Duke Ellington performs for patients at Travis Air Force Base in 1954.
Whether you’re a major news organization like NPR or a solo blogger like me, you know that converting readers into paid supporters is a major challenge. Since starting Media Nation in 2005, I have offered it as a free source of news and commentary, and that’s not going to change. I think folks working in academia have an obligation to freely distribute at least some of their work, and I’d lose a lot of reach if I put up a paywall.
But generating some income from this blog has proved to be an uphill climb. Nearly 2,500 readers have signed up to receive new posts by email for free, and nearly 108,000 visitors have accessed more than 186,000 pages so far in 2025. I don’t disclose my number of paid supporters, but I’ll just say that it lags well behind those numbers.
This afternoon I’ll be sending out my weekly newsletter to paid supporters in which I recommend a terrific book about how Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie overcame racism and helped create the culture we live in today. There are other goodies as well: a roundup of the week’s posts, photography and a song of the week. For just $6 month, you can become a supporter as well. I hope you’ll consider it. Just click here.
Sugar River in Claremont, N.H. Photo (cc) 2015 by Mark Bonica.
Recently I took note of the demise of the Eagle Times in Claremont, New Hampshire, observing that the paper had also closed in 2009 and that it had apparently been operating on a shoestring for some time. Well, it turns out there may have been more to it than that. Or not.
Todd Bookman of New Hampshire Public Radio has produced a deep dive into the odd reign of former owner Jay Lucas, a venture capitalist with degrees from Harvard and Yale who grew up in nearby Newport. According to Bookman, Lucas bought the paper from an out-of-state chain in 2022 with big plans to revive local news in the area, but he fell short on the financial side. He shut down the paper in June after failing to make payroll.
“In the wake of the collapse, staff have claimed that Lucas repeatedly failed to pay overdue bills, and on occasion requested workers hold off on cashing their paychecks due to a lack of funding,” Bookman writes, adding that “the local boy who had made good, and decided to invest in his hometown, appeared to have harmed the very community he was aiming to help.”
It’s a harsh assessment, and Lucas comes across as an easy target, spouting optimistic aphorisms while letting the paper wither and die. Yet I came away from the story wanting to know more. As Bookman describes it, Newport is a low-income community that has been dealing with an opioid epidemic. Claremont, too, is struggling, with a median household income of $54,520, just a little more than half the statewide median of $95,628.
From the sounds of it, I’d say that any local newspaper owner would have a tough time making a go of it in such circumstances. Lucas says he hasn’t given up the idea of reviving it; he’s launching a nonprofit, and perhaps a new iteration of the Eagle Times will be part of that.
Earlier this month, Steve Taylor of the Valley News, based in Lebanon, New Hampshire, noted that the Eagle had been star-crossed since 1950, “when its publisher, John McLane Clark, drowned while canoeing in a flooded Sugar River.”
Clark, a former editorial writer for The Washington Post, had purchased the Eagle in 1946 after losing out to the incestuous pedophile William Loeb on a bid to buy Manchester’s two papers, the Union and the Leader. Those papers continue as the New Hampshire Union Leader. Meanwhile, Taylor writes, the Eagle lost money for much of its existence.
To paraphrase the science fiction writer William Gibson, the future of local news is here, but it’s unevenly distributed. Affluent communities across the country are hosting hundreds of independent start-ups, both nonprofit and for-profit, while news deserts are spreading in urban communities of color and rural areas.
The Claremont-Newport area needs quality news and information, but traditional market economics simply don’t work in such places. I hope someone — perhaps Lucas, perhaps not — comes through with a philanthropic model rooted in the community.
Note: I made a copy-editing fix after this post was published.
Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, Vt. Photo (cc) 2017 by Kenneth C. Zirkel.
The mayor of Burlington, Vermont, has rescinded a gag order that had prevented the city’s police department from issuing press releases without the approval of her office. The contentious order was one of two reasons that the mayor, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, was given a New England Muzzle Award earlier this year.
The original, restrictive executive order was enacted on January 10, under former Police Chief Jon Murad, who did not seek reappointment. It required all BPD press releases, including emergency alerts, to be submitted to the mayor’s office for approval before public dissemination.
As LaMarche observes, the gag order was aimed more at Murad than at the police department as a whole, and with Murad gone, there wasn’t much incentive for Mulvaney-Stanak to keep the cone of silence in place. The mayor targeted Murad for speaking out about a local man who’d had nearly 2,000 encounters with police. Among other things, Murad’s lament was reported on WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) in Boston, which couldn’t have endeared him to Mulvaney-Stanak.
