Author: Dan Kennedy

How a growing Jewish newspaper is helping to fill the local news void

This week on the “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Steve Rosenberg, editor of the Jewish Journal in Massachusetts, and Linda Matchan, who was named associate editor in February. Our topic: the role of ethnic and religious media in the local news landscape.

Both Steve and Linda had long and productive careers at The Boston Globe. Steve worked for 15 years as a staff writer and columnist, writing about cities and towns north of Boston. He was also editor of the now-defunct Jewish Advocate.

Linda worked at the Globe for 36 years. During her extensive career, she did a little bit of everything, from  investigative reporting to feature writing to spot news.

Dan shares a Quick Take on the Uvalde Leader-News, a twice-weekly paper that not only had the difficult task of covering the school shootings that claimed the lives of 21 people but that was also a victim of those shootings. Here’s a link to Rachel Monroe’s riveting New Yorker story on Uvalde and its aftermath, as well as the emotional remarks by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and others at a memorial in Washington for victims of gun violence.

Ellen discusses the ethical dilemma posed by the Online News Association’s new “3M Truth in Science Award.” (Teresa Carr broke the story in Undark and Nieman Lab.) Ellen reached out to longtime science journalist Judy Foreman to get her perspective.

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

Gannett puts the brakes on its drive to cut back on print

Photo via Pixabay

It looks like executives at Gannett have decided they were going too far in cutting back on print. The country’s largest newspaper chain has been eliminating print days at its dailies and killing off or merging print weeklies. Here, for example, is Kevin Graeler, managing editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri, which had been scheduled to drop from seven days to just three:

Under a national decision by Gannett, which owns the Tribune and more than 200 other newspapers across the USA Today Network, all changes to the number of print editions published per week are being paused while the company analyzes new data and takes into consideration valuable input from our subscribers.

Of course, the real problem isn’t the lack of print — it’s the lack of coverage. In Massachusetts, Gannett announced in February it was moving nearly all of the local staff reporters at its community weeklies to regional beats. So much for coverage of the city council, mayor, select board and school committee. A month later, the chain told readers that it was closing 19 weeklies and merging nine others into four.

This doesn’t take place in a vacuum. For years, people have been starting independent news organizations in response to cutbacks by Gannett and its predecessor company, GateHouse Media. And just recently, new local news ventures have either been launched or announced in Marblehead, Concord and Newton. More to come, I’m sure.

You can find a complete list of independent local news outlets in Massachusetts in the upper right-hand corner of this page. Just look for “Mass. Indy News.”

A Washington Post reporter is suspended after his sexist retweet blows up

Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee. Photo (cc) 2022 by the World Economic Forum.

The use and misuse of social media platforms — especially Twitter — continue to torment newsrooms. The latest news organization to have a mess on its hands is The Washington Post, which is no stranger to past Twitter controversies.

Let’s start at the end: political reporter David Weigel was suspended for a month without pay after retweeting a horrendously sexist joke for which he had already apologized. The joke — and yes, God Almighty, Weigel should have known better: “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy has a good overview of the entire controversy, which included pointed criticism of Weigel by a fellow Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez (on Twitter, naturally) and criticism of Sonmez by reporter Jose Del Real, who was upset that Sonmez had unleashed the Twitter mob on Weigel.

Post executive editor Sally Buzbee weighed in on Sunday, writing an internal memo calling on Post journalists “to treat each other with respect and kindness both in the newsroom and online.” That might have been the end of it, but obviously Buzbee thought she needed to make a statement about what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

We are all tempted to push the envelope on Twitter to get attention, measured by like and retweets. But at this late date, you’d think a reporter for a respected news organization would have figured it out. We don’t always know where the lines are, but it was pretty obvious in this case.

Twitter has its uses in journalism — mainly to follow people and organizations who are useful for your beat. If you read 10 times more frequently than you post, you’re probably doing it right. I’d say that journalists ought to restrict their Twitter activities to posting links to their work and that of their news organization; sharing other work they think is worthwhile; and engaging in light banter, because we’re all human. But if light banter is what Weigel thought he was doing, maybe he needs to take a long, long break from Twitter.

Weigel, by the way, lost an earlier gig at the Post back in 2010 after it was revealed that he’d been disparaging conservatives on a private forum called Journolist. And Sonmez was suspended after she took to Twitter in the immediate aftermath of Kobe Bryant’s death to remind everyone of his past sexual assaults.

As they say: Never tweet.

Re Substack: Never mind

I received a message from Substack a little while ago, and it appears that I may have misunderstood the service’s business model in some important ways. Rather than try to fix my item, I’ve taken it down. Thanks for your understanding.

Dam project underway in the Middlesex Fells

I hadn’t visited the Middlesex Fells for several months, and it looks like I missed a lot. The town of Winchester is rebuilding the 147-year-old North Reservoir Dam at a cost of $6 million. The water level has been lowered considerably in order to accommodate the construction. Here’s a story about it from the Winchester Star, back when there was a Star.

Hearst CT de-emphasizes print while expanding its newsroom and digital subs

The New Haven Register’s printing plant is long gone. And now its owner, Hearst, will be printing it out of state as the chain doubles down on digital subscriptions. Photo (cc) 2009 by Dan Kennedy.

