A walk around the Middle and South Reservoirs in the Middlesex Fells on a summer-like afternoon.
Month: November 2022
The Globe is hit with a subpoena despite new rules protecting journalists
Well, that didn’t last long.
Late last month, supporters of a free press were celebrating when Attorney General Merrick Garland announced new guidelines aimed at protecting journalists. As Hadley Baker and Katherine Pompilio wrote at Lawfare, the rules — codifying a policy that Garland had put into effect early in his term — would prohibit “the use of compulsory legal process — the use of subpoenas, search warrants, court orders, and other investigatory practices — against ‘newsgathering’ individuals who possess and/or publish classified information.”
The rules were specifically aimed at protecting journalists in leak investigations involving classified information. But surely the guidelines would inform the Justice Department’s behavior in lesser matters, no? No. Today The Boston Globe reports that one of its editors, Joshua Miller, has been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors who are demanding that Miller testify on Dec. 5 in a case involving the Harvard admissions scandal. Miller broke that story in 2019.
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Miller would most likely not have to testify in 49 states or the District of Columbia because they either have a shield law or, as is the case in Massachusetts, a ruling from their highest state court that journalists are protected from being dragged into court at the whim of prosecutors. The only places that do not have shield protections are the state of Wyoming and the federal government. The courts, though, are supposed to balance the interests of the criminal-justice system against the importance of a free press. As Mike Damiano writes in the Globe:
In a memorandum supporting a motion to quash the subpoena, Globe counsel Jonathan M. Albano cited extensive legal precedents protecting journalists from subpoenas and referred to “the widespread recognition that the First Amendment protects journalists from the needless disclosure of sources, investigative techniques, and both confidential and non-confidential work product.”
The judge in the case may rule against the prosecution, but it shouldn’t get even that far. This is an outrage against the First Amendment. If U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins didn’t know about it, she needs to step in immediately and put an end to it. And if she did know, then she needs to undergo the “comprehensive training” that the Garland memo refers to as soon as possible.
Nancy West talks about her entrepreneurial journey and the state of journalism in N.H.
On this week’s “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Nancy West, executive editor of InDepthNH.org.
Nancy was an investigative reporter during her 30-year career at the New Hampshire Union Leader. Nancy founded the nonprofit New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism in 2015, and has taught investigative reporting at a summer program for students at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
Ellen has a Quick Take on a recent article by Dan Froomkin in Washington Monthly. Froomkin, who is now editor of Press Watch, used to work for The Washington Post and has been critical of owner Jeff Bezos. Froomkin is taking aim at the content management system developed by the Post under Bezos. The Post licenses this system to other news outlets around the country. That kind of market power worries Froomkin.
My Quick Take is on the state of journalism in Vermont, a subject we talked about on a recent podcast with Anne Galloway, the founding editor of VTDigger, a well-regarded digital startup. Dan’s topic is about a good piece of media criticism. Bill Schubart, a journalist who writes a column for VTDigger, wrote a column critiquing a recent New Yorker piece by Bill McKibben on Vermont journalism. But Schubart also looked inward and wrote that Digger itself is having problems.
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Seismic change comes to the New Haven Independent as Tom Breen moves up
There is huge news today in the world of independent community journalism. Paul Bass, the founder of the New Haven Independent, is stepping aside as editor while Tom Breen, currently the managing editor, moves up to the top position. Bass has been talking about making this change for a while, and on Tuesday he made it official.
Bass, 62, isn’t going anywhere. He’ll continue as executive director of the Online Journalism Project, the nonprofit organization he set up to oversee the Independent, the Valley Independent Sentinel in New Haven’s northwest suburbs, and WNHH Radio, a low-power FM station that specializes in community programming. He’ll also continue to report the news for the Independent and host a show on WNHH.
Breen, 34, joined the staff of the Independent as a reporter in 2018 and later became managing editor. Breen is a dogged journalist; last November, I accompanied him as he knocked on the doors of houses that had been foreclosed on, a regular practice of his that has yielded important stories.