What sealed the Muzzle, though, was that the mayor then called an invitation-only news conference without letting at least two outlets that had been critical of her know about it. Those outlets were Seven Days and Vermont News First. Vermont First Amendment legend Michael Donoghue, who writes for Vermont News First, told me last winter that he believed only local television newscasts had been invited.
• Good/bad/good news in Dallas. Last week I wrote that the notorious cost-cutting hedge fund Alden Global Capital was ready to swoop in and upset the pending sale of The Dallas Morning News to the Hearst chain, a privately held company known for quality regional and statewide journalism. Now Joshua Benton reports for Nieman Lab that the sale to Hearst is back on track. “This morning,” Benton wrote Monday, “the DallasNews Corporation (formerly A.H. Belo) announced that its board had ‘reviewed and rejected’ Alden’s offer. (It also added a ‘poison pill’ shareholder rights plan, just in case Alden tries anything funny.)”
• An overdue Globe update. Last week The Boston Guardian and Contrarian Boston reported that two Boston Globe journalists, along with two South End residents who were accompanying them, had been attacked while on assignment as they were reporting in the notorious Mass and Cass area of Boston. The story was subsequently picked up by Universal Hub, Hub Blog and Media Nation. But there was no mention of it in the Globe until this morning, as part of a larger story by the two journalists, reporter Niki Griswold and Barry Chin. Griswold wrote:
While reporting this story, two Globe journalists were confronted by at least three men on the Melnea Cass bike path as they toured the area on a July afternoon with [Brian] McCarter and another longtime South End resident. The men approached and threatened the group after spotting the Globephotographer taking pictures from a distance. The men, two holding hammer-like tools, followed the group, which took shelter in a nearby building.
The incident prompted Globe editor Nancy Barnes to issue a memo to the newsroom about security precautions.
• The wages of sin. Paramount wasted no time in making up for some of the $16 million it paid to Donald Trump in order to settle a bogus lawsuit the president had brought against “60 Minutes” — a settlement widely believed to pave the way for a merger with Trump-friendly Skydance Media. Last week WBZ-TV (Channel 4) in Boston announced that a number of employees had been offered buyouts, while longtime reporter Beth Germano said she’d retire and health reporter Dr. Mallika Marshall said she’d been laid off, according to Ross Cristantiello of Boston.com. “I gotta believe it has something to do with the merger,” union official Fletcher Fischer was quoted as saying. At a time when trust in the media is at an all-time low, local television news stands out as an exception. Moves like this, though, erode that trust.
• Here’s some fresh AI hell. Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain as well as a steady source of terrible news about layoffs, closures and other cuts, is offering buyouts to many of its journalists so that it can replace them with artificial intelligence. Sean Burch of The Verge quotes a memo from Mike Reed, who writes in his characteristically inimitable style: “Given our static revenue trends, we need to adjust our organization to effectively meet the needs of our business today and position ourselves for sustainable growth in the future as we continue to use AI and leverage automation to realize efficiencies.”
Gannett’s weeklies are pretty much gone, but it still publishes several dailies in New England, most notably The Providence Journal and the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, as well as about 200 dailies across the country, anchored by USA Today.
Correction: Sorry for rushing this. I’ve fixed a few botched names.
I rarely write about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza because I would be speaking mainly out of ignorance. Other than following news coverage, I have no more insight than anyone else. As with everyone, though, recent reports of mass starvation have left me horrified and appalled. The fighting between Israel and Hamas has to end. Israel must uphold international law by allowing aid to get through. Hamas must release the remaining hostages.
What moves me to write this morning is that I learned over the weekend that the International Rescue Committee continues to prove assistance to people on the ground. Mohammed Mansour writes in The New York Times (gift link):
I am a senior nutrition manager with the International Rescue Committee, one of the few organizations that is still able to deliver aid in Gaza. On a typical day, my colleagues and I screen hundreds of children for malnutrition at mobile clinics across the territory. We provide therapeutic food for kids who are at risk of starvation and counsel parents who are doing their best to care for their daughters and sons under unimaginable conditions.
More than 100 organizations have warned that “mass starvation” is spreading in Gaza. Not that journalists have any special claim to be exempt from that suffering, but it’s notable that hunger among reporters in Gaza has become so widespread that the Committee to Protect Journalists has issued an alert.
But this is about what we can do to help. To donate to the International Rescue Committee, just click here. I’m going to do it as soon as I publish this item.
