A great bookstore is one that introduces you to books that you didn’t know you wanted to read. Amazon doesn’t do that. Most physical bookstores succeed only partially.
Over the summer, though, our travels took us through Manchester, Vermont, where we visited the Northshire Bookstore, an independent outlet that has the advantage of being both enormous and lovingly curated and thus well-stocked with books I might not have heard of. That’s where I discovered Caleb Carr’s “My Beloved Monster,” a memoir about his life with a Siberian cat named Masha.
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Andrea Martinez, chairwoman of the Walker River Paiute Tribe, stands outside the tribe’s polling location in Schurz, Nev., during the state’s 2024 primary election on June 11, 2024. Photo by Christopher Lomahquahu/News21.
When you page through the national and international news, it can sometimes seem like there is nothing going on except the presidential election campaign and the wars in Gaza (as well as the broader region) and Ukraine.
These are, in fact, news developments of monumental importance. But what would we be talking about if these issues were suddenly taken off the table? Once a semester, I ask my media ethics students to identify an undercovered story and explain why it should have gotten more attention.
It’s a big class — 30 students. And they are all smart and idealistic. I could easily highlight every story they found, but here is a representative sample of 11.
• Voting rights for Native Americans. Despite being recognized as U.S. citizens more than 100 years ago, Indigenous Americans in some places still face barriers to voting. Worse, some states are winding the clock backwards by making it more difficult for Native Americans to vote. This important reporting was produced by Carnegie-Knight News21, a nonprofit that makes its journalism available free of charge to other news organizations — including USA Today.
• The dangers of vaccine hesitancy. As I write this, I’m dealing with the after-effects of my Moderna COVID booster, which I got Monday along with a flu shot. Even now, though, I’d much rather put up with a little discomfort than get COVID. Here is a CBS News story that traces the history of vaccines from Benjamin Franklin to Jonas Salk to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s taken his anti-science views mainstream as a presidential candidate and, now, as a Donald Trump surrogate.
• Lost in space. The fate of two astronauts who are stuck on the International Space Station has gotten more attention lately, but it seems like we heard very little for months. I hesitate to call it a crisis, since it doesn’t seem that the two astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, are in any danger. But according to The New York Times, they will have wait until next year to come home on a SpaceX capsule rather than a Boeing vehicle, as originally planned.
• Let there be (too much) light. The pervasiveness of artificial light harms animals, including those of the human variety, since it’s a major contributor to overwork and maladjusted body clocks. Light pollution makes it more difficult for astronomers to do their jobs and wreaks havoc with the navigation systems of marine animals such as sea turtles. A story in National Geographic lays out the problem and suggests some steps that can be taken to ease it.
• Black women and breast cancer. In the modern media environment, it’s not just news organizations that are producing useful journalism. For instance, a blog post at the Mayo Clinic website informs us that Black women are “41% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women,” even though they are a lower risk. The reason: breast cancer is more likely to be detected in Black women at a later stage, making it more difficult to treat.
• A horrifying protest goes unnoticed. You would think that when someone who demonstrates in favor of Palestinian rights lights himself on fire and dies of his burns, that story would get a great deal of attention. Yet the tragic story of Matt Nelson, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate in Boston on Sept. 11, has attracted little notice. The left-leaning news site Common Dreams covered it, as did the Cape Cod Times, which noted that Nelson had ties to the Cape. Nothing in The Boston Globe, though; NBC Boston ran a brief story, and there was very little else, at least not in the local media.
• A recognition of public service. At a time when working for the government is disparaged, as it has been pretty much since the Reagan era, it’s useful to be reminded of the good work that many public servants perform. The Federal News Network reported last week on the 2024 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, known as the “Sammies,” which recognizes federal employees who have achieved excellence. How did a student find this story? She told me that she was reading The Washington Post and came across a link. The Post, of course, is the hometown paper for the federal government.
• Threatening the right to read. Book-banning doesn’t quite fall into the category of an undercovered story, but we don’t know as much about it as we ought to — especially on the state level and exactly what books are being banned. Word In Black, which describes itself as a “groundbreaking collaboration of 10 legendary Black news publishers,” reports that Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Utah and Tennessee are among the states that have restricted the books that public school students can access related to sex and Black history.
• Trump’s blood lust. This story from Rolling Stone is more than a year and a half old — but that’s what makes it important. As Trump was in the final months of his term in 2020 and early 2021, he embarked on an unprecedented spree of federal executions. As the story puts it, “Before 2020, there had been three federal executions in 60 years. Then Trump put 13 people to death in six months.” The article is behind a paywall (I accessed it through a library database), but for anyone who is horrified by the continued use of the death penalty, it would make sense to be reminded of Trump’s record during the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign.
• A deadly storm in Vietnam. It’s not unusual for our news feeds to be filled with weather-related stories, from the mundane (will it rain this weekend?) to serious coverage of floods and wildfires. Overseas, though, is another matter. Did you know, for instance, that Typhoon Yagi has claimed 143 lives in Vietnam, and many more people are missing? According to The New York Times, Yagi is just the latest example of a storm that was made more extreme because of climate change.
