Author: Dan Kennedy

What’s wrong with CNN

CNN has fallen to third place in prime time. It’s an easy way out to argue that it’s because CNN is doing news while Fox and MSNBC are doing talk. But it seems to me that CNN has three problems of its own making:

  • It’s given up on the 8 p.m. slot, where Campbell Brown is caught between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann. Has anyone ever watched Brown’s show? She certainly isn’t compelling enough as part of “The Best Political Team on Television” (or at least the largest) to make me want to check her out.
  • Larry King at 9 p.m. — you can’t live with him, you can’t live without him. CNN’s fortunes have been tied up with King for so many years that no one dares to mess with his show. But it’s not what it used to be. I’d move it to 8 and try to come up with something else at 9. An intelligent political talk show, perhaps? If that’s not too oxymoronic?
  • At 10 p.m., CNN ought to clean up. Its best anchor, Anderson Cooper, is up against Greta Van Susteren and the Olbermann rerun. Trouble is, Cooper’s newscast lacks a distinct identity. And because it’s two hours long, he spends way too much time flogging stuff that will be coming up after 11, when people are either in bed or watching Jon Stewart. I’d cut it to an hour and make it a consistent, signature newscast. Then again, that’s what Aaron Brown was doing in that time slot, and I would have kept him and deployed Cooper elsewhere.

Problem solved. Next?

Marty Baron is not tweeting

So what did I find in my inbox this morning? A message from someone named Marty Baron, letting me know that he was following me on Twitter. Well, I started following him and sent him a private note to make sure it was really him.

As it turns out, it’s not Boston Globe editor Marty Baron, but someone pretending to be him. “It’s not me,” Baron told me by e-mail. Such gamesmanship is far from unusual on Twitter, though it looks like the normally savvy Adam Gaffin was taken in.

Why can’t everyone be as honest as Fake Rahm Emanuel?

Shorter Freeman Dyson

He doesn’t deny global warming. He likes global warming. From Nicholas Dawidoff’s profile in the New York Times Magazine:

Dyson agrees with the prevailing view that there are rapidly rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by human activity. To the planet, he suggests, the rising carbon may well be a MacGuffin, a striking yet ultimately benign occurrence in what Dyson says is still “a relatively cool period in the earth’s history.” The warming, he says, is not global but local, “making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter.” Far from expecting any drastic harmful consequences from these increased temperatures, he says the carbon may well be salubrious — a sign that “the climate is actually improving rather than getting worse,” because carbon acts as an ideal fertilizer promoting forest growth and crop yields. “Most of the evolution of life occurred on a planet substantially warmer than it is now,” he contends, “and substantially richer in carbon dioxide.” Dyson calls ocean acidification, which many scientists say is destroying the saltwater food chain, a genuine but probably exaggerated problem. Sea levels, he says, are rising steadily, but why this is and what dangers it might portend “cannot be predicted until we know much more about its causes.”

Given that Dyson accepts the basic science of global warming, how — despite all his brilliance — is his opinion on the effects of warming worth any more than anyone else’s?

The Weather Underground again (II)

As it turned out, it really didn’t take me that long to skim the 1976 FBI history of the Weather Underground.

At 420 pages, it is a comprehensive overview of whom the FBI considered to be associated with the Weather Underground and what activities they engaged in. And there is not one solitary mention of Katherine Ann Power, Susan Saxe or the 1970 murder of Boston police officer Walter Schroeder.

As I wrote earlier, the section in the index where Power’s name might have appeared has been blacked out (or, to be more accurate, whited out). But from actually scanning through the document, it is clear that she’s nowhere to be found. Whoever’s name has been whited out, it’s safe to say, isn’t Power’s.

In another part of the document (PDF) is a section titled “WUO [Weather Underground Organization] Communiques and Bombings 1970-1976.” The section comprises a long list of terrorist acts for which the Weather Underground took credit — everything from bombing New York City police headquarters and the U.S. Capitol to helping Timothy Leary escape to Algeria. Again, there is no mention of the bank robbery in which Officer Schroeder was killed.

The only FBI reference to Power’s alleged membership in the Weather Underground is a photo caption on a Web page that links to the 1976 report. Based on what I’ve found so far, I think someone in the FBI communications department made a mistake.

Moving right along: Over at Google Books, I was able to search “The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground,” by Ron Jacobs (1997). There are no references whatsoever to Power, Saxe or the Schroeder case.