A newspaper battle is brewing in Connecticut — but print is becoming an afterthought.

Hearst Connecticut recently announced that it would move its printing operations to Albany, New York, meaning that deadlines for titles such as the New Haven Register and the Connecticut Post of Bridgeport will be earlier than ever. Twenty-eight jobs will be eliminated, reports Greg Bordonaro of the Hartford Business Journal.

At the same time, Hearst has been growing in Connecticut. The chain is adding positions to its combined newsroom of about 160 full-timers. According to confidential sources I’ve been in touch with with, digital subscriptions have risen from about 21,000 to 39,000 over the past 16 months.

With Connecticut’s statewide daily, the Hartford Courant, being strangled by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, the privately owned Hearst is attempting to fill the void. Last summer, Hearst unveiled a new statewide website, CTInsider, that has its own staff and also draws on content from Hearst CT’s eight dailies and 13 weeklies.

It’s an approach that emphasizes statewide and regional coverage over community watchdog reporting, and it’s similar to what Advance is doing in New Jersey, where papers such as The Star-Ledger of Newark, The Times of Trenton and the South Jersey Times have been united under the NJ.com banner. Nevertheless, the emphasis on growth and real journalism at Hearst CT is heartening at a time when hedge-fund cutbacks are dominant.

Memphis newspaper legend Otis Sanford on the rise of a new media ecosystem

Otis Sanford at his 2014 induction into the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame

This week on the “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Professor Otis Sanford, who is something of a journalistic legend in Memphis. As a general assignment reporter at The Commercial Appeal in 1977, Sanford covered the death of Elvis Presley. He also covered courts, county government and politics before being promoted into management. After stints at the Pittsburgh Press and Detroit Free Press, Sanford returned to The Commercial Appeal. In 2002 he was named managing editor and in 2007 he became editorial page editor.

As opinion editor in Memphis, Sanford launched a Citizens Editorial Board. While that was a number of years ago, Sanford was ahead of the curve in terms of community engagement.

In 2011, Sanford joined the University of Memphis Department of Journalism faculty. He holds the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Economic and Managerial Journalism. He still writes a column on politics and events in Memphis. It’s published in The Daily Memphian, a thriving startup founded by journalists and business people who were disappointed by the rounds of layoffs at The Commercial Appeal.

The Daily Memphian is one of two digital newsrooms launched by journalists who left The Commercial Appeal. The other newsroom is the award-winning MLK50, started by Wendi C. Thomas, to cover income inequality, race and justice issues.

I’ve got a quick take on the latest from The Baltimore Banner, a digital start-up that will be competing with the Baltimore Sun, acquired last year by the notorious hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

Ellen looks at the new Votebeat site, a Chalkbeat spinoff that just might help election integrity.

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

A heart-breaking example of how local news can bind a community’s wounds

Shortly after the school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, I checked in to see what local newspapers were reporting. The San Antonio Express-News, a Hearst paper, seemed to be doing a thorough job, but its strict paywall meant that I couldn’t read anything. Then I discovered there was a paper in Uvalde — the Leader-News. But at that early stage there was no coverage of the shootings, so I moved on.

In the days since the shootings, the twice-weekly Leader-News has emerged as a symbol of a community’s suffering. An all-black front page garnered quite a bit of attention. And a sensitive, detailed story in The New Yorker by Rachel Monroe brought us into the lives of the staff members. We learn that Kimberly Rubio, the reporter whose daughter, Lexi, was among those killed, had been a receptionist at the paper and was offered a newsroom job because publisher Craig Garnett often saw her reading a book. “I said, ‘You know, if you love to read that much, you can write,’” Garnett told Monroe. “And, by gosh, she didn’t let us down.”

The New Yorker story is heart-breaking, but it’s also affirming. You’re not going to turn to the Leader-News for an investigative report on the failures of the local police. But as Garnett said, what the paper can provide is “context. A source of understanding, and hand-holding, and healing.” Finally, here is a story from the paper on the victims of the shootings. The headline: “They were smart, funny, loved.”

The Globe leads with a story from public media outlet WBUR

Here’s something I hadn’t seen before. The Boston Globe’s lead story today, on the backlog of cases at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, is from WBUR, one of the city’s two major public media outlets. It strikes me as semi-smart.

On the one hand, I’m all in favor of collaboration. On the other, I assume that the overlap between the Globe’s and WBUR’s audiences is extensive. Some Globe readers might not appreciate paying for something they already heard on the radio or read at WBUR.org.

Next time I might think twice about leading the paper with it. Maybe run it below the fold, as we used to say back when print mattered. Overall, though, it’s a good, important story that deserves the wider distribution the Globe can give it.

Oliver Mill

Oliver Mill in Middleborough on Sunday. A correction to the bottom sign: Muttock was not “largely ignored” until the 1960s and ’70s. Crowds always went there during herring season, where you could see waves of fish migrating upstream. The restoration got mixed reviews at the time, as it involved the removal of a lot of trees.

It was legal to catch herring back then. One time I brought a few home and cleaned them. My grandmother baked them. The taste was pretty horrible, and they were filled with bones, so I didn’t try that again. And no one called it Oliver Mill. It was Muttock.