• The war on terror’s awful legacy. As a country, we have moved on from our disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without ever coming to terms with the legacy of those conflicts. The New Yorker, with support from the Pulitzer Center, has gone back and reported on war crimes committed by U.S. forces, putting together a database of “the largest known collection of investigations of possible war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 — nearly eight hundred incidents in all.” These incidents include murder, sexual assault and other forms of abuse. It is interesting, to say the least, that Vice President Kamala Harris has gratefully accepted the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the principal architects of the so-called war on terror. We should not forget what happened during those years.
“Boston Globe Today” host Segun on a Harris-Walz fundraising call.
The Boston Globe has an ethical dilemma on its hands. Segun Oduolowu, who is the host of the Globe’s daily television newscast, “Boston Globe Today,” recently took part in a fundraising call for Vice President Kamala Harris and spoke enthusiastically on behalf of her presidential campaign.
But according to Jennifer Smith of CommonWealth Beacon, the newscast came under the control of the newsroom only recently, after the fundraiser, making it unclear whether Oduolowu violated the paper’s ethical guidelines.
Smith wrote that “the repercussions of his remarks are messy. The call was just two weeks before an internal email announced that the ‘Boston Globe Today’ show would be moving under newsroom control — likely subjecting it to a typical set of journalistic ethics rules.” (Disclosure: I’m a member of CommonWealth Beacon’s editorial advisory board.)
Oduolowu spoke for about seven minutes as part of an “African Diaspora for Harris-Walz” video event. Oduolowu’s remarks start here. Among other things, he said:
November 5, when you go to those polls, make the right decision for not just you, but the people who fought so hard for you to have that opportunity, to be in a call like this, to be in this country, to make that choice and put this woman in office…. I think the choice is simple.
Smith quoted a statement from the Globe that seems carefully worded to distance itself from Oduolowu’s actions without saying explicitly that he’d deviated from any ethical policy:
Boston Globe Media employees are expected to adhere to our company guidelines, standards, and policies which align with their role. In this case, the personal political comments made by an employee were their own and were not endorsed by or reflective of Boston Globe Media, nor were the comments shared via one of our products, platforms, or events.
Frankly, I’m confused. By all appearances, “Boston Globe Today” is an extension of the Globe’s journalism, presented as a newscast and frequently featuring interviews with Globe reporters.
But it does sound like any ambiguities are about to be eliminated, as Smith reports that editor Nancy Barnes sent an email to the staff on Sept. 10 announcing that “Boston Globe Today” would be moved “under the auspices of the newsroom.” The Harris-Walz call on which Oduolowu appeared took place on Aug. 26.
The Dorchester Reporter has published an impassioned editorial about Donald Trump’s and JD Vance’s racist, fact-free attacks on the Haitian community. The Reporter is one of Boston’s most vibrant neighborhood weeklies; the editorial is signed by publisher and executive editor Bill Forry, who’s Irish American, and his wife, co-publisher Linda Dorcena Forry, who’s Haitian American. They begin:
Once again, and very likely not for the last time, Haitians find themselves in the crosshairs of the Republican propaganda machinery. This time the slurs pivot on a malicious and utterly racist falsehood involving debunked allegations of migrants making meals of stolen pets in Ohio.
And it’s not just the deranged Donald Trump who is advancing the lies. Republican leaders nationally are engaged in a coordinated assault targeting Haitians specifically.
It’s a disgusting display.
The Dorchester Reporter was founded in 1983 by Bill Forry’s parents, Ed and Mary Forry. The Forrys also publish Boston Irish and the Boston Haitian Reporter.
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I fall into our third season with an interview with Mark Henderson, an old friend of the pod and a pioneer in online media. Mark is a journalist and technologist with decades of experience in news. He is the founder and CEO of The 016, a first-of-its-kind news publisher and distributor focused on Worcester, Massachusetts.
Mark worked at the Telegram & Gazette, Worcester’s daily newspaper, from 1990 to 2014. He spent 19 years in the newsroom, rising to the position of assistant sports editor before being named deputy managing editor for technology in 2005. In 2009, he was named digital director, where he launched the first paywall at a New York Times Co. newspaper. He founded the Worcester Sun, a subscription news site that launched in August 2015 and suspended publication in February 2018.
Mark was also one of the very first people we interviewed for our book, “What Works in Community News.” Although Mark is not in the book, I wrote up our conversation for Nieman Lab.
I’ve also got a Quick Take on a report from the Poynter Institute, a leading journalism education organization based in St. Petersburg, Florida, that offers a clear-eyed assessment of why there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of journalism despite the very real challenges that we still face.
Ellen recounts a Knight Science Journalism Program panel and awards ceremony last week at MIT. The program honored Cicero Independiente, a nonprofit newsroom in the Chicago area. The staff won for an innovative project that examined toxic air.
Then-Sen. Kamala Harris. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.
No sooner had I uploaded a post about Donald Trump, JD Vance and whether their promotion of lies about pet-eating immigrants amounted to incitement than we were treated to an example of something closer to actual incitement.