Using Amazon.com’s “Search Inside” feature, I also peeked at William Ayers’ memoir, “Fugitive Days.” Again, no reference to Power, Saxe or Schroeder.

I also consulted stories from the New York Times and the Associated Press published at the time of Schroeder’s murder. Both reported the FBI’s belief that the suspects were involved in “revolutionary” activities. Neither story made any mention of the Weather Underground.

I see no reason to back down from asserting that Katherine Ann Power had no connection to the Weather Underground.

The Weather Underground again

Proving a negative can be damn near impossible. So consider this a first, halting effort to refute Michael Graham’s claim that Katherine Ann Power was a member of the Weather Underground.

Power, as you may recall, is a convicted murder — a former student radical who was one of five people responsible for killing Boston police officer Walter Schroeder in a 1970 bank robbery. Last year, Michele McPhee, like Graham a talk-show host on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM), repeatedly claimed that Schroeder was killed by the Weather Underground; that because William Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground, knows Barack Obama, it must therefore follow that Obama was being disrespectful to the Schroeder family or something.

Now Ayers has been invited and disinvited to speak at Boston College, which occasions Graham’s missive.

Graham’s evidence is a link to an FBI Web page in which Power is identified as a member of the Weather Underground. Yet it is an odd document to which Graham refers — there is nothing in it about the Schroeder murder or Power. There are, however, photos of Bernardine Dohrn (Ayers’ wife, and indeed a former member of the Weather Underground) and Power. No further information is provided.

There is also a link to an FBI document, in multiple parts and hundreds of pages long, that is a 1976 internal history of the Weather Underground. However, it is unsearchable, as it is in the form of a PDF image file. It would take me many hours to read through it. I don’t have the time, but if anyone would like to try, be my guest. I’d like to know what’s in it.

More interesting is another link Graham provides — to a long article in National Review, published in 1993, not long after Power’s arrest. In it, one of her former Brandeis professors, Jacob Cohen, goes into deep, fascinating detail about Power and her classmate and co-murderer Susan Saxe. Cohen makes it clear that Power and Saxe were consumed by the radical insanity of the time. But Cohen, who knew them well, offers no indication that either of them was a member of the Weather Underground. It just doesn’t come up.

The thing is, Power’s story is well-known. She and Saxe, while students at Brandeis, hooked up with three ex-convicts and robbed a bank so that they could raise money for the Black Panthers. It sounds crazy, and it was. The crime they committed was unspeakable. But with the sole exception of that FBI page, I don’t think you will find anything anywhere suggesting that they were tied to the Weather Underground.

Here is how the New York Times described it following Power’s 1993 arrest:

The bank robbery came in a year when the anti-war movement had splintered, with some groups going underground and turning to violence. That March, three members of the Weathermen, a radical group, blew themselves up in the Greenwich Village town house where they were trying to build bombs.

Then the United States invaded Cambodia. Four days later in early May, four Kent State University students were shot to death by the National Guard during a protest of the invasion. The next day Kathy Power was one of thousands of students who walked out of classes in protest.

A national committee to coordinate student strikes was set up at Brandeis and it included Ms. Power, Susan Saxe and a state prison inmate on a college furlough program, Stanley Bond. All three took part in the bank robbery.

I am trying to find out more. Given the FBI statement, I am treading carefully. But, so far, I have seen no facts that would challenge the public record: that Power and Saxe had nothing to do with the Weather Underground.

Instant update: I just had a flash of inspiration and looked at the index of Weather Underground members in that FBI report (PDF). The place where Power’s name would be (if it’s there) has been blacked out. Saxe is not mentioned at all.

Still more: I see that Graham has referred to me as “some moron who claims to teach at Northeastern University.” We shall see who’s the moron by the time this has been resolved.

Blogging the death of newspapers

This post is unfair to its intended targets, but it’s hilarious nevertheless. Paul Dailing writes at the Huffington Post:

I’ll join the ranks of Jeff Jarvis, Paul Gillin, Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky in competing to see who can use the most jargon to describe something everyone knows is happening. Apparently, it’s very simple.

The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you’re doing. If you make it sound like you’re the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win.

I have to admit — there are times when this comes pretty close to the actual discourse. I’ll try to imagine Dailing whispering in my ear the next time I write my own death-of-newspapers post.

Next steps for the shrinking Globe

Working harder isn’t going to do it once the Boston Globe has finished with its current round of 50 reductions to the newsroom staff. Once that process has been completed, the news staff will have shrunk from about 550 full-time journalists (or their equivalent) in 2000 to roughly 330. That means the Globe will, of necessity, be a fundamentally different paper.

