By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
A new book, “Newshawks in Berlin,” by Larry Heinzerling and Randy Herschaft, details the shameful coddling of the Nazis before and during World War II at the hands of The Associated Press’ Berlin bureau. Tunku Varadarajan reviews it (free link) for The Wall Street Journal. There are echoes of my Northeastern colleague Laurel Leff’s book “Buried by the Times,” about The New York Times’ playing down of the Holocaust.
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It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on here. But Lana Bellamy of the Times Union in Albany, New York, has a story about a local district attorney named David Hoovler who’s been working with a public relations agency in Cheyenne, Wyoming, to produce favorable stories about him that are published in pink-slimy websites like California Weekly. My guess is that Hoovler’s getting ripped off.
I did not watch Ronna McDaniel’s appearance on “Meet the Press” Sunday. Brian Stelter has a detailed summary on Threads, and that’s plenty for me. It sounds like host Kristen Welker found her voice and really went after McDaniel, who in her previous job as chair of the Republican National Committee regularly lied and engaged in election denialism on behalf of Donald Trump.
What I did see was former “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd’s remarkable takedown of NBC News executives for hiring McDaniel in the first place. Neither Welker nor Todd has a reputation for tough questioning; quite the opposite. But Welker really went after McDaniel, and Todd took the network to task, telling Welker that they “owe you an apology” and that it was impossible to “know what to believe” given McDaniel’s previous lies.
Good for both of them. A previous announcement that McDaniel would also pop up on MSNBC has been rescinded, so it’s hard to see what value she can provide to NBC News given the limited amount of time that it commands the network’s airwaves.
My instinct, as I wrote the other day, is to rip the presence of any partisan players on television news shows, whether Democrat or Republican. Clearly, though, the hiring of McDaniel has resonated in a way that, say, the hiring of Jen Psaki or Mick Mulvaney did not. Tom Jones of Poynter Online put it this way:
There’s no issue with NBC News hiring McDaniel as a contributor based on her politics alone…. However, the problem isn’t McDaniel’s views on, say, the economy or immigration or crime or abortion. The problem is McDaniel has a serious credibility problem. And her actions, most notably around the 2020 election, put the country and our very democracy at risk.
Similarly, Jon Allsop of the Columbia Journalism Review said that “the glaring problem with her hiring is not that she was (or is) a partisan hack or anything to do with her policy positions, but her deep complicity in Trump’s election denialism.” But he also offered some optimism, adding:
Perhaps ironically, this desperate episode has given rise to what I see as a very hopeful one: the performances on air yesterday of Todd and, especially, Welker. In the past, I’ve criticized “Meet the Press” (and the Sunday show format as a whole) for letting lying politicians off the hook, but Welker’s interview with McDaniel yesterday was one of the best I’ve seen on any such show in years: it was tenacious, devastatingly so, without being performatively confrontational or rude.
It’s pretty obvious that McDaniel’s hiring has set off a crisis at NBC News, one that may end only with the cancellation of her contract. For instance, Ryan Lizza reports in Politico that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski spoke out against the hiring on air earlier today. I’m not entirely sure what I think about this. As I’ve said, I would lock the revolving door and not hire any of these folks, going right back to George Stephanopoulos, who years ago jumped from the Clinton White House into a cushy job at ABC News. A pox on all of them.
But McDaniel, as Jones and Allsop write, is different. We almost lost the country on Jan. 6, 2021 — and she brazenly told Welker that she saw it as her role to “take one for the team” rather than speak out. As Todd said, if she admits she wasn’t telling the truth then, how can we know that she’s telling the truth now?
More: I want to add that joining Todd on the panel were Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr and Stephen Hayes, editor of The Dispatch, a Never Trump conservative website. They were both excellent as well, with Atkins Stohr pointing out that McDaniel worked with Trump in an attempt to toss out 2020 ballots cast by Black voters in her hometown of Detroit. The entire panel discussion about McDaniel can be seen here.