Those working on the Mass. Central hope to build a 104-mile bike path connecting Boston and Northampton. They’ve got a long way to go. On Saturday I turned left at the end of the Bruce Freeman and rode east along about a mile and a half of recently paved pathway before hitting the end in Sudbury. I understand that if I’d wanted to snake my way around I could have picked it up again and headed toward Wayland.
Instead, I turned around and rode west, pedaling about six and a half miles from the Bruce Freeman’s southern terminus to where the paved section ends at a parking lot in Hudson. From there I picked up the Assabet River Rail Trail and rode a half-mile, turning around on Main Street just outside downtown Hudson. All told, I rode a bit more than 21 miles, including a short stretch along the Bruce Freeman starting at the Broadacres Farm parking lot in Sudbury.
Heading west along the Mass. Central is an interesting ride, taking you past McMansions, followed by more modest homes, and then finally an industrial area. You’ll head through wooded areas and open fields, too. It looks like a paved stretch from Boston to Northampton is some time off in the future, though. As advocates say, “It won’t be easy. While much of the old right of way is passable to a dedicated traveler today, in part the ownership is not clear.”
But they also say that 63 miles are now open, including the final stretch to Boston, which begins at Brighton Avenue in Belmont, runs southeast along the Fitchburg Cut-Off, crosses the Minuteman Bikeway, and then follows the Alewife Linear Park and the Somerville Community Path most of the way to the Museum of Science. From there you can pick up the Charles River bike paths, which can take you as far as Waltham.
What’s nice about the Bruce Freeman and Mass. Central is that they are not as crowded as the Minuteman, which tends to be choked with bikers, scooters, skateboarders and pedestrians. Since they’re newer, they’re also in a better state of repair. On the other hand, I can ride my bike from my house to the Minuteman. If I want to head out west, I have to drive there.
At the southern terminus of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail.A reminder that the Mass. Central follows an abandoned rail line. In Sudbury.No sign of Mr. Conductor. In Sudbury.A bucolic view just a short distance from busy Boston Post Road (Route 20) in Sudbury.In Hudson.At Marlboro Road in Hudson.
Hulk Hogan poster. Photo (cc) 2009 by Tom Hodgkinson.
The professional wrestler Hulk Hogan died Thursday at 71. Among other things, Hogan’s death has prompted reminders that he, with the help of secret financing from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, pursued a lawsuit that destroyed Gawker, a website that trafficked in gossip, sleaze and occasionally important investigative reporting. In 2016 I wrote a commentary for GBH News arguing that Hogan and Thiel weren’t quite the bad guys they seemed, and that Gawker’s behavior truly was reprehensible. Here is that column again.
***
Sympathy for the Devil: Billionaire Peter Thiel versus Gawker versus the First Amendment
GBH News | June 1, 2016
Does Hulk Hogan’s invasion-of-privacy suit against the news-and-gossip site Gawker threaten the First Amendment? No. But the way his case is being paid for might.
Last week we learned that Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire, had provided about $10 million to help fund Hogan’s case. Such third-party financing is legal, and it proved to be a sound investment: in March, a Florida jury found that Gawker had invaded Hogan’s privacy by publishing a video of him and a friend’s wife without permission and awarded him $140 million.
Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes has now addressed the assault on two of her journalists at Mass and Cass. An email went out to the newsroom a little while ago, and a copy of it was provided to me by a trusted source. That source adds that Mass and Cass isn’t the only location where Globe reporters need protection. Barnes’ message follows.
Dear all,
The incident at Mass. and Cass involving our journalists, Niki Griswold and Barry Chin, is understandably concerning to everyone who goes out on assignment in places that might be dangerous. The situation at Mass. and Cass has evolved in recent years, and we are considering a requirement for anyone going there to have security, which we will discuss with our reporting teams and the rest of the company. We understand that not every journalist supports this approach. Meanwhile, we always have security available as an option to anyone going out on assignment if needed. Please reach out to your department head if you are headed to an area that might not be safe.
We have already been in contact with Poynter and the Dart Institute about training for reporters covering protests or other points of conflict; we will let you know as soon as that is scheduled. And, we will have a fuller conversation with our reporters and photographers who cover Mass. and Cass and other trouble spots to discuss best practices for our journalists in the weeks and months ahead. More information about security, including digital security, is available on the Globe intranet, On Point, and Jen Peter will send out a broader note about resources in the next few days.
The work of a journalist, serving as a witness, is a challenging job on many days. We never want our journalists to put themselves in danger, or to lack the security and training they need to stay safe. Please let us know if there are resources, training or gear that we lack, and which would be helpful. I’m available to talk to anyone about their specific concerns as well.
