Dan Kennedy

Three things that are driving me crazy about the move to WordPress.org

Update: Thanks to reader Mike Stucka, I have solved No. 1. I have also found my subscribers, but I can only see about a dozen of the most recent ones. I don’t see any place to access the entire list. As for No. 3, I would like to find a real fix, but in the meantime I’ve come up with a workaround.

You may know that I recently moved Media Nation from WordPress.com to .org. I’m 99% done and no longer posting to .com, but there are still a few things that drive me crazy.

Scroll down the right-hand rail on the home page to where it says “Subscribe to Media Nation via email.” There’s a black rectangle that you have to click to complete your subscription. Hover over it and it says “Subscribe.” But why is it black out until you hover over it?
I was able to pull over all my email subscribers from .com to .org. That was a big concern, since I’ve got more than 2,000 and I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. But now I can’t find a list of them anywhere either on .com or .org. Where are they?
If you scroll through posts on the home page, you won’t see “Leave a Comment” anywhere in the red type beneath the headline. (For an example of what I mean, do the same thing at dankennedy.wordpress.com.) As a result, there’s no indication that you can leave a comment, even though you can — but you have to click on the headline and open up the post. This is a massive speed bump.

Note: If you read Media Nation exclusively by email, you won’t see what I’m talking about in Nos. 1 and 3.

Do you use Venmo? Then do this right away.

Now here’s some news you can use. If you’ve been forced to use Venmo, you may be sharing far more personal information than you realized. I knew they had turned off the public feed a couple of years ago (whoever thought that was a good idea?), but I didn’t know that was just the tip of the iceberg. Brian X. Chen explains in The New York Times.

If you can’t get past the Times paywall, don’t be concerned. The steps you need to take are simple. On Venmo, choose “Me” (lower right) on the home screen, then settings (the gear thingie in the upper right). Choose “Privacy,” then select “Private.” Scroll down to “Friends List” and set that to “Private” as well. Finally, turn off “Appear in other users’ friends lists.” That’s it.

Update: I forgot to mention that you should also go to “Past Transactions” and choose “Change All to Private.”

What’s the Buzz in Burlington, Mass.? Nicci Kadilak on what it’s like to be a one-person news source

Nicci Kadilak was among several local news entrepreneurs featured earlier this year by GBH News. Photo by Jeremy Siegel / GBH News. Used by permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Nicci Kadilak, an educator, author, mom and founder of Burlington Buzz. The Buzz is a hyperlocal online news site serving Burlington, Massachusetts, a town of 26,000 people north and west of Boston. Kadilak created the Buzz in early 2022, when a town election was on the horizon and the local Gannett weekly, the Burlington Union, switched to regional coverage — and later ended its print edition altogether. In the 1980s, Burlington was covered by two weekly papers and The Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn, where I worked for quite a few years.

Nicci uses the Substack platform and charges a range of subscription fees. She offers news stories about town government, cultural events, sports, and has a section that provides a platform for audio interviews of newsmakers. She allows reader comments, too. Nicci also writes essays at Nicci’s Notes, and her debut novel, “When We Were Mothers,” is available wherever you buy books online. (Nicci, Ellen and Dan met in a Zoom discussion of local news led by Simon Owens for his informative Media Newsletter.)

By the way, the Buzz was just named one of 74 finalists for a Lion Independent Online News (LION) Publishers’ Local Journalism Award. Listeners of this podcast will notice a number of other familiar news organizations as well.

In our Quick Takes on developments in local news, I report on another effort to leverage tax credits for local journalism, and Ellen checks in on the decline and apparent death of the Santa Barbara News-Press.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Journalism, public goods and the free rider problem

Watchdog journalism at its finest. Photo via Needpix.

One of the arguments that often comes up in discussions about how to pay for news is that journalism is a “public good.” I was thinking about this last night when I read Rebuild Local News president Steve Waldman’s latest piece in The Atlantic, in which he observes that journalism often saves more money than it costs. He cites some notable examples, including a ProPublica investigation that led to $435 million in fines and reporting by MLK50 in Memphis, Tennessee, that resulted in the cancellation of about $12 million in debt owed by hospital patients.