Ellen Clegg — a retired Boston Globe editor, the co-author of our book, the co-host and producer of our podcast, the co-chair of the nonprofit Brookline.News, and my friend — was one of five journalists who received the prestigious Yankee Quill Award this past Saturday. Read about all five here.
The Yankee Quill recognizes great journalists who have also contributed to the betterment of our profession. As the Academy of New England Journalists puts it, “Selection for the award is not based on any single achievement, or for doing your job each day, but rather on the broad influence for good over the course of a career.” Her prepared remarks follow.
Thank you for this honor. Thanks to friends and colleagues, and thank you to my family for your support over many years when I worked nights and weekends, or got a ping from a boss at 5 a.m.
The Yankee Quill award recognizes past achievements over the long arc of a career. It’s about history and tradition.
But today’s honorees are also about the future. We’re innovating and experimenting, using digital tools that, 25 years ago, we never imagined would exist. We’re connecting with communities and readers in novel ways — deploying multimedia and measuring and nurturing audiences. Storytelling is as old as the Bronze Age and as new as TikTok.
The business of fact-based reporting that holds power to account, faces existential challenges. You know them well: digital disruption, the collapse of print advertising, the rise of platforms built on algorithms of anger.
As Professor Penny Abernathy has written, these forces have resulted in news deserts across the country — entire counties where there is no newspaper left at all. Some 2,900 newspapers have closed down since 2005 — nearly one-third of the nation’s total. About 43,000 journalism jobs have disappeared.
And, for sure, we didn’t always help ourselves. Legacy newsrooms were sometimes slow to recognize the promise — and, frankly, some of the perils — of digital publication. We were slow to change our business models. We were slow to put up paywalls that enabled us to assign a fair value to the work of our journalists. We were slow to adapt to a more frenzied pace, slow to restructure traditional newsrooms so they were digital-first.
But these same challenges have also prompted a wave of innovation and experimentation like never before. Steven Waldman, the cofounder of Report for America, calls it a replanting of local news.
Dan Kennedy and I began reporting on this phenomenon in 2019, for a book called “What Works in Community News.” We profiled nine media startups, and interviewed scores of enterprising journalists who are in the process of reinventing our business. We found an emerging movement that is nothing short of inspiring. It’s also sometimes a hard journey, fraught with uncertainty.
This wave of innovation isn’t temporary. It’s part of our future. I’m proud to be here today with journalists who are sustaining local news and providing the essential information that is so necessary to participatory democracy.
Thank you.
With her attacks on the media and her lies on behalf of Donald Trump, former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel — who was just hired by NBC News and MSNBC — is worse than most. But as I have long argued, one of the many problems with cable news is that they hire partisan hacks to comment on the news rather than journalists. I talked about it with Northeastern Global News back in 2022 when Mick Mulvaney and Jen Psaki made the move from politics to punditry, to no one’s benefit but their own.
My family always watched the news on WBZ-TV (Channel 4) when I was growing up, so I had the privilege of seeing Sarah-Ann Shaw’s stories on the Black community, social justice and numerous other topics from a fairly early age. The pioneering Black journalist worked at WBZ from 1969 until her retirement in 2000. She died Thursday at the age of 90.
A WBZ story on her death quotes the late WBZ reporter Charles Austin as saying: “People were just waking up to the fact that there was an underserved community and they needed to be recognized in a way that was on a parallel, on a par, with everyone else.”
WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) has an interview with Ron Mitchell, a retired video editor and videographer at WBZ who’s now the publisher of The Bay State Banner. Here’s an excerpt:
Sarah-Ann Shaw was a trailblazer. She was a daughter of Roxbury, and she held her community in the highest esteem. So she made sure that when she told stories about the greater Roxbury and … greater Black community, that she told the truth about our community. You know, back when she started, a lot of the news, especially about Roxbury, was very negative. And it was hard to get positive stories about our community, and Sarah-Ann Shaw made sure that those stories existed … they were honest, and she was telling her truth about her community.