Sketch of Trump and Epstein by Mike Goad using Sora AI
This morning I want to highlight an astonishing passage in The Wall Street Journal’s new report (gift link) that Donald Trump’s name does indeed show up in the Epstein files:
They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.
They also told Trump that senior Justice Department officials didn’t plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information, the officials said.
Let’s unpack this a bit. The files contain “unverified hearsay” about Trump, which sounds like it could be really bad, although possibly untrue. And the documents include child-sex-abuse materials. Thus we have the president of these United States being tied to some sort of unproven bad behavior that is somehow connected with, or at least adjacent to, the sexual exploitation of children.
Wow. And of course this comes on the heels of last week’s Journal exclusive (gift link) that Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein a “bawdy” letter on the latter’s 50th birthday that included a reference to “another wonderful secret.”
Last week I listened to Ezra Klein’s podcast with journalist Will Sommer (gift link) about Epstein, QAnon and the conspiracy theories at the heart of Trump’s appeal to the unhinged right. To summarize, an Epstein cover-up is the one thing for which Trump’s base will not forgive him. You may say, well, eventually they forgive him for anything, but Sommer makes a compelling argument that this really is different: They forgive him for anything because they see Trump’s role as exposing an international pedophile ring controlled by secretive elites, including top Democrats. Once that’s gone, there’s nothing left.
And right on cue, the “QAnon Shaman,” Jake Angeli-Chansley, turned on Trump this week.
It’s very bad for Trump, and it seems likely to get a whole lot worse. The question is how many others will be hurt along the way.
Globe journalists attacked
Two Boston Globe journalists on assignment and two South End residents who were accompanying them were attacked last week by alleged drug dealers near the notorious intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, known as Mass and Cass. The incident was reported by Jules Roscoe in The Boston Guardian and by Scott Van Voorhis, who writes the newsletter Contrarian Boston. Van Voorhis writes:
First, a drug-addled man, swinging a nasty-looking metal rod studded with nails, threatened them. Before long, Globe City Hall reporter Niki Griswold and photographer Barry Chin and their neighborhood sherpas were surrounded by a group of what appeared to be drug dealers on bikes, demanding that they delete their pictures and turn over the camera.
One of the neighborhood residents bravely confronted a 300-or-so-pound dealer as he started towards the Globe’s photographer. The Good Samaritan flipped the thug to the ground when the man appeared to reach for a weapon, sources who were at the scene told Contrarian Boston.
The Globe has not yet reported on the incident. Nor has Mayor Michelle Wu contacted the residents, according to the two accounts, though they reportedly have heard from City Councilor Ed Flynn, state Rep. John Moran and Wu’s mayoral challenger, Josh Kraft.
Gin Dumcius moves on
Congratulations to longtime political reporter Gin Dumcius, who’s moved to State House News Service in order to take the helm of the insidery MASSter List newsletter. Until recently, Dumcius had been a staff reporter for CommonWealth Beacon.
CommonWealth, meanwhile, is advertising for a senior reporter to replace Dumcius. I’m on the board of advisers, and I think this is one of the top opportunities in the country for someone who wants to do serious reporting about politics and public policy.
Less than two weeks ago I wrote that Hearst’s plan to acquire The Dallas Morning News and add it to its expanding group of Texas newspapers was a positive development for the Lone Star State. Hearst is a privately owned chain that has a reputation for producing quality statewide and regional news, although its community-level coverage is lacking.
Now comes a terrifying development: Katie Robertson reports in The New York Times (gift link) that Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that has inflicted so much damage on journalism, is countering with a higher offer — $88 million as opposed to $75 million. Let’s be clear that Alden can afford to pay more because it will finance the acquisition by slashing the Dallas paper’s newsroom and perhaps selling off its real estate, as it has done in so many other places, from Denver and Chicago to Hartford, Connecticut, and Lowell and Fitchburg in Massachusetts.
According to Robertson, the Morning News would be added to Alden’s MediaNews Group, one of two chains it owns; the other is Tribune Publishing. She quotes from a MediaNews Group letter to the DallasNews Corp. board:
We have been considering a potential transaction with DallasNews for several years because we are consistently impressed with its commitment to high-quality local journalism supported by operational efficiency that maximizes resources available for the newsroom.
Under Hearst ownership, Poynter media-business media analyst Rick Edmonds predicted that some business operations would be consolidated but the newsroom would be left alone. If the ghouls from Alden take charge, though, all bets would be off. Robertson reports that Alden has already bought up 10% of DallasNews’ stock. We can only hope that the board is willing and able to fight off this truly frightening takeover attempt.
