Month: October 2014

The Providence Phoenix, 1978-2014*

Screen Shot 2014-10-10 at 7.20.05 AMAs you may have already heard, The Providence Phoenix is shutting down, about a year and a half after The Boston Phoenix closed its doors. Ted Nesi of WPRI covers it here. Awful news, but not entirely unexpected. As recently as a few months ago, I was hearing that The Portland Phoenix of Maine was doing well but that Providence was lagging financially.

What happened? It’s hard to say. But Portland is a smallish city, insular and self-contained — the sort of place where alt-weeklies seem to be surviving. An example: Seven Days of Burlington, Vermont, which appears to be thriving. Providence, by contrast, is a fairly large city within the orbit of Greater Boston.

The demise of The Providence Phoenix would be bad enough on its own. What makes it even worse is that the Providence Journal is in the midst of downsizing following its sale to a company affiliated with the GateHouse Media chain. There is a real gap in Providence, and it’s not immediately clear what will fill it. Perhaps Rhode Island Public Radio can beef up its online local coverage. Maybe the online-only news site GoLocalProv will rise to the challenge. Or something new might come along.

The Providence Phoenix has produced some fine journalists over the years, including Ian Donnis of RIPR and David Scharfenberg of The Boston Globe. And best wishes to editor Lou Papineau, a veteran who started at the paper back when it was known as the NewPaper, and news editor Phil Eil, a more recent hire.

Best wishes, too, to publisher Stephen Mindich, who kept the Boston and Providence papers alive for as long as he could. I hope the future is brighter for The Portland Phoenix — now the only remaining alt-weekly in what was once a vibrant regional chain.

And yes, I plan to rant about this later today on WGBH’s “Beat the Press.”

(Note: I was a staff writer and editor for The Boston Phoenix from 1991 to 2005, and last wrote for the Providence and Portland papers this past July.)

*Correction: The headline originally gave the incorrect year for the founding of The Providence Phoenix, which began life as The NewPaper. As founder Ty Davis writes in the farewell issue, he began the paper during the Blizzard of 1978.

Ethan Zuckerman on the limits of interconnectedness

Ethan Zuckerberg at Northeastern on Wednesday.
Ethan Zuckerman at Northeastern on Wednesday

The promise of the Internet was that it would break down social, cultural and national barriers, bringing people of diverse backgrounds together in ways that were never before possible. The reality is that online communities have reinforced those barriers.

That was the message of a talk Wednesday evening by Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media. Zuckerman, who spoke at Northeastern, is the author of the 2013 book “Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection.” He is also the co-founder of Global Voices Online, a project begun at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society that tracks citizen media around the world.

I’ve seen Ethan talk on several occasions, and I always learn something new from him. Here is some live-tweeting I did on Wednesday.

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519966015254712320

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519968349418455040

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519969002249277440

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519970428459421696

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519970765496934401

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519972247323553793

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519973089506238464

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519974299156086784

One of the most interesting graphics Zuckerman showed was a map of San Francisco based on GPS-tracked cab drivers. Unlike a street map, which shows infrastructure, the taxi map showed flow — where people are actually traveling. Among other things, we could see that the African-American neighborhood of Hunters Point didn’t even appear on the flow map, suggesting that cab drivers do not travel in or out of that neighborhood (reinforcing the oft-stated complaint by African-Americans that cab drivers discriminate against them).

Since we can all be tracked via the GPS in our smartphones, flow maps such as the one Zuckerman demonstrated raise serious privacy implications as well.

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519974299156086784

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519975183260860416

We may actually be less cosmopolitan than we were 100 years ago.

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519977254718550016

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to show a map suggesting that Facebook fosters interconnectedness around the world. In fact, upon closer examination the map mainly shows interconnectedness within a country. The United Arab Emirates demonstrates the highest level of international interconnectedness, but that’s because the UAE has an extraordinary number of guest workers who use the Internet to stay in touch with people back home. That leads Ethan Zuckerman to argue that maps often tell us what their designers want us to believe.

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519978709953294336

This final tweet seems out of context, but I’m including it because I like what Zuckerman said. It explains perfectly why I prefer Twitter to Facebook, even though I’m a heavy user of both. And it explains why many of us, including Zuckerman, rely on Twitter to bring us much of our news and information.

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/519979810597400576

Matt DeRienzo has left the building

Matt DeRienzo
Matt DeRienzo

Matt DeRienzo, the top editor at Digital First Media’s Connecticut properties, including the New Haven Register, has taken a buyout offer and left the company, according to Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent.

DeRienzo, 38, had worked at various permutations of DFM for the past 11 years. In his early days, he once told me in an interview for my book “The Wired City,” his tasks included making sure the chain’s newspapers didn’t post too much content on their websites so that customers wouldn’t have less incentive to buy a paper. Toward the end, under DFM chief executive John Paton, DeRienzo was a leader in nudging his journalists away from print into the digital age. He writes:

I’ve come to know hundreds of people who have dedicated their lives to journalism, who work long hours for low pay, and put up with all kinds of crap (including plenty from me!) year after year. Cynical exteriors aside, at the heart of it, they care about strangers and are in journalism to improve people’s lives.

