Scott Van Voorhis offers some important context about Andrea Estes’ departure from The Boston Globe. In his Contrarian Boston newsletter, Van Voorhis calls her work “compelling and consequential,” and observes that her reporting uncovered a kickback scheme that resulted in a federal prison term for former House Speaker Sal DiMasi and exposed the $300,000-plus salary of Methuen’s now-former police chief.
The current controversy involves two lengthy corrections the Globe published after an Estes-bylined story reported that nine top MBTA managers were working remotely. According to the corrections, the actual number was six, and there were other problems as well. Van Voorhis writes that “to pin the alleged mistakes in the story solely on Estes seems grossly unfair. Where was her editor? And with the prominent play the Globe gave to the story, there surely were other editors involved in at least reviewing the piece.”
Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that she’s “working to unravel all of this,” adding: “We will hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes because trust is so essential to us as journalists.”
Now, here’s an interesting idea. The Batavian, a for-profit digital news outlet located in Genesee County, in western New York, has begun charging readers who want to see stories as soon as they’re posted. Others have to wait four hours.
In a press release posted by the trade publication Editor & Publisher, Howard Owens, who has led The Batavian since its founding nearly 15 years ago, explained that the website has begun charging $8 a month, or $80 a year, for subscribers who don’t want to put up with the four-hour delay. He calls it an “Early Access Pass,” and he writes:
I’m not aware of any other news publication using a similar reader-revenue model. For 15 years, our news site has been supported by more than 150 locally owned businesses, and we had an obligation to our fellow small business owners to ensure The Batavian remains the first stop in our community for local news. A paywall like many newspaper sites erect would kill site traffic, but with this model, we anticipate our program will keep our market-dominating traffic numbers high.
In a post at The Batavian, Owens says that the Early Access Pass is off to a fast start. He quotes one couple who told him: “We believe that being connected to local news is important for a healthy community. Knowing what’s happening in our own backyards helps raise awareness of events that we can have an effect on. We appreciate having an unbiased news source, and that is still free for our neighbors who may frequently face difficult financial choices.”
The Batavian has been an innovative project since its founding, and I reported on it for my 2013 book “The Wired City.” Owens launched the site as a pilot project for GateHouse Media in 2008, when he was the chain’s head of digital publishing. After GateHouse eliminated his position the following year, he took The Batavian with him and has been at it ever since. (GateHouse, as you know, merged with Gannett in 2019 and took its name.)
You’ll be able to hear Owens talk about The Batavian on an upcoming episode of the “What Works” podcast.
On the latest “What Works” podcast, I talk with Lara Salahi, an associate professor of journalism at Endicott College, where she teaches a range of courses, from feature writing to digital journalism. She has also been a digital producer for NBC Universal and a field producer for ABC News. The main topic of our conversation is about how students journalists can help ease the local news crisis — and a project she’s run with her students at Endicott.
Salahi has also done some consulting and writing on science and health projects. She was executive producer on a podcast called Track the Vax, which ran during the height of the pandemic. And she collaborated with Pardis Sabeti, a systems biologist and Harvard professor who researches infectious diseases like Ebola and Lassa virus. They wrote a book together in 2018 that is still relevant called “Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic.” They updated the paperback with a new preface and epilogue in 2021 to reflect on the COVID-19 outbreak, and the lessons learned from past epidemics.
In Quick Takes, there’s a lot going on in community journalism. One development involves the future ownership of the Portland Press Herald in Maine as well as its sister papers. The other is about a dramatic, unexpected development in hyperlocal news in New Jersey. The third involves some very good news for a daily paper in central Pennsylvania.
My Northeastern University colleague Meg Heckman pays tribute to a legendary journalist — Mike Pride, the retired editor of the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire and the former administrator of the Pulitzer Prize. Mike died on April 24 in Florida of a blood disorder. He was 76, and left his imprint on journalism in many ways. Meg worked at the Concord Monitor for more than 10 years.
Ellen Clegg was out of pocket for this podcast episode but did the sound editing and post-production. She’ll return next week.
Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that the paper plans to offer an explanation about what went wrong with former reporter Andrea Estes’ story about MBTA managers who work remotely. Her email was passed along to me by a trusted source and closes with this:
Finally, I want to acknowledge the concerns individuals have raised about the multiple corrections in the recent MBTA story about executives living remotely. I am still working to unravel all of this and so there is not a lot I can say publicly for now except this: We will hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes because trust is so essential to us as journalists
This is good news and sends exactly the right message. Barnes took over for Brian McGrory just a few months ago, and this is her first public crisis. I look forward to reading the Globe’s account of what happened.
Update: Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood confirmed this morning that Andrea Estes “no longer works at the Globe.” I have edited the headline to reflect that.