Meanwhile, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the medical-device billionaire who helped deliver the Tribune papers to Alden, has yet another scheme for resuscitating the Los Angeles Times, which has failed to thrive under his feckless ownership and which has been floundering since he killed his paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election, and just days before Jeff Bezos did the same at The Washington Post.
The “red-pilled billionaire,” to use Oliver Darcy’s wonderful description, has decided to take the Times public. He announced the news during an interview with Jon Stewart that Darcy describes as weirdly obsequious, with Stewart and his staff seemingly not having done any research on the MAGA-curious Soon-Shiong. The aforementioned Edmonds writes (fourth item) of Soon-Shiong’s harebrained scheme to engineer a Wall Street bailout:
The truly baffling part, though, is how in the world he imagines going public is a match for the Times’ situation. Typically, initial public offerings allow founders who have put together a business with a still-growing, big base of customers to cash in. Plus, it’s a vehicle to raise capital for major expansion.
But who wants to buy into a particularly troubled franchise in a declining industry?
These are dark times for the news media, with major papers and television networks paying obeisance to Donald Trump. The need for tough, independent journalism is greater than ever. It’s still out there, but you really have to wonder who’s going to be picked off next.
This is ingenious. On Monday, Media Nation commenter Steve Stein asked:
The $1.1B cut to public broadcasting is less than $10 per taxpayer. (BTW, is that PER YEAR or over 10 years?) [Congress rescinded spending that had been approved over the next two years.]
I plan on upping my yearly pledge to public radio in some form. Should I up my pledge to WHYY? Would that help the situation nationally? (My guess is WHYY is doing very well compared to, say, WYSO in Yellow Springs OH) Do you think there will be a mechanism from NPR or CPB that could funnel money from the bigger stations to the rural stations that will bear the brunt of cuts?
Later that day, Nieman Lab mentioned a tool called Adopt A Station. You call up the public radio stations in your state (or in any state), and you are shown a station in another part of the country that’s losing more than 50% of its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose funding was eliminated by Donald Trump and the Republican Congress. Overall, local public radio stations are losing $350 million in federal funding in each of the next two years.
If you call up Pennsylvania in Adopt A Station, you’ll see that Steve’s station, Philadelphia-based WHYY, is losing just 2% of its funding. But Adopt A Station suggests that he consider supporting not just WHYY but also WRVS in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, which is losing 71% of its funding. Elizabeth City is located in the northeast corner of the state, about 45 miles south of Norfolk Virginia.
I tried to look up Elizabeth City at the U.S. Census QuickFacts site only to find that it’s down, because of course it is. Thanks, Elon! But according to Wikipedia, Elizabeth City has about 18,700 residents, half of whom are Black, 38% white and 7% Hispanic. In 2011, about 28% of the population was below the poverty line, including 42% of those under 18. About 64,000 people lived in the metro area.
In other words, it’s exactly the sort of place that is being devastated by the CPB cuts, unlike affluent, well-educated metro areas like Greater Philadelphia — or, for that matter, Greater Boston, where WBUR Radio is losing 5% of its funding and GBH Radio is losing 1%. (GBH-TV is losing 8%, and, among Massachusetts public radio stations, WICN of Worcester is losing the most at 18%.)
Adopt A Station was designed by Alex Curley, who writes a newsletter about public media called Semipublic. The idea grew out of a long, data-heavy post he wrote that showed some 15% of public radio stations across the country are in danger of shutting down, including every station that’s losing 50% or more of its funding. He explained:
I was talking with friends within the public media system the next day, debriefing what is the most significant event in the industry’s history since President Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, when an idea was brought up: What if there was an easy way to connect donors looking to make the biggest impact with stations that were truly at risk?
In addition to volunteer efforts like Adopt A Station, NPR itself is cutting its budget by $8 million and will give that money to stations that are being the most harmed by the elimination of funding. NPR depends on direct federal funding for just 1% of its budget, but a much larger share comes from fees paid by local stations for programming such as “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”
Despite these efforts, I wouldn’t be surprised if we still lose a few public radio and television stations over the next few years. But through cooperative projects such as Curley’s and NPR’s, the damage, I hope, will be minimized until the MAGA extremists can be voted out of power.
As LaMarche observes, the gag order was aimed more at Murad than at the police department as a whole, and with Murad gone, there wasn’t much incentive for Mulvaney-Stanak to keep the cone of silence in place. The mayor targeted Murad for speaking out about a local man who’d had nearly 2,000 encounters with police. Among other things, Murad’s lament was reported on WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) in Boston, which couldn’t have endeared him to Mulvaney-Stanak.
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