By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
I’m writing from New Haven, where I’m on a reporting trip, and I know nothing other than what was in the Boston Globe today. But it seems that WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) talk-show host Jay Severin has been suspended again.
Severin was suspended two years ago for making racist comments about Mexicans — something he had been doing for years about many ethnic groups and women. The difference was that his ratings had started to fall.
Prediction: This time, he won’t be back. And few will care.
The Boston Globe has published a wonderful obituary of Clif Garboden in advance of his memorial service, which will be held on April 9 at 2 p.m. at Framingham Friends Meeting. Clif, as readers of this blog know, was senior managing editor of the Boston Phoenix, and had been the heart and soul of the newsroom since the 1960s.
Globe obit writer Bryan Marquard’s observation that Clif “could do compassion and curmudgeon in a single sentence and write with equal eloquence about swan boats or the cancer that cut short his life” is a keeper.
Here is my earlier item on Clif’s untimely passing. And here is the Phoenix’s tribute to him.
The New York Times has had months to test its online paid-content system. And, as of this morning, it’s a mess.
Last night I tried logging on to the Times’ iPhone app, which, as a subscriber to the Sunday print edition, I am supposed to get for no additional charge. I entered my username and password and got a message telling me to look for a confirmation email. I did. It wasn’t there — not in my inbox and not in my spam folder. I did it again. And again this morning. No dice.
I tweeted, and Greg Reibman, publisher of GateHouse Media’s Metro Boston papers, tweeted back: “Exact same thing happened to me. @nytimes promised email confirmation that never came.”
I also got this, from @NYTdigitalsubs: “Sorry to hear you’re experiencing login issues w/ iPhone. We’re investigating. Stay tuned. Thanks for patience.”
Perfection may be unattainable, but given the resistance to paying for Internet content, the Times needed as smooth a launch as possible. So far, not so good.
On the bright side, I did have a chance to play with the Times’ new iPhone app for a few days before the paywall went up, and it is spectacular. And since the “Top News” section is free to everyone, I was able to read that this morning.
Tuesday afternoon update: @NYTdigitalsubs came up with a workaround — log in as a digital subscriber rather than as a print subscriber. That did the trick. A more complete solution is supposed to be available later today.
As a journalist, my inclination is to support public-records laws that guarantee maximum disclosure. As an ordinary citizen, it’s sometimes unclear to me exactly how far those laws ought to go.
You may have heard that Wisconsin Republicans have filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain private emails written by or to a history professor named William Cronon, whose blog has become a focal point in the battle over the rights of public-employee unions in that state.
Cronon may have to comply because he teaches at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a state university and thus subject to Wisconsin’s strict public-records laws.
One strong argument against disclosure — and one invoked by Cronon himself — is the principle of academic freedom. That may well be how Cronon beats this, yet it strikes me as an easy way out. Why should a professor be exempt while, say, a $50,000-a-year career employee in the highway department is subject to having his private emails revealed in response to a FOIA request?
I should note that this does not affect me personally. Northeastern is a private university. But I don’t see why I should be safe from the long arm of FOIA while my colleagues at UMass are not.
Like Paul Krugman, I make some attempt to use my work email address for professional business and my personal address for everything else. But it’s mainly for my organizational benefit, and I’m not all that painstaking about keeping the two accounts separate.
I’m not sure what the answer is. It seems to me that some officials higher up the food chain ought to be subject to FOIA laws, but that ordinary employees should not. Of course, such officials’ correspondence with ordinary employees would be covered. But I shouldn’t be able to FOIA the email of anyone just because he or she happens to draw a government paycheck.
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Please have a look at my students’ Google map project in my Reinventing the News class. Every semester, this is always one of my favorites: students fan out into the neighborhhoods around Northeastern to take pictures, write blog posts and plot them on a map. This time, they chose to review cheap-eats places in and around the Back Bay.
The project is currently near the top of Boston.com’s Your Town/Back Bay site (Northeastern has a partnership with the Boston Globe to provide content to Your Town). I think the students did a great job. They took it seriously, they had fun and they learned something about how free, easy-to-use online tools such as mapping can enhance journalism.
Update: It’s featured prominently on the Your Town/Roxbury site as well.
Tomorrow I’ll be giving a talk to Northeastern alumni at the Burlington campus as part of the NU@Noon series. My topic will be “Social Media: The Connective Tissue Between News Outlets and Their Communities.” I’ve prepared some slides and plan to riff on them a bit before turning it over to questions. If you’d like a sneak preview, here you go.
It was a week ago today that the New York Times ran this lede:
Japan faced the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident Tuesday morning, as an explosion at the most crippled of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station damaged its crucial steel containment structure, emergency workers were withdrawn from the plant, and much larger emissions of radioactive materials appeared imminent, according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments.
The headline, which led NYTimes.com that night: “Japan Faces Potential Nuclear Disaster as Radiation Levels Rise.”
We can all be grateful that the worst hasn’t happened. It appears that the nuclear situation in Japan, despite continued setbacks, may slowly be coming under control. So my question this morning is whether the Times grossly overstated what was happening on that scary night.
A news organization should not lightly assert “the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident.”
Unfortunately for Apple, it has forfeited its right to assert free-speech protection because of the censorious manner in which it has run its iTunes Store. So when a group of gay activists demands that Apple remove an app claiming it can “cure” people of homosexuality, what can we do except agree?
The day Apple stops discriminating against certain types of content is the day I come to the company’s defense.
As best as I can figure out, it will soon be cheaper to get access to all of the New York Times’ digital products and the Sunday print edition too than it will to go paperless. Let’s run down the math.
Every three months, Media Nation Central pays $97.50 for home delivery of the Sunday Times. Under the new pay scheme announced last week, that entitles us to free access to most of the Times’ electronic delivery options: NYTimes.com, Times Reader, and apps for smartphones and tablets. (Kindle and Nook editions aren’t included in any of the just-announced options.)
On the other hand, if we don’t get the print edition at all, it will cost us $35 every four weeks for the same electronic package. That’s $113.75 every three months, or $16.25 more than getting the identical range of products plus the Sunday paper. That’s a markup of nearly 17 percent.
Now, Times executives have every incentive in the world to push the Sunday paper: it’s where most of the advertising revenue comes from. I’ve been told that the Boston Globe makes as much as two-thirds of its money from the Sunday paper. It’s probably about the same at the Times.
Still, it seems odd that the Times has deliberately set up a system under which you get more if you pay less — although, granted, I’m not factoring in the cost of tips, which should bring the price of paper-plus-electronic to somewhat more than electronic-only.
Robert Bertsche, a prominent First Amendment lawyer in Boston, passes along the latest news from the AP Stylebook Online (yes, I’m too cheap to subscribe):
dwarf The preferred term for people with a medical or genetic condition resulting in short stature. Plural is dwarfs.
midget Considered offensive when used to describe a person of short stature. Dwarf is the preferred term for people with that medical or genetic condition.
My 2004 edition of the AP Stylebook does not contain an entry for either word. Clearly the dwarfism community is making progress in its efforts to educate the public about the “M”-word.
In 2009, the New York Times’ then-public editor, Clark Hoyt, wrote that the Times had concluded the “M”-word was offensive.
I discuss the rise and fall of the “M”-word in Chapter Seven of my book on dwarfism, “Little People.”