Update 2: Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that she’s working to unravel what went wrong.
Boston Globe reporter Andrea Estes, an investigative journalist whose recent error-riddled story about absentee managers at the MBTA led to a lengthy correction, has disappeared from the Globe’s online staff directory. You can still find her official Globe listing, though. She’s described as a “former reporter,” and her bio begins: “Estes was an investigative reporter specializing in government accountability.”
On Wednesday evening I sent an email to Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood asking, “Has Andrea Estes left the Globe?” Flood’s response: “Thanks for reaching out. The company does not comment on personnel matters.” I also emailed Globe editor Nancy Barnes, who did not respond. I tried emailing Estes at her Globe address earlier this morning, and it bounced back.
It seems pretty clear that Estes is gone. And though no reason has been given, her most recent story, which led the Sunday paper on April 23, has proved to be an embarrassment for the Globe. The idea that some of the T’s leading executives were working virtually from distant places while bus drivers, subway operators and maintenance workers were putting themselves on the line every day was enraging. Here’s the heart of her story, which comes from a PDF of the print edition:
The MBTA is facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence in its service, punctuated by slow trains, endless delays, and gruesome accidents. Yet, many top T managers live far from the troubled system they’re trying to rescue and some are rarely seen in person by their employees. A Globe review has found that nine senior managers (including one who has left the agency) have a primary residence more than 100 miles from the nearest T station — and some much farther.
The story was later revised to cut that number from nine to six, and was appended with a lengthy correction:
Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that three MBTA managers live primarily in homes far from the T’s service area. Dennis Lytton, the deputy safety chief, has an apartment in Brighton and says he has not worked remotely since starting the job in February. Michele Stiehler, the T’s chief of paratransit, lives in Boston and walks to work. Jennifer Tabakin, who oversees the T’s South Coast Rail project, also has a home in Boston within walking distance of T headquarters. In addition, the story incorrectly reported that Ronald Ester’s “primary residence” is in Chicago; Ester said he considers his home in Massachusetts as his primary residence.
Estes’ story led to an editorial that has now also been appended with a correction. That correction includes a wrinkle that doesn’t appear in the one attached to Estes’ article: “The original editorial also incorrectly stated where Dennis Lytton, an MBTA safety official, was when reached by reporters. He was in Boston.” Estes’ original story said, “When contacted by the Globe recently, Lytton, who makes $175,000 a year, said he was home in Los Angeles at the time.” That sentence was deleted from the revised version.
Reporters make mistakes. We’ve all had corrections appended to our work. But to level such a serious accusation against three MBTA managers by name and then have to retract it is unusual.
As for Flood’s comment that the Globe doesn’t comment on personnel matters, I would note that there have been a number of prominent situations in the past when people have been fired, pushed into leaving or suspended, and the paper has gone into considerable detail in telling its audience what happened. We all know who they are, and I’m not going to drag their names into this.
I wrote last week that the Globe should have an ombudsman — an in-house reader advocate paid to look into fiascoes like this and write about them. At one time, many news outlets, including the Globe, had such a person on their staffs, but that’s pretty rare these days.
Even in the absence of an ombudsman, though, the Globe still owes us an explanation of what went wrong, and it should be published in a prominent spot.
Who could have imagined that Tucker Carlson, a white supremacist in public, is also a white supremacist in private? The New York Times has unearthed what it claims is the text message that got Carlson fired from Fox News. It’s from Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the insurrection. Here it is in full:
A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?
Fox executives were terrified that the message, which Carlson had sent to one of his producers, would be introduced at trial by Dominion Voting Systems as part of the company’s libel case against Fox. That fear contributed to Fox’s decision to settle the case for nearly $800 million.
In other words, Carlson had to go because he cost Rupert Murdoch money.
Roy Wood Jr. is wrong, and so are the journalists who are nodding their heads in agreement with him. Wood’s lament, expressed at the White House Correspondents Dinner over the weekend, was that quality news is increasingly inaccessible to those who either won’t or can’t pay for it, whereas propaganda, lies and conspiracy theories are all available for free.
“The issue with good media is that most people can’t afford that,” the comedian said during his monologue. “All the essential, fair, and nuanced reporting is stuck behind a paywall. People can’t afford rent. People can’t afford food. They can’t afford an education. They damn sure can’t afford to pay for the truth.”
Offering an approving “amen” is Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, who wrote:
Wood was getting at one of the most consequential questions facing the news: how to pay for it at a time of severe economic insecurity and amid a business-model collapse in how journalism is funded. A tiered system has emerged, with high-quality news outlets like [The New York] Times and The Washington Post that depend on subscriptions for support sitting atop a heap of free news providers fueled by social media.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it’s not even remotely true. There has never been more free, high-quality news available than there is today, and you don’t have to look very far to find it. Wood and Pope are referring specifically to paywalls, so I’ll assume that they regard non-paywalled news sites as “free,” notwithstanding the cost of digital devices and an internet connection. With that assumption as a baseline, let’s think this through, shall we?