For the time being DeRienzo is doing some writing for CT News Junkie, a for-profit website that covers Connecticut politics and public policy.

DeRienzo will be succeeded at DFM’s Connecticut publications by Mark Brackenbury, someone who — in my one brief encounter — impressed me as an editor who cares about journalism and communities.

As I wrote for The Huffington Post earlier this year, DFM seems to be on the verge of breaking up and disappearing; the company’s financial problems had a serious effect on DeRienzo’s ability to carry out his vision. Yet in Bass’ Independent story, Paton sounds as charged up as ever, saying the company will move forward once a buyer for the chain is found.

I hope Paton is right. And best wishes to Matt, one of the good guys in our field.

Peter Canellos to be Politico’s No. 3 editor

The big local media news this morning is that Peter Canellos, who recently took a buyout offer from The Boston Globe, is moving back to Washington in order to become Politico’s executive editor. He will be number three under Susan Glasser, who has only held the number two spot for a few weeks. (The editor-in-chief is John Harris. See correction below.)

Do the Glasser-Canellos moves signal a shift toward substance and away from Politico’s infamous “win the morning” orientation? Let’s hope so. At the Globe, Canellos was known for taking a cerebral approach in his stints as Washington bureau chief, metro editor and, finally, editorial-page editor. He also oversaw the Sunday Ideas section.

In 2009, several months after Canellos was chosen to run the editorial pages, my WGBH colleague Adam Reilly profiled him for The Boston Phoenix. Canellos told Reilly his goal was to make the pages smart and unpredictable:

“Opinion is free. What we have to do is emphasize anything that rises above that cacophony,” says Canellos. “That means our columnists have to have a much more distinctive voice, and our columns and editorials have to be much better written than the cacophony — more authoritative, more credible, more reliable.”

This is good news for Canellos and for Politico.

Correction: I originally reported that Canellos would be the No. 2 editor.

Herald to work with NAACP following cartoon controversy

Smart move by the Boston Herald: The paper will work with the NAACP following publication of the racist cartoon involving President Obama and watermelon-flavored toothpaste. More links:

Joe Kahn accepts the Globe’s buyout offer

Add veteran reporter Joe Kahn to the list of Boston Globe journalists who have accepted a buyout and will be taking early retirement. Kahn, a graceful feature writer, expects to continue contributing to the paper on a freelance basis while pursuing other interests.

So far, Kahn and former editorial-page editor Peter Canellos are the only two Globe staffers whose departures have been announced, though I’ve heard of other possibilities. If anyone has a list and would like to pass it along, your anonymity will be assured.

Kahn sent this email blast out earlier today, and I am reposting it here with his permission.

After 26 years, I am leaving my full-time job at the Boston Globe. Management has offered me a generous buyout package, which I’ve chosen to accept. In the meantime, I’m negotiating an arrangement by which I hope to become a semi-regular freelance contributor.

I am grateful for the editors’ enthusiasm for this plan and for understanding that this transition could hardly come at a more opportune time for myself and my family.

What’s next? In addition to writing, I’m interested in nonprofit and foundation work, possibly connected to youth sports — something I’m passionate about, as many of you know. More time to spend on the tennis court, golf course, and ski slopes will be nice, too. Also high on my list is travel and seeing far-flung family and friends more often.

I’m excited about this new phase and wish you all the best.

Cheers,
Joe

Matt Bai, Tom Fiedler set sail aboard the Monkey Business

jpgPreviously published at WGBHNews.org.

It was the summer of 2009, and the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication was in town. A group of us went out to dinner at Legal Seafoods at the Pru. Among them was Tom Fiedler, dean of Boston University’s College of Communication and the former executive editor of the Miami Herald.

Fiedler held us in thrall with a blow-by-blow description of his best-known story: the sinking of Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign aboard the good ship Monkey Business. It was the Herald that staked out Hart’s townhouse in Washington and learned that a woman named Donna Rice had been staying with him. Hart soon dropped out of the campaign; he later re-entered it but failed to gain any traction.

Last month The New York Times Magazine published a long excerpt from a book by Times political reporter (and Boston Globe alumnus) Matt Bai arguing that the Herald’s pursuit of Hart represented something new and disturbing in American politics: Journalists in the skeptical post-Watergate era were no longer willing to give politicians a pass on any misbehavior, including their sexual peccadilloes. Perhaps the most damning part of Bai’s piece was his discovery that Fiedler, who had long cited Hart’s challenge to “follow me around” as justification, had actually not learned of that challenge until after the Herald’s stakeout.