This is the very definition of a “public good.” When economists talk about a public good, they mean something similar, but not identical, to what we lay people mean. You and I might simply mean that a public good is good for the public, as tough, ethical journalism surely is. But what economists mean is that it’s also something that benefits the public whether they pay for it or not. Here’s how Investopedia puts it: “The two main criteria that distinguish a public good are that it must be non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Non-rivalrous means that the goods do not dwindle in supply as more people consume them; non-excludability means that the good is available to all citizens.” Thus, a public good carries with it a free rider problem.

This is what I wrote about public goods in my 2013 book “The Wired City”:

In economic terms, a public good is something that benefits everyone, whether each of us pays for it or not — which, perversely, creates incentives for us not to pay. That is why we must pay taxes rather than make voluntary contributions to fund national defense. “Public good” is a phrase that also comes up a lot in discussions of why it is so difficult to fix the news business. For example, the local newspaper reports that members of the school committee are taking bribes from a bus company with a record of safety violations. As a result of that reporting, those committee members are removed and prosecuted. Schoolchildren are safer. Yet people who don’t buy or even read the paper benefit just as much as those who do. Thus, there needs to be a way to pay or such journalism outside the for-profit, advertiser-based context that worked reasonably well until a few years ago. Seen in this light, community journalism is a public good that deserves funding beyond what the market is willing to pay.

The problem is that when tax money is used to fund journalism, it can create a conflict that interferes with the independence needed for a news organization to fulfill its role as a monitor of power. Watchdog reporting is difficult when the institutions you’re holding to account are also providing you with the money you need to operate. That makes journalism very different from the fire department, schools or public works, all of which may accept public money without any such conflicts.

In his Atlantic piece, Waldman advocates for tax credits for local publishers and advertisers, a variation of an idea that he’s been promoting for several years that was recently revived in the form of the Community News and Small Business Support Act, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Now, tax credits are sufficiently arm’s-length that they don’t present much of a threat to journalistic independence. But the very fact that such indirect government assistance is being talked about helps illustrate why news isn’t just good for the public — it’s also a public good in every sense of the term.

At one time there was so much advertising money supporting journalism that we didn’t need to think about such things. These days, news has morphed from a highly profitable enterprise into a classic public good. It makes sense for us to find ways to fund that public good as long as we can do so without undermining the very qualities that make it a public good in the first place.

Republicans are undermining institutions. But the Times asks: Whatabout the Dems?

Marianne Williamson. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.

The whataboutism burns brightly in an otherwise fine New York Times story on how Republican candidates for president are undermining confidence in institutions such as the courts, the military and schools. About two-thirds of the way into the article, Jennifer Medina writes:

Casting doubt on the integrity of government is hardly limited to Republican candidates. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-shot candidate for the Democratic nomination, has made questioning public health officials on long-established science a focus of his campaign. In her quixotic bid for the nomination, Marianne Williamson has declared that she is “running to challenge the system.”

And President Biden, whose resistance to institutional change has often frustrated the left wing of his party, has mused about his skepticism of the Supreme Court — “this is not a normal court,” he said after the court’s ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions.

Well, now. Are we to believe that fringe Democratic figures like Kennedy (essentially a Steve Bannon-promoted Trumper plant) and Williamson are the equivalent of major Republicans like Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or even Nikki Haley?

As for Biden’s comment that the Supreme Court isn’t “normal,” consider: one of the justices, Neil Gorsuch, occupies the stolen seat that Mitch McConnell refused to let President Obama fill following the death of Antonin Scalia; another, Amy Coney Barrett, was rushed through in the closing days of Trump’s presidency; and all three of Trump’s appointments were made by a president who had lost the popular vote and were confirmed by Republican senators who represented far fewer people than the Democratic senators.

A fourth right-wing justice, Clarence Thomas, is shockingly corrupt.

The Times is hardly alone in reaching reflexively for that “to be sure” section, even when the facts cut entirely one way. But given that it’s our leading news organization, it really ought to concentrate on telling the truth rather than pandering to both sides.

A Muzzle Award goes to an R.I. city councilor who threw a critic out of the chambers

The Providence Journal’s Antonia Noori Farzan reported last month that a land transfer to Donna Travis, a member of the city council in Warwick, Rhode Island, had come under scrutiny, with the new leaders of a group that gave Travis the land raising questions about possible improprieties. Travis denied any wrongdoing.