This Friday, I’m going to be talking about the future of local news on “Radio Boston,” on WBUR (90.9 FM), from 1 to 2 p.m., along with El Planeta managing editor Marcela García, Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub and Globe regional editor David Dahl. I’ve been thinking about these ideas for a while, and this seems like as good a time as any to put them out there. (The Globe cuts will also be discussed on “Beat the Press,” on WGBH-TV/Channel 2, on Friday at 7 p.m.)

As the newspaper business has shrunk over the past few years, Globe executives have made some tough decisions about priorities. There are no more international bureaus. There is little national coverage outside of Washington. The Washington bureau has stayed, in part because Boston remains a politically minded town, in part because the Globe’s Washington coverage is picked up by a lot of news Web sites around the country. Essentially, though, the Globe has become a local and regional paper.

Now, though, it would appear that the Globe won’t even be able to cover local news as thoroughly without fundamentally rethinking how it should go about its business.

Like just about every news junkie, I have some thoughts — nothing original, and nothing, I’m sure, that editor Marty Baron, Boston.com editor David Beard, Globe managing editor Caleb Solomon, publisher Steve Ainsley and company haven’t already considered. The crisis is ongoing, and it won’t be solved by cutting 50 positions.

The question of whether the Globe is worth $20 million or $200 million, and if it is among the 10 most likely papers to close or drop its print edition (see Douglas McIntyre’s latest), is irrelevant. The survival of every large regional paper in the country is at stake right now.

1. Re-define Boston.com as the Globe’s principal news vehicle. This is tricky. With 5.2 million unique visitors a month, Boston.com has more readers than any online regional newspaper, far outperforming its print edition in the national rankings. So, yes, first, do no harm. But Boston.com needs to be branded as the umbrella for all of the Globe’s readers — the only platform that reaches what we used to call a mass audience.

Nevertheless, there’s a visual dichotomy between Boston.com and the Globe’s own online presence that helps neither entity. It goes back to the earliest days of the Web, when Boston.com had a number of partners, including Boston magazine, Banker & Tradesman and New England Cable News. These days, Boston.com is like Yugoslavia — a former federation now consisting of just one country, the Globe.

The problem with Boston.com is that you enter it not quite knowing whether you are going to encounter all of the Globe’s content. Despite several redesigns over the years, it remains too easy to get lost, too. Because of efforts to establish Boston.com as being separate from the Globe, it has a feel that might charitably be described as lite. I would redo the site so that it is clearly stamped as the Globe’s 24/7 news operation, very much along the lines of the New York Times and Washington Post Web sites.

Next, I would take it a step further than most newspaper sites have been willing to do. Though I would include all (or most — see next item) of the Globe’s content on Boston.com, I would drop the “Today’s Paper” feature. It’s fine and probably necessary to post the Globe’s content on its free Web site. Recent proposals by the likes of Walter Isaacson, Steven Brill and Alan Mutter to charge for online content are well-intentioned but deeply flawed.

But that doesn’t mean Boston.com ought to offer the Globe in a form that’s organized exactly the same way as the print edition. Why should the Globe — or the Times or the Post or anyone else — offer a perfect substitute? The Boston Herald, by the way, is already doing this, running a 24/7 news site that is entirely unconnected to its print edition.

Last fall I had a chance to interview John Yemma, the editor of the Christian Science Monitor (and a former Globe staff member). As you no doubt know, next month the Monitor will end its daily print edition. [Update: In fact, it has already printed its final edition.] Instead, it will supplement its own 24/7 Web site with a weekly magazine. All of the magazine’s content will be posted on the Web site — but it will be distributed among different content and subject areas. The magazine itself will not be posted as a separate and distinct entity.

“We’re going to disaggregate the print edition and feed it to the appropriate places,” Yemma said.

Not a bad idea.

2. Charge a lot more for the print edition. The Globe still sells almost 325,000 papers on weekdays and 500,000 on Sundays. That’s a lot of papers, even though it’s a far cry from the more than 500,000 it used to sell on weekdays and the 800,000-plus it sold on Sundays.

If the advertising market hadn’t changed so completely, the picture wouldn’t be nearly so dire. But it’s simply a fact of life that Craigslist has devastated the classified market, formerly the most lucrative part of the Globe.