I’ll begin by saying that I pay for a lot of news, with subscriptions to The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Talking Points Memo. I have access to The Wall Street Journal through my university, and I also donate to a number of news outlets, mostly local, in order to support projects that Ellen Clegg and I are writing about in our book-in-progress, “What Works in Community News.” But that doesn’t mean that paid subscriptions are the only route to being well-informed.
So let’s take a look at how people who insist on free might go about informing themselves. I’m going to stick with major U.S.-based news outlets that cover a full range of topics and that are not explicitly skewed toward one political point of view.
I’ll start with national and international news. NPR is one of our great news organizations. Despite some recent cutbacks, its on-air signal, website, newsletters and podcasts comprise a source of reliable news and information that is almost as comprehensive as the Times’. PBS doesn’t offer nearly as much news as NPR, but the “NewsHour” is excellent, if a little slow, and its “Frontline” documentaries are outstanding. And let’s not forget The Associated Press, whose world-class coverage is available to the public for free as well as to news organizations for a fee.
The options in the Boston area are many as well. No, there is nothing as comprehensive as the Globe, but that’s not the same as saying there’s nothing. Excellent free sources of regional coverage include WBUR,GBH News and CommonWealth Magazine. There’s the indispensable Universal Hub, which provides a combination of aggregation (some of it from unlikely sources) and original reporting. Our local television newscasts offer quality coverage, too. And let’s be honest: If the Globe breaks a big story, other outlets are going to summarize it.
Coverage thins out at the local level, because in many cases there simply aren’t any options, either paid or free. A number of communities in the suburbs and beyond are now covered by very good nonprofit news organizations, and nearly all of those are free. A few legacy newspapers are still published, but you have to pay for those. At the moment, it depends on where you live.
Now, a caveat: Nearly every news organization I’ve mentioned subsists on revenue from a variety of sources, including readers, listeners and viewers like you. So yes, they’re free if you choose not to pay, or if you can’t. But if you can, you should support the news that you consume.
Still, the notion that everyone who can’t afford a subscription to The New York Times is doomed to a steady diet of Fox News and Alex Jones is just silly. The Wild West days of the internet, when everything was free, are long gone, but that doesn’t mean there still aren’t plenty of high-quality free options. If people choose to gorge on garbage, well, I’m sorry, but that’s a choice they’ve made.
Carlson calling: Telephone sculpture in Bryant Pond, Maine. Photo (cc) 2019 by Zendry 423.
The Boston Globe has published a story about ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s summer home in Bryant Pond, Maine, and how residents are taking his defenestration. Reading it reminded me that two years ago I gave Carlson a New England Muzzle Award for siccing his on-air mob on two freelance journalists who, he falsely claimed, were seeking to dox him by exposing the exact location of his Maine redoubt. Here’s what I wrote at the time for GBH News:
One night last July [2020], three members of a terrified family locked themselves in an upstairs room of their home in Maine as someone — apparently more than one — pounded on the door and tried to get in.
“My brother-in-law is a journalist and a news source posted his name on, uh, Tucker Carlson show and his address and things of that nature so he has, um, been getting threats all night long,” said the brother-in-law of Tristan Spinski, a freelance photographer who occasionally gets assignments from The New York Times. Spinski and his wife were there as well. The quote comes from a 911 call obtained by Erik Wemple of The Washington Post.
So what happened? Last summer, Tucker Carlson claimed, falsely, on his Fox News show that the Times was planning to dox him in an upcoming story by revealing the address of his home in Maine and running photos of it. He called out the journalists by name: “So how would Murray Carpenter and his photographer, Tristan Spinski, feel if we told you where they live? If we put pictures of their homes on the air?” And he let his adoring fans do the rest.
“The threats against the two freelancers came via email, voice mail, etc.,” wrote Wemple — even though the Times had reportedly already assured Carlson on two separate occasions that the story would not include the address or photos of his home.
Carlson has a weird history regarding his privacy in Maine. Two years ago, he canceled plans to build a studio next to a public library from which he sometimes hosts his show, blaming the Sun Journal of Lewiston for revealing the location. Yet he had all but announced its coordinates on the air, referring to it as “the northernmost bureau of Fox News.” A year later, his plans were apparently back on again.
In any case, putting two freelance journalists at risk of bodily harm even though he had been told they had no intention of doxxing him had its intended effect. The story never ran. And though the Times has a well-deserved reputation for resisting intimidation, freelance journalists everywhere were put on notice not to mess with Tucker Carlson.
