Year: 2009

An update on Kazakhstan’s Internet crackdown

The partly free republic of Kazakhstan has taken a step toward greater repression, as President Nursultan Nazarbayev (photo) recently signed a bill aimed at cracking down on the Internet.

According to David Stern, writing for GlobalPost, the new law subjects all Internet communications to Kazakhstan’s “already punitive mass media and libel laws.” The law will also make it easier for the Kazakh government to block foreign Web sites.

The bill was the subject of a protest last April during the Eurasian Media Forum, held in the country’s largest city, Almaty. I was at the forum and covered the story here and here. At the time, people like Almaty resident Adil Nurmakov, Central Asia editor for Global Voices Online, were hopeful that Nurmakov might veto the legislation.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. As Stern’s story makes clear, the authorities have decided not to risk any sort of Twitter revolution spreading to Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is an important country — a vast, lightly populated former Soviet republic with considerable oil and gas resources. It’s a shame that Nazarbayev’s interest in opening up to the West does not extend to greater liberties for his own people.

Charges against Gates to be dropped

WHDH-TV (Channel 7) reports that charges against Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates will be dropped. Meanwhile, the Cambridge Chronicle notes that Boston.com’s copy of the arrest report has gone missing.

Update: Boston.com has reposted (PDF) some of the arrest report, but there’s less now than there was yesterday. The Cambridge Chronicle has a longer version here.

Correction: I wrote yesterday that Gates had apparently locked himself out of his house. As is now clear, that wasn’t the case — his door was jammed.

Why did Brooks invoke Coulter?

One of my favorite conservative pundits, New York Times columnist David Brooks, goes off the rails today, writing, “Every cliché Ann Coulter throws at the Democrats is gloriously fulfilled by the Democratic health care bills.”

Here’s a list of Coulter witticisms about the Democrats, compiled by Media Matters:

  • “Democrats are racist, and they’re just stunned to find a black man who can walk and talk.”
  • “The Democrats want Saddam back.”
  • The Democratic Party is “a party that supports killing, lying, adultery, thievery, envy.”
  • “[Y]ou just expect Democrats to side with Al Qaeda.”
  • “I think the problem the Democrats have is, no one really believes they’re authentic patriots.”
  • “I understand why you are so terrified of letting us point out what racists the Democrats are and how they have a big problem with black women.”

As for health care, the issue at hand, I can’t find much of anything Coulter has said directly about the subject, which makes it doubly puzzling as to why Brooks brought her up in the first place. At AnnCoulter.com, though, I did find this gem from 2007:

  • “The only ‘crisis’ in health care in this country is that doctors are paid too little…. [T]he Democratic Party treats doctors like they’re Klan members.”

Every so often Brooks, as sharp an analyst as we have, feels the need to re-establish his conservative credentials in the most boneheaded way imaginable. Today was one of those days.

After the deluge

Now that the Boston Newspaper Guild has decisively approved a $10 million package of wage and benefit cuts, it seems like anyone who’s been following this closely should be able to offer some thoughts on what’s next for the Boston Globe.

For the time being, though, everything that can be said has already been said several times over. It’s a sign of how long this has dragged on that Romenesko offers just the bare bones, and that the trade magazine Editor & Publisher goes with an AP story. A huge story has gotten smaller with the passage of time.

The Guild cuts, along with another $10 million agreed to by the Globe’s other unions, are going to be a bitter pill to swallow. Management never fostered a sense of shared sacrifice, which is why a similar package was narrowly defeated last month. Still, simply as a reader, I hope yesterday’s vote allows the paper to move forward rather than obsess over the Globe’s uncertain present.

More than anything, we should all hope that the vote leads to a quick sale by the New York Times Co. to local owners who will do what they can to preserve the Globe as a leading regional institution. I would argue that the Times Co. was a reasonably good steward until the last year or so. But it all got very ugly very quickly.

This relationship can’t end soon enough, provided the right buyers can be found.

George Merry’s local legacy

George Merry, a longtime political reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, who died on July 1, is someone I knew slightly. We were both graduates of Northeastern University, and George often attended events organized by our journalism alumni group in the 1980s.

He was a proper gentleman, and though I can’t say I was intimately familiar with his coverage of Massachusetts politics, I could tell from talking with him that he was a fine journalist, fair-minded and curious about the world around him.

Gloria Negri has a lengthy obit in today’s Boston Globe. The Monitor ran a tribute on July 7.

