and 20 million unique visitors each month. I don’t pretend to know what ESPN’s business strategy is for the new local sites, but it seems logical that company executives would be willing to subsidize them for quite a while if they help cement brand loyalty.
Reiss is not the only local sports reporter to leave for sites operated by non-newspaper companies. Previously, the Boston Herald lost Rob Bradford to WEEI.com, and Globe baseball writer Gordon Edes decamped to Yahoo. The Globe and the Herald have always had good sports sections, and their coverage has helped drive a lot of circulation. Their sports sections are still good, but now they must compete with online coverage produced by companies with fewer financial problems than the newspaper business is experiencing.
And sports is just one example. Tom Palmer retired from the development beat at the Globe last year and kept right on doing his thing for McDermott Ventures, a public-relations firm — a relationship that may raise eyebrows among journalism ethicists, but that is sure to becoming increasingly common.
Also in 2008, Boston.com political blogger James Pindell left to head a national network of state political sites called Politicker.com. The project was ahead of its time, and it folded in the midst of last fall’s economic crisis. But the idea lives on: Pindell is now trying a similar project on his own in New Hampshire.
Finally, and not to repeat myself, but one of the more interesting projects under way right now is the redesigned WBUR.org, published by Boston’s public-radio powerhouse, WBUR (90.9 FM); the site combines local and NPR news into a quality online newspaper. Public radio has not been immune from having to make recession-related cuts. But, unlike newspapers, both its distribution model (commuters stuck in their cars) and its business model (listener contributions, corporate underwriting and grants, supplemented with a small amount of taxpayer money) remain intact.
If the next owner of the Globe keeps on cutting, it’s easy to imagine WBUR.org morphing into a real alternative. And, of course, there’s nothing to stop the city’s television news operations from pumping up their Web sites, though they, like the newspaper business, are experiencing tough economic times.
We often hear that if newspapers die, there will be nothing left but amateur citizen-media sites that, for all their strengths, lack the capacity to do the sort of public-interest journalism a democracy needs to thrive. In fact, there is reason to be a lot more optimistic than that. I hope newspaper companies can find a way of combining their print and online operations so they can thrive for years to come. But if they can’t, it won’t be the end of journalism.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk
There’s an entertaining if pedantic review in today’s New York Times of the Stoogeum, a museum in suburban Philadelphia that’s dedicated to the legacy of the Three Stooges. The next time I get to Philly, I’ll make sure to stop by.
Times Co. executives to visit Globe
New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and president Janet Robinson will visit the Boston Globe on Sept. 9, according to an e-mail sent to Globe staffers that was obtained by Media Nation. The full text of the e-mail follows:
Please mark your calendars!
Arthur and Janet will visit the Globe on Wednesday, September 9th to hold business update meetings that are open to all employees.
The meetings are scheduled for 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM. Each meeting will be held in the Link.
All employees are encouraged to attend. There will be time for Q&A’s.
[Globe publisher] Steve [Ainsley] will begin the meeting with a brief overview of The Boston Globe and Boston.com business plan.
No doubt the number-one question on most folks’ minds will be the status of Times Co. efforts to sell the Globe, Boston.com and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
Update: For what it’s worth, Media Nation has received a revised e-mail stating that Ainsley “will hold a series of separate employee meetings in mid-September” in order to “ensure that all employees have ample opportunity to both meet with and
ask questions of Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson.”
Globe’s Kennedy series drives Web traffic
The Boston Globe’s Web site, Boston.com, received more than 8 million page views yesterday by 5 p.m., according to Zachary Seward of the Nieman Journalism Lab — a surge driven by the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy.
And though Seward doesn’t have specific numbers, he notes that Boston.com was (and still is) giving prominent play to its multimedia series on Kennedy’s life that was published last February. As I wrote then, the package was likely to serve as an important resource for some time to come, especially giving that Kennedy was nearing the end of his life.
Interestingly enough, Seward learns that the text had been taken down for a while at the request of Simon & Schuster, which published a book based on the series, and was only recently restored.
Looks like we’re back in Kansas, Toto
Oh, my. A first-term Republican congresswoman from Kansas named Lynn Jenkins told folks attending a town meeting recently that her party needs to find a “great white hope” to do battle with President Obama. According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Jenkins told the crowd:
Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope. I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington.
Jenkins proceeded to rattle off the names of several Republican up-and-comers, all of whom were, uh, white. She later apologized through a spokeswoman.
Sounds like the classic definition of a gaffe. That is, she accidentally said what she meant. As Charles Pierce observes, when they say it’s not about race, it’s about race. (Via TPMDC.)