On Sunday, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire posted on Twitter/X: “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.” According to NBC 10 Boston, they took the post down a short time later — not because they had any second thoughts, mind you, but because “we don’t want to break the terms of this website we agreed to. It’s a shame that even on a ‘free speech’ website that libertarians cannot speak freely. Libertarians are truly the most oppressed minority.”
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the state’s Libertarian Party said the organization “believes that the journalists at the Boston Globe are as evil as rapists or murderers.”
“A proper society would exclude Globe Journalists from residing within it entirely,” Jeremy Kauffman wrote in an email.
Good Lord. I was actually aware of all this Sunday morning but refrained from writing anything because I couldn’t be sure if the Libertarians’ Twitter account had been hacked. Now we know that they’re proud of their hateful, dangerous rhetoric. It will be interesting to see whether there are any legal repercussions given that the threat against Harris comes closer to the legal definition of incitement than anything Trump or Vance said. Then again, it may still fall short of the imminent-threat language contained in Brandenburg v. Ohio.
Also on Sunday, a would-be assassin was taken into custody at Trump’s Florida golf course just two months after he was shot at during a rally in Pennsylvania.
And, finally, the U.S. Justice Department has charged two alleged neo-Nazis of publishing an assassination “hit list” whose potential targets included former U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins.
We are living through a terrifying moment, and it’s not going to end on Election Day.
JD Vance: “Keep the cat memes flowing.” Photo (cc) 2023 by Gage Skidmore.
Over the past week, former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have been inciting threats and possible violence against the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, by advancing false claims that Haitian immigrants are grabbing people’s pets off the street and eating them.
Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done to bring Trump and Vance to heel. As I’ve written before, there is virtually no enforceable law against incitement in the U.S., even though it’s one of just three categories of speech that may be censored, the others being serious breaches of national security and obscenity.
Although lies about pet-eating had been moving through the nether reaches of the online right for a while, Trump super-charged those lies last Tuesday in his disastrous (for him) debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. Here, again, is what he said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
It all goes back to Nixon. 1972 photo (cc) by Charles Harrity of The Associated Press.
Something that Donald Trump said after his disastrous debate with Kamala Harris served to confirm my Richard Nixon Unified Field Theory of Everything.
The morning after the debate, Trump called in to Fox News, and he was mighty unhappy. He began complaining about ABC News and its debate moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, who had the temerity to correct him when he said that undocumented immigrants are feasting on pets fricassee and that Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, support “executing” infants after they are born. Then he issued a threat:
I think ABC took a big hit last night. I mean, to be honest, they’re a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that.
Now, ABC is a network, and it doesn’t hold a license. But it does own stations in some of the largest media markets in the country, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. (The ABC affiliate in Boston, WCVB-TV Channel 5, is owned by the Hearst chain.) So even though no one can take away a non-existent license from the ABC network, a fact that Trump may or may not understand, he could threaten local licenses.
Which brings me to Nixon. After he won re-election in 1972, his presidency started to unravel over the Watergate scandal — and coverage of that scandal was being driven by The Washington Post. One of Nixon’s responses was to threaten (not in so many words, mind you) to pull the licenses from several television stations that the Post then owned. For instance, a close friend of Nixon’s, Cromwell Anderson, headed up a group that challenged the Post’s license at a Miami TV station. Then-publisher Katharine Graham wrote in her memoir (free link), “Personal History”:
Anderson began to move against our station in Miami in September of 1972. This happened to be the same month Nixon (as later heard on the tapes) said that The Post would have “damnable, damnable problems” about our license renewals, a phrase that was censored when the tapes were first released by the White House….
[T]he legal costs of defending the licenses added up to well over a million dollars in the 2½ years the entire process took — a far larger sum then than now for a small company like ours.
Back then, presidents and former presidents didn’t blurt out such threats on national television. They worked behind the scenes, and Graham couldn’t be sure if Nixon had a direct role in the license challenges or not. Then as now, though, allowing the government to have a say in regulating the media can lead to threats and retaliation — something that Nixon took advantage of, and that Trump would like to emulate.
Media notes
• My Northeastern journalism colleague John Wihbey and I spoke with Patrick Daly of Northeastern Global News about why some media outlets in the U.K. are charging readers an extra fee if they don’t want to be tracked by advertising cookies. I told Daly that the practice hasn’t caught on in the U.S. because most people don’t care all that much about privacy. Daly, by the way, is based in Global News’ London office, where Northeastern has a campus.
• The once-great Baltimore Sun has fired reporter Madeleine O’Neill for comments she made on the Sun’s internal Slack channel about the paper’s newish owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group chair David Smith. Among other things, the op-ed page has been running pieces by Smith’s buddies without disclosing that Smith has been funding the causes they’re pushing. Fern Shen of the Baltimore Brew has the story.
MLK 50: Justice Through Journalism, based in Memphis, won two awards in the medium-to-large revenue tier — one for operational resilience, the other for financial health.
Santa Cruz Local, in Southern California, received the product of the year award in the micro-to-small revenue tier.
A great bookstore is one that introduces you to books that you didn’t know you wanted to read. Amazon doesn’t do that. Most physical bookstores succeed only partially.