It wasn’t the first time that Travis’ behavior had come under scrutiny. Back in 2017, she admitted she’d violated the state’s ethics code and paid a $1,200 fine. According to the Journal’s Carol Kozma, Travis’ case stemmed from her mixing her roles as a city official and as an executive at local nonprofit organizations. (I was able to access Farzan’s story through my USA Today subscription, but the process is convoluted and I don’t have a working link.)

🗽The New England Muzzles🗽

What brought this to my attention is what happened next. At a July 17 city council meeting, a Warwick resident named Rob Cote — identified by Rob Borkowski of the Warwick Post as a “frequent city critic” — was escorted out of the council chambers by a uniformed police officer after he had the temerity to wave a copy of the Journal at the council members and say, “First, I’d like to congratulate Councilwoman Donna Travis. Another front page of The Providence Journal.”

According to the Post and to a video of the proceedings rebroadcast on WPRI-TV (Channel 12), Travis immediately interjected that Cote would be thrown out if he failed to restrict his comments to matters involving city government.

Cote: “This is about city government.”

Travis: “Stick to a topic about city government or else you’ll be escorted out.”

Cote: “This is about city government. It’s actually mentioned about the Warwick City Council.”

Travis: “Did you hear what I just said?”

After telling Travis that the ACLU would hear about her attempts to squelch him, Cote was led out of the building. And sure enough, the ACLU of Rhode Island has gotten involved, writing a letter in conjunction with the New England First Amendment Coalition in which they “call upon the Council to reassure the public that this type of response will not be repeated and that residents will be free to speak at future meetings on matters involving city government without fear of being silenced.”

For her censorious efforts to shut down public discussion of an issue involving city government, Donna Travis has earned a New England Muzzle Award.

Now, let me tease out a few of the nuances here. As noted in the ACLU-NEFAC letter, signed by Steven Brown, executive editor of the ACLU of Rhode Island, and Justin Silverman, executive director of NEFAC, the city of Warwick imposes certain restrictions on members of the public who wish to speak at governmental meetings. One is that their comments pertain to issues “directly affecting city government.” But as the letter notes, Cote was shut down barely before he could get a word out, and, in any case, the property dispute involving Travis was “clearly a topic of public concern.”

In addition, the letter notes that Travis told the Warwick Beacon “it was the unwritten practice of the City Council not to allow ‘personal attacks’ during the public comment period.” Brown and Silverman respond that, “leaving aside the impropriety of relying on an ‘unwritten’ policy to censor the speech of a member of the public, any such policy itself is just as problematic from a First Amendment standpoint. In fact, courts have often struck down such restrictions as a violation of the public’s free speech rights.”

The other nuance I want to bring up is that the lack civility at local public meetings has become a real problem, making it difficult for elected officials to conduct business and driving some of them out of government. We’ve all seen televised school committee meetings at which out-of-control members of the public start screaming about critical race theory, transgender issues, vaccines or whatever. It can be difficult to know where to draw the line. Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that local officials had gone too far in silencing a woman who twice called a select board chair “a Hitler.”

In the Warwick case, though, Cote comes across as polite, if sarcastic, and ready to talk about a matter of considerable public concern.

Travis might also consider the Streisand effect. Few people would know about the property dispute if she hadn’t tried to silence Cote. All around, it was a pretty sad performance by someone who was elected to act in the public’s best interest.

Correction: This post originally said that Travis was “led out of the building.” It was, of course, Cote.

The Globe fires back against its ex-president, claiming his spending was out of control

Boston Globe Media Partners has fired back against its former president Vinay Mehra, who sued the company in June over what he claimed was $12 million in compensation that he is owed in lost commissions, wages and other compensation. The Globe’s answer, filed Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court, goes beyond the usual dry denial of Mehra’s charges to offer a rather vivid account of its own allegations against Mehra. It begins by claiming that the Globe …

… terminated Vinay Mehra’s employment [in June 2020] for cause for repeated instances of poor judgment (or worse) with excessive, unauthorized, and inappropriate spending of the Globe’s money. Unable to resist the temptation to spend corporate money for his own benefit, Mehra repeatedly used his corporate credit card or else spent company money to run up extraordinary expenses that offered no benefit to the Globe. At first, Mehra acknowleged the Globe’s objections to these abuses, and promised they would not recur. But they did recur, and Mehra eventually simply stopped even attempting to justify them.

