Year: 2009

NU students report on Egyptian dissident

Northeastern journalism students touring the Middle East have broken some important news.

Kate Augusto, Danielle Capalbo and Nick Mendez report that Ayman Nour, a leading political dissident in Egypt, has decided to return to prison and finish his sentence in order to dramatize what he calls the Egyptian government’s ongoing lack of respect for democratic values.

The Boston Globe’s Worldly Boston blog has picked up on the news.

Nour was released earlier this year, with the government announcing that it was responding to Nour’s poor health.

Our students are traveling with journalism professor Carlene Hempel and political-science professor Denis Sullivan, who directs both the Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development and the International Affairs Program.

Please check out the group blog, as well as the individual student and faculty blogs that are linked from the main page.

Photo of Nour by Nick Mendez.

Warsh responds to Paulson

David Warsh wrote a letter to the Boston Globe over the weekend responding to Michael Paulson, who, in turn, was responding to Warsh’s observation — which I think I’m characterizing correctly — that the Globe’s coverage of the pedophile-priest scandal was perhaps more popular with the Pulitzer judges than it was with readers.

Specifically, Warsh objects to being called “insane.”

One point Warsh makes that is undeniable is that the Globe’s relentless pursuit of younger readers has not paid off. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea. But by putting so much effort into trying to convert non-readers into readers, the Globe — and many other newspapers — may only have succeeded in the opposite.

My earlier item, with links to Warsh’s and Paulson’s previous salvos.

The blogosphere versus Maureen Dowd

Simon Owens has the latest on the Maureen Dowd plagiarism story, with quotes from Dowd and a no-comment from Josh Marshall.

The New York Times has already updated Dowd’s column to credit Marshall, but there’s no acknowledgment that there was a problem in the first place.

OK, this is premature, but here is Dowd friend Howell Raines’ 1998 takedown of the Boston Globe, which he chastises for failing to fire star columnist Mike Barnicle after he’d been caught plagiarizing one-liners from a book by George Carlin.

I would imagine Times editors are going to have to do something even if Dowd’s explanation pans out. I’d also guess that the next 24 hours will be key. Right now, we can assume that dozens (hundreds?) of bloggers are scouring every column she’s ever written.

If she can survive that, then she’ll get through this. If not, then all bets are off.

Show us the money (III)

The Boston Globe today runs an “Editor’s Note” saying that Ariel Ayanna, whose family was the subject of a feel-good story about people trying to get by with less money, “never meant to suggest” that he isn’t looking for a job.

It will be interesting to see if this is the end of it.

Update: And, no, that wasn’t the end of it. The Ayannas have posted a blog item taking issue with both the Editor’s Note and with a letter to the editor that they submitted and then retracted because of proposed cuts that they say eliminated most of their criticism of the Globe.

“I guess I was pretty naive to think I could express myself accurately and without censorship,” writes Amiri Ayanna.

My offer for the Globe to respond here remains on the table.

Globe gets ready to unveil GlobeReader

Thanks to rozzie02131, who discovered that an e-version of the Boston Globe will become available next month. Called GlobeReader, it will presumably be based on the same Adobe Air platform as Times Reader 2.0, which was unveiled earlier this week.

No word on pricing. The come-on says that it will be available with “all Boston Globe home delivery subscriptions.” If that means Sunday-only print customers can get it for free, that would represent quite a savings.

But being able to buy a separate GlobeReader subscription for $10 or $15 a month, as you can with Times Reader, would be better.

Is Geffen a source close to Geffen?

Yesterday the New York Post ran a pretty emphatic item reporting that entertainment mogul David Geffen is not interested in buying the New York Times or a share thereof. The Post’s Peter Lauria called the Geffen bubble a “myth,” citing “three sources with direct knowledge of the situation.”

Today the Times itself comes back with a story claiming that Geffen is “seriously interested” in buying the Times, either in whole or in part. Reporters Richard Pérez-Peña and Michael Cieply one-up the Post, attributing their reporting to “people who are very familiar with his [Geffen’s] thinking.”

Far from being a throwaway, it’s likely that the word “very” was the subject of extensive negotiations between the Times and, uh, one of its sources. Very interesting, I’d say.

Figuring out the Globe’s new price structure

I’m not going to complain about the latest price increases announced by the Boston Globe, since I’m on the record as believing that newspapers can and should charge a lot more for their print editions. But does it have to be so confusing?

As home-delivery customers, we get charged by the month — $35.16, to be exact. But the new prices are by the week. Since we live in Greater Boston, the new price for us will be $12.25. As best as I can figure out, based on the Globe’s explanation, that’s an increase of $3 per week. Media Nation is an algebra-free zone. But if $9.25 is to $35.16 as $12.25 is to x, then I guess the new monthly price is $46.56.

Over at the Boston Phoenix, Adam Reilly, ponders moving to online-only, and asks whether his readers will pay the higher price. My answer: I couldn’t rely solely on Boston.com, the Globe’s free Web site, because its ad servers are miserably slow. It’s fine for reading a few stories, but not the whole paper.

If I had a Kindle, I would certainly consider switching to the Globe’s Kindle edition, which costs $9.99 a month. And if there were a Globe Reader e-version similar to the new Times Reader 2.0, I would consider dropping print and subscribing to that instead.

As is the case with many newspaper observers, my sense is that the advertising market won’t come back that strongly even after the recession ends. There have simply been too many systemic changes — the rise of Craigslist and the fall of downtown retail businesses to name perhaps the two most important.

In such an environment, newspapers are going to have to find a way to get readers to pick up more of the cost. It may be a hopeless task, and it may fail, as Warren Buffett warned recently. But unless they try, failure is guaranteed.