Last fall I was reporting a story on the Monitor for CommonWealth Magazine. Monitor executives had just announced they were going to eliminate the daily print edition, going instead with their already-excellent Web site and a new weekly magazine.

Among the angles I wanted to explore was whether it might make sense for the Monitor — which is, after all, based in Boston — to re-establish its local presence at a time when the Globe and the Boston Herald were getting smaller and smaller.

The angle didn’t pan out. But I did have a chance to interview Merry, reaching him by phone at his home in Hyde Park. He clearly wasn’t well, and he labored to speak. Yet he was as courteous and helpful as he could be.

The Monitor, of course, is known for its national and especially its international reporting. Merry, though, told me that the Monitor took its local coverage very seriously at one time, and that it was an ideal training ground for the paper’s stars of the future.

“When I first went on the New England bureau staff, there were at least a dozen reporters,” he said. “I think we brought a different viewpoint. It was a different voice. It wasn’t so commercially oriented.” He added, though, that “it got very expensive to maintain.”

Merry was also skeptical of the Monitor’s plan to eliminate the daily print edition. “The Internet’s a wonderful thing, but I think it’s somewhat of a risk,” he said.

George Merry was not well-known outside of local media and political circles. But he was a good guy and a pro, and he’ll be missed.

The formerly independent Bay State Banner (II)

Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker writes about Bay State Banner publisher Melvin Miller’s decision to accept a $200,000 government-administered loan, courtesy of Boston Mayor Tom Menino: “[I]ts independence is the only thing that makes the Banner worth saving, journalistically speaking. There is simply no getting around the fact that it will return to the stands as a less independent voice.”

Baron, too

Boston Globe editor Marty Baron just sent this e-mail to his troops:

To the staff:

I know how stressful the past several months have been for all of you. Still, despite the pressures and the tension, you have never wavered in your commitment to deliver journalism of the highest caliber.

I want to say thank you.

Thank you for the depth of your dedication. Thank you for your consummate professionalism, even in times of discord and difficulty. And thank you for demonstrating every day that the work of this organization holds powerful and enduring value in our community.

Marty

Guild approves Globe concessions

The Boston Newspaper Guild has approved a $10 million package of concessions at the Boston Globe. A newsroom source just zapped me the following company-wide e-mail sent by publisher Steve Ainsley.

Dear Colleagues:

I am pleased the Guild membership voted to ratify their new contract. I appreciate the personal sacrifices all Guild members are making, and I thank each one for their commitment to this institution.

The ratification strengthens the stability of The Boston Globe and Boston.com.

Since we now have settled contracts with all our major unions, let me take this opportunity to thank every Globe employee, union and non-union, for the sacrifices you have made to meet the unprecedented challenges we faced at the beginning of the year.

Additionally, thank you for performing to such a high level of accomplishment under such pressure.

Your efforts and sacrifices are making a difference.

— Steve

According to Reuters, the vote was an overwhelming 366 to 179. The Boston Herald offers some additional background.

Cambridge police arrest Henry Louis Gates

In case you haven’t heard, it looks like the Cambridge Police Department has a public-relations disaster on its hands. Last Thursday, it has been revealed, police arrested Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates and charged him with disorderly conduct.

According to Boston Globe reporter Tracy Jan, police responded to a call that someone was attempting to break into a house. Apparently Gates had locked himself out of his own couldn’t get into his home because the door was jammed, and he was upset and frustrated. (Been there.) As he is also African-American, the possibility of racial profiling can’t be ruled out. (Haven’t been there.)

Gates reportedly told the officer who arrested him, “This is what happens to black men in America.”

To make matters worse, the Cambridge Chronicle reports that police have refused to release the arrest report*, citing the “investigatory exemption” to the public-records law. Mind you, we are talking about an incident that took place four days ago involving a man trying to get into his own house a little before one in the afternoon.

The Chronicle credits the Huffington Post with breaking the story, but I’m confused. The Chronicle links to an Associated Press story that HuffPo published. It’s time-stamped 2:22 p.m., two hours later than the Globe piece. For the moment, it’s unclear who broke this story.

We can’t assume that the police botched this, though their refusal to release their report sends all the wrong signals. The police need to come clean on this quickly.

*Update: The Globe story has been updated and now includes a link to what appears to be the full police report (PDF). Thanks to alert Media Nation reader J.S. for letting me know.

Still more: The Cambridge Chronicle blog reports that the Cambridge police say the Globe didn’t get the report from them.