According to the answer, filed by the Globe’s lawyer, Mark W. Batten of Proskauer Rose, Mehra:

Leased a car for $23,000 without authorization shortly after he was hired in 2017.
Spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on consultants without seeking approval from ownership.
Spent $45,000 on a two-year subscription to Bloomberg Financial, accessible only to him and “with zero discernible benefit to the company.”
Racked up some $400,000 on his corporate credit card without approval, spent Globe funds to attend the 2019 Super Bowl with no benefit to the Globe, and mischaracterized a charitable endeavor related to COVID-19 that primarily benefited a hospital connected to his wife.

The narrative section of the Globe’s answer concludes by alleging that, after repeated offenses, “it became clear that his behavior could not, and would not, stop” and that “the breach had at last become irreparable.”

On Thursday, the Globe’s Larry Edelman reported on the Globe’s answer and quoted Mehra’s lawyer, David W. Sanford, as saying: “The Boston Globe’s accusations are false and a jury that will hear this case eventually will understand them to be false…. The hard work of the litigation begins now with discovery, and discovery will show Vinay is right.”

Before coming to the Globe, Mehra held high-level corporate positions at Politico and, before that, GBH in Boston.

Judy Woodruff takes on the local news crisis

Earlier this week Judy Woodruff of the “PBS NewsHour” reported on the demise of The Canadian Record, an independently owned weekly newspaper that served the community of Canadian, Texas. Woodruff hits on themes familiar to readers of this space, including the loss of more than 2,000 newspapers in recent decades as well as the rise of polarization and the decline in voter turnout, both of which are related to a lack of reliable news and information at the local level.

The news from Canadian turns out to be not quite as grim as most of the story would suggest. We learn toward the end that publisher Laurie Brown and others continue to post occasional stories to the website and to the Record’s Facebook page, and that she’s currently seeking a buyer for the paper. But it’s certainly grim enough, as neither she nor her contributors are getting paid.

As optimistic as I am about the future of local news, there are parts of the country that are just hard. Places like Canadian, a small town in the rural Texas Panhandle, are especially difficult, as they lack the population base to sustain a news outlet now that most advertising has migrated to the internet. Such places also frequently lack the social capital needed to launch a nonprofit news organization.

I hope the Record finds a buyer, although, if she does, the new owner is going to face exactly the same kinds of challenges that proved insurmountable for Brown.

The worst thing Ron DeSantis has ever said

Why isn’t this getting more attention? “Slitting the throats” of “deep state” federal bureaucrats? In better times, DeSantis would have been forced out of the race. (Free link.)

The two largest federal employee unions on Thursday denounced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s recent vow that as president he would “start slitting throats” in the federal bureaucracy — the latest escalation in intensifying Republican attacks on government operations they want to slash or eliminate.

DeSantis, whose campaign for the GOP nomination has included promises to downsize agencies and fire bureaucrats, made the comments this weekend in New Hampshire while criticizing the “deep state,” echoing a term regularly used by former president Donald Trump to deride Washington.

Why I’m not excited that Jeffrey Goldberg will host ‘Washington Week’

Jeffrey Goldberg, left, interviews then-Secretary of State John Kerry. Photo (cc) 2016 by the Brookings Institution.

I can’t say that I’m a fan of PBS’s “Washington Week,” even though its recently departed moderator, Yamiche Alcindor, is someone for whom I have a lot of respect.

When I’ve watched, which has not been often, it has struck me as being obsessed with political gamesmanship to its core. An elected official could call for executing anyone caught wearing green pants, and the panel would chew over the political implications rather than the outrageousness of the proposal itself. The questions and answers come across as rehearsed.

So I don’t care all that much that Alcindor’s successor will be Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Is it a mistake to follow Alcindor with a late-middle-aged white guy of moderately liberal views? Yes, it is a mistake. But I don’t imagine things will change all that much.

The show will be renamed “Washington Week with The Atlantic.” The PBS press release says that The Atlantic will become an “editorial partner” along with the “PBS NewsHour” and WETA, but it sounds like The Atlantic will not be involved in the actual production. Goldberg’s announcement makes no mention of the possibility that The Atlantic will have a greater presence on the program.

The one positive I can think of is that, at a time when the thrice-indicted Donald Trump is threatening the very future of our democracy by running for president on an explicitly authoritarian platform, it’s notable that The Atlantic has been fierce and unstinting in its commentary on Trump and Trumpism. So I guess we’ll see how that plays out on Friday nights.