The Independent is one of the oldest and still among the best nonprofit local news startups in the country. It was the primary subject of my 2013 book, “The Wired City,” and it will also be featured in “What Works: The Future of Local News,” a book-in-progress by Ellen Clegg and me.
Congratulations to Paul and Tom. This is a big change for a news organization that has been remarkably stable over the course of its 17-year existence.
Jackie Kucinich of The Daily Beast will be the Globe’s new DC bureau chief
The Boston Globe has hired a new Washington bureau chief — Jackie Kucinich, who currently holds that position at The Daily Beast. Kucinich replaces Liz Goodwin, who left the Globe during the summer in order to cover Congress for The Washington Post.
Before starting at the Beast in 2014, Kucinich worked for the Post, USA Today, Roll Call and The Hill, and is a regular contributor to CNN.
“This is a big get for the Globe,” said Brian McGrory in a memo to the staff, which a trusted source forwarded to me Tuesday. “Jackie is heralded around Washington, rightly so, for her fresh eye and her appropriately skeptical view, for knowing the intricacies of the city without ever allowing herself to be part of the press pack within it.”
Kucinich, who lives in Washington with her husband and daughter, is the daughter of former Cleveland mayor and congressman Dennis Kucinich. She’ll begin her new job on Nov. 21.
Michael Reed tells E&P that everything is coming up Gannett
You’ve seen plenty of bad news about Gannett here — layoffs, reassigning staff away from local news coverage, closing papers and, more recently, imposing furloughs, pension freezes and buyouts. With more than 200 daily newspapers across the country, what happens at Gannett matters. Its ongoing shrinkage is a significant part of the local news crisis.
So I was interested to see that Gannett chief executive Michael Reed talked — OK, exchanged emails — with Gretchen A. Peck of the trade publication Editor & Publisher. I wanted to see what sort of story he’s telling these days about the path forward for his debt-addled chain, which nevertheless found a way to pay him $7.7 million last year.
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Not surprisingly, it turns out to be a lot of the same old, same old — an emphasis on digital subscriptions despite having little journalism to attract new readers as well as ancillary businesses ranging from events to sports betting. At least he didn’t mention NFTs this time.
One thing I didn’t know was that Gannett’s consumer product website, Reviewed.com, is based in Cambridge, and that it employs more than 100 people, including scientists, product experts, writers and editors. The idea is similar to Wirecutter, founded as an independent site and later acquired by The New York Times. Buy something through Reviewed.com and Gannett gets a cut of the action. Reed told Peck:
If you look across the larger media landscape throughout the last decade, we have seen expansion beyond traditional news into varied product offerings and different types of content. As the traditional revenue streams we largely relied on, such as print advertising and print subscriptions, continue to transition to digital, we are also adapting to new revenue opportunities. These diversifying revenue streams help us to ensure we can support our ongoing news efforts in an increasingly digital world.
Reed added that progress continues to be made in paying down the debt that Gannett took on when it merged with GateHouse Media in 2019. Gannett these days is essentially GateHouse under a different name; Reed himself was the head of GateHouse before the merger.
Despite Reed’s happy talk, the company continues to throw newspapers and staff members overboard. According to Ray Schultz of Publishers Daily, Gannett is selling two papers in New Mexico and has put its Phoenix printing facility on the block for $47.4 million. Urban Milwaukee’s Bruce Murphy reports that six veteran journalists are leaving Gannett’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Local opinion content continues to be slashed as well, writes Mark Pickering in Contrarian Boston.
Essentially Reed is telling the same story he’s always told: Times are tough, and we have to keep cutting. Eventually, though, digital subscriptions and our non-news investments will begin to pay off and support our journalism. It’s just that “eventually” never seems to come. Still, there’s considerable value in reading about Reed’s assessment of how Gannett can pull out of its downward spiral; Peck and E&P deserve credit for getting him on the record.
Meanwhile, in Eastern Massachusetts and across the country, independent news projects are rising up to fill the gap left by Gannett’s retreat. The latest is The Concord Bridge, a digital-and-print nonprofit competing with Gannett’s Concord Journal, ghosted by the shift from local to regional coverage last spring.
You can access a complete list of independent local news outlets in Massachusetts by clicking here.