OK, now take a deep breath. I would charge $2 for the daily edition (up from 75 cents) and $5 on Sunday (up from $2.50). What effect would such an increase have on circulation? A rather large one, I suspect. But given that the print edition of any newspaper is a break-even proposition (at best) because of the cost of paper, ink, distribution and the like, it makes sense to extract some serious revenue out of readers who really want a print edition in the morning.

Customers willing to pay such a price would be an elite audience especially attractive to advertisers. (The danger that editors would have to avoid is the temptation to tailor their coverage accordingly.) And the Globe would actually be making money from its print edition.

The problem with such an idea, of course, is that you’d be asking people to pay a lot more money at a time when the paper is thinner than it’s ever been. The challenge is to offer extra value. I don’t have any good answers to that. Perhaps there is some content that would be reserved exclusively for print readers.

The metro columnists? Probably not. How about a really well-edited, analytical daily briefing on world, national and local news that would take up all of an ad-free pages two and three? It would have to be sufficiently meaty that it would take 10 or 15 minutes to get through it, and leave readers feeling as though they didn’t absolutely have to read the rest of the paper. That would be a real service to time-starved folks who are serious about news.

The extra value doesn’t have to be only related to content. Subscribers would receive a Globe card, just like a public television contributor card. Cooperating businesses could offer discounts to cardholders. Free admission could be offered to certain Globe-sponsored events. This would represent an expansion of current efforts rather than something entirely new.

3. Blog what you can’t cover. As Jeff Jarvis likes to say, “Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.” Given that there are going to be fewer local reporters on the Globe’s staff, I would hire about a half-dozen bloggers to offer intelligent aggregation of local blogs covering politics, food, sports, city life — what have you. You could then take the highlights and reverse-publish them in the print edition.

I want to draw a distinction between the bloggers you’d hire, who would be paid, and the bloggers whose work would be aggregated, who wouldn’t be paid. Some of the aggregatees wouldn’t want to be included, which is fine. Most would be thrilled. I’m always happy to see Media Nation featured on Boston.com or in the VoxOp column on the op-ed page.

And by the way, I’m talking about paid bloggers who would offer judgment, commentary and context — not the automated aggregation of local content that got the Globe into trouble earlier this year. It wouldn’t be as cheap, but it would be a crucial investment in the future.

4. Do something about the Metro dilemma. Why on earth did the Globe’s corporate parent, the New York Times Co., buy 49 percent of Metro Boston a few years ago? It was just enough deny it the control that it needs.

I would do everything I could to capture a controlling interest in Metro — or, failing that, start a competitor. I’d keep it as a freebie tabloid and continue aiming it at younger readers and subway and bus riders. Then I would fill it exclusively with shorter versions of Globe stories and use it relentlessly to promote Boston.com and the full-scale print edition.

There’s money to be made in free newspapers. In fact, let’s keep going with that idea.

5. Develop a variety of free, advertiser-supported publications. Last year the Globe repackaged all of its arts, entertainment and lifestyle coverage in a daily tabloid called g. Whether you like g or not (departing literary-beat reporter David Mehegan gives it a thumbs-down), it does present the Globe with an opportunity to do something different — give it away in places where people who are looking for something to do would be likely to pick it up.

The Globe folded its paid sports magazine, OT, in a matter of months. It should have tried free distribution at sporting events. As with g, I think advertisers would have been attracted to such a publication if the Globe had found a way to get it into the hands of sports fans.

I have no idea whether it’s considered a success, but the Globe is already doing something like this with Lola, a giveaway aimed at women. Snicker if you like. But in an era when there is no longer any such thing as a mass audience, a newspaper must target many different audiences.

Would these ideas save the Globe? I don’t know, but I think they’re worth trying. The other ideas that are floating around — going online-only, or putting out a print edition just three or four days a week — are a lot more drastic, and would represent a continuing downward spiral rather than a new beginning.

Not to sound old-fashioned, but I believe that a healthy Globe is vital to the civic life of the community. You often hear people ask whether Boston will remain “a two-newspaper town,” a reference to the Globe and the Herald. I think that’s looking at it the wrong way.

The fact is that the Globe, even in its shrunken state, remains the dominant regional media organization. There are a number of other important news outlets — not just the Herald, but the Boston Phoenix, WBUR, New England Cable News, local television stations and community papers. In other words, there’s the Globe, and there’s everyone else.

The Globe and other large metropolitan dailies will never be restored. They can, I hope, be reconceived.

As always, I invite your comments.