Now Fiedler has written a strong, thoughtful article for Politico Magazine in which he responds to Bai, taking the view that a presidential candidate’s lies should not be considered “inconsequential.” Fielder’s take on the “follow me around” matter is worth quoting in full:

For Bai, much hinges on the precise timing of this quote. He claims that the Herald used the “follow me around” challenge to justify its pursuit of Hart. This was dishonest, he suggests, because we couldn’t have known about it before the stakeout — the quote appeared in the [New York] Times on May 3, the same day our story ran. What Bai doesn’t acknowledge is that we didn’t need the [E.J.] Dionne quote for justification.

A week or so before the Herald and the Times’ articles ran, in an interview with me, Hart had been similarly dismissive of the womanizing allegations, saying, “I’ve been in public life for 15 years and I think that if there was anything about my background that anybody had any information on, they would bring it forward. But they haven’t.” The Hart quote I published wasn’t as dramatic as the one Hart provided to Dionne, but its intent was the same. And it was a lie. That’s not news?

Fiedler’s purpose is not to discredit Bai. Indeed, Fiedler calls himself “a great admirer of Bai’s talents as a journalist and a writer.” But Fiedler does manage to provide a different context for why and how Hart’s downfall was covered. If you read Bai’s article, you owe it to yourself to read Fiedler’s as well.

(Disclosure: Fiedler is a friendly acquaintance and a colleague on WGBH’s “Beat the Press.”)

It’s time for the Herald to close the circle

Update: I’m not sure when this was added, but Herald editorial-page editor Rachelle Cohen tells Romenesko that she vetted the cartoon: “Herald editorial page editor Rachelle Cohen tells me neither she nor artist Jerry Holbert saw anything wrong with the cartoon. ‘Jerry doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,’ she says. He chose watermelon because he had just seen that flavor of toothpaste in his house, says Cohen.” So now we have the cartoonist and his editor both claiming that they didn’t see any racist intent in the watermelon reference. At best, this speaks to a lack of diversity in the newsroom.

To their credit, the folks at the Boston Herald clearly and quickly understood that they had a problem on their hands Wednesday after publishing an editorial cartoon by Jerry Holbert that was racist in its effect, if not in Holbert’s intent. The cartoon depicted an intruder in a White House bathroom asking President Obama if he had “tried the new watermelon-flavored toothpaste.”

Holbert went on the newspaper’s online radio station to apologize, and said he understood he compounded his error when he failed to notify the Herald that his syndicate had told him to alter the cartoon so as to eliminate the racial inference. And today, the paper publishes a straightforward apology. On the editorial page, Holbert apologizes again.

But now it’s time for the Herald to close the circle. Even if Holbert didn’t understand why African-Americans are offended by stereotypes of black people as placid, happy watermelon-eaters, are we to believe that editorial cartoons somehow leap onto the pages of the Herald with no intervention on the part of editors?

Here is an excerpt from a well-sourced article at Wikipedia:

While the exact origins of this stereotype remain unclear, an association of African Americans and watermelon goes back to the time of slavery in the United States. Defenders of slavery used the fruit to paint African Americans as a simple-minded people who were happy when provided watermelon and a little rest. The stereotype was perpetuated in minstrel shows often depicting African Americans as ignorant and workshy, given to song and dance and inordinately fond of watermelon.

I agree with my WGBH colleague Emily Rooney of “Greater Boston,” who said last night (above) that she believes Holbert when he says he had no racial intent — but that someone at the Herald should have caught it before publication. The Herald should tell us who approved the cartoon and why.

In case you missed it, here is how the story unfolded on Wednesday.

The Herald has some explaining to do

Kudos to Greg Reibman, president of the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce (and a former Boston Herald staff member), who flagged this on Twitter. It’s currently the lead item at Romenesko.

And it keeps on coming:

https://twitter.com/Bevmire/status/517323716796366848

Here’s the link; screen image below.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 10.47.46 AM

 

So which came first? The watermelon or the raspberries?

Here’s the Herald’s story on Holbert’s apology, which he delivered on the newspaper’s online radio station.

In newspaper innovation, Bezos lags behind Henry

I’ve been saying for some time that John Henry has been more aggressively innovative at The Boston Globe than Jeff Bezos has at The Washington Post. Now Dylan Byers of Politico weighs in with this article, writing that “the Post, far from embarking on the radical reinvention that many thought Bezos would bring, remains more old school than cutting edge.”

Bezos has moved cautiously. His choice as publisher — former Reagan confidant Fred Ryan — seems anything but innovative. Henry, meanwhile, installed himself in the publisher’s office and has presided over high-profile new projects like Capital, a weekly political section, and Crux, a standalone website “covering all things Catholic.”

Byers also writes that Post executive editor Marty Baron is “the epitome of the 20th-century newspaperman,” which strikes me as both tonally and factually wrong. If anything, Baron was one of the more digitally savvy big-paper editors when he ran the Globe newsroom — a period that took place entirely in the 21st century, by the way.

But I think Byers’ overall point is correct. The Post is a fine newspaper, and it’s gotten bigger and better under Bezos’ stewardship. If there is to be a more drastic reinvention, though, we’re going to have to wait.