Before moving to WBZ, Ms. Shaw was a reporter at “Say Brother,” a show created by WGBH-TV (Channel 2) amid the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. (The show was later renamed “Basic Black.”) “It’s very, very important that ‘Say Brother’ did shows and expose people in the community about different areas — police brutality, education — that they could not really get from other sources,” Ms. Shaw said in 2018 on the 50th-anniversary episode of the program.
The Boston Globe quotes Ms. Shaw from a 2007 interview: “I tried to do stories that showed positive events in the Black community. I thought it was important particularly for young Black kids to see themselves not on television for fighting, for doing drugs, et cetera, but for doing something positive.”
Sarah-Ann Shaw was a vital part of the city’s fabric, showing the way for two generations of Black and female reporters in Boston. It couldn’t have been easy. But by all accounts, she handled her role with grace and professionalism. She will be missed.
A couple of notable women in New England media are moving on.
• Christine Stuart, who had run CT News Junkie since 2006, has accepted a job in state government as deputy director of communications with Connecticut’s Department of Social Services. Stuart acquired News Junkie not long after its founding and has kept it running as a for-profit source of news about politics and public policy ever since, even while supporting herself in several other news jobs over the years, including a stint as a television reporter.
Stuart was the very first person I interviewed for my 2013 book, “The Wired City.” I spent a day following her around the Statehouse in Hartford in 2009 and have stayed in intermittent touch with her over the years. She’s a dogged reporter, even unsnarling a weird connection between a Connecticut newspaper publisher and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson not long after the latter bought the Las Vegas Review Journal in 2015.
“I never thought I would be writing this, but the time has come for me to leave the news industry,” she writes in her farewell message. “I am incredibly proud of my 23-year career, which started as an intern at The Hartford Courant and will end at CTNewsJunkie.com.”
News Junkie will continue under the direction of Stuart’s business partner and former husband, Doug Hardy. The site is one of two state-politics projects in Connecticut, the other being the nonprofit Connecticut Mirror. Best wishes to Christine and Doug.
• Jess Bidgood, who’d been a senior reporter in The Boston Globe’s Washington bureau since 2018, is moving on to The New York Times, where she’ll be managing correspondent of the Times’ On Politics newsletter. Bidgood had previously worked at the Time’ Boston bureau, and before that at WGBH (now GBH News) and WBUR.
In an internal Globe message shared with me by a trusted source, Globe Washington bureau chief Jackie Kucinich said of Bidgood: “To say she is a force of nature is an understatement. There were times during the relatively short time we worked together when I swear there was more than one of her.”
Bidgood wrote on Twitter/X that “it’s bittersweet to leave the @BostonGlobe,” adding, “I am hugely proud of the work we do in the Globe’s DC bureau, and grateful for the Globe’s commitment to us.”
The Boston Globe is unveiling its new mobile app for iOS and Android. Although it will be rolled out gradually over the next week, you can download it now. My quick test shows it to be attractive and fast.
One thing I’ll be watching for is whether you get handed off to the mobile website, which the old app did way too often. In any case, I hope the new app wears as well as my first impression seems to promise. Here’s an internal announcement that was provided to me a little while ago by a trusted source:
We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Boston Globe app for both iOS and Android! Our new app has a cleaner, modern design and new features which include in-app commenting, the ability to listen to certain articles, an all new in-app Boston Globe Today TV experience, the ability for users to play our new games and puzzles, and ability to view the e-paper right in the app. The new app also has the ability for users to subscribe to Globe.com directly from the app.
The release will be rolled out slowly to our audience starting today and continue over the next 7 days on the following schedule:
Day 1 – 1% of legacy app users will get the update automatically, then
Day 2 – 2%
Day 3 – 5%
Day 4 – 10%
Day 5 – 20%
Day 6 – 50%
Day 7 – 100%
Users who have auto update enabled will automatically get the app update and, if they were logged in to the legacy app, they will remain logged in to the updated one. Alternatively, users will be able to manually update from the Apple or Google Play stores once we’ve hit 100% rollout.
In partnership with the Marketing team we are also planning a marketing campaign once the new app has been rolled out to 100% of the audience. Please help us spread the word on your social networks.
We appreciate everyone’s work on this project, as it was a truly collaborative effort among numerous departments.
Thanks,
The Mobile App Team
The Rural Justice Network and the ACLU of Massachusetts have settled a lawsuit they filed against town officials in North Brookfield after the town agreed to allow a Pride event to take place on June 29. The town was the recipient of a New England Muzzle Award in December after two members of the three-member board of selectmen said they would vote against a permit because it would include a drag show. It was the second time they voted “no,” having done so previously in advance of a 2023 Pride celebration. They were overturned back then, too.
There is an odd passage in the ACLU’s press release: “According to the settlement, the North Brookfield Planning Board has approved a permit for Small Town Pride on June 29, after the Town stripped the Select Board of the power to approve all future events in local parks in light of prior obstruction by the two Select Board members.” I’m not sure how “the Town” would take power away from the selectmen (yes, the town uses the old-fashioned gendered term) except at town meeting or possibly in a referendum. Otherwise, the selectmen are the town’s highest authority.
The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester reported earlier this week that permitting would be turned over to North Brookfield’s parks and recreation committee, although, again, there’s no explanation as to how that transfer of power came about. T&G reporter Veer Mudambi writes that the committee did not respond to a request for comment.
The ACLU’s full press release follows:
Town agrees to refrain from future interference and alter permitting process following ACLU lawsuit
The Rural Justice Network and ACLU of Massachusetts today announced a settlement in their lawsuit against the Town of North Brookfield, following an earlier announcement that a local Pride event will go forward as planned on June 29. Two members of the town Select Board had unlawfully blocked a permit for this event because it includes plans for a drag show.
According to the settlement, the North Brookfield Planning Board has approved a permit for Small Town Pride on June 29, after the Town stripped the Select Board of the power to approve all future events in local parks in light of prior obstruction by the two Select Board members. In addition, the Town agrees not to interfere with Small Town Pride in the future and will pay damages and attorneys’ fees.
“We are pleased for the assurance that this settlement affords our clients, as well as compensation for harms caused by the unlawful interference by two Select Board members,” said Ruth Bourquin, senior managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts.“North Brookfield has now taken steps we hope will ensure that groups like the Rural Justice Network can exercise their right to express themselves equally and openly in public spaces. We look forward to celebrating Small Town Pride this year and for many years to come.”
In October, the Rural Justice Network requested permission to host its fourth annual Small Town Pride celebration on the North Brookfield Town Common in June 2024. During a November Board meeting, after event organizers confirmed the celebration would include a drag performance that would not be hidden from public view in a tent, the chair and then-vice chair refused to approve the Rural Justice Network’s request and explained that the decision meant that the application for the event permit “doesn’t go forward.” This prompted an ACLU lawsuit in December, alleging a pattern of discriminatory treatment, violations of free expression and assembly rights, and unlawful discrimination on the basis of gender.
“In spite of challenges we have faced in the past two years, events like Small Town Pride always make it worth the effort,” said Rob Orpilla, President of the Rural Justice Network. “We’re happy to start making concrete moves for our 2024 event now that we’ve resolved the lawsuit. This is another victory for change in our area.”
Last year, the same chair and vice chair had attempted to deny the Rural Justice Network the right to include any drag performance in its 2023 Small Town Pride celebration simply because the officials personally believe that such performance is “wrong.” The event ultimately went forward as planned after the ACLU and North Brookfield’s legal counsel became involved.
For more information about Rural Justice Network v. Town of North Brookfield, go to: https://www.aclum.org/en/cases/rural-justice-network-v-town-north-brookfield
There’s a bit more nuance to the news that Gannett is dropping The Associated Press — nuance that wasn’t included in Ben Mullin’s initial tweets or in a follow-up story at The Wrap. New York Times media reporters Mullin and Katie Robertson now report that Gannett will use Reuters for international news and that it will continue to use the AP for election data. The McClatchy newspaper chain is cutting back on its use of AP journalism as well.
Credit where it’s due: Sophie Culpepper of Nieman Lab appears to have been the first to report that Gannett will use Reuters.
Three observations:
Earlier:
