Author: Dan Kennedy

Today’s Boston Globe contains that most frustrating of journalistic subspecies: a long, abject “Editor’s Note” that will prove utterly mystifying to any reader who doesn’t remember the original story. As mea culpas go, this one’s a doozy, beginning with this:

GLOBE: A Page One story Aug. 26 detailing allegations that the International Rescue Committee’s resettlement program for Somali Bantus in Boston has provided inadequate assistance to the refugees failed to meet Globe reporting standards in several areas. The story relied on the accounts of two former IRC employees and four families in the approximately 140-refugee community and did not present enough context about the broader refugee experience for the reader to judge how prevalent the alleged problems were.

And on and on it goes, closing with a statement that even the translator the Globe relied on shouldn’t have been used, because that person’s participation “was arranged by the ex-employees who had brought the complaints to the Globe’s attention.”

None of this, though, adds up to much unless you can look up the original story. I have. Written by Globe staff reporter Raja Mishra beneath the headline “Rift Erupts over Agency’s Care of Refugees – Ex Workers Plan to File Complaints,” it begins with this:

MISHRA: Asha Mohamed’s life began on a Somalian corn farm. It ended, improbably, in Everett.

There, the mother of seven descended into dementia, living months in a urine-soaked apartment without medical care, caretakers and family members said. She died quietly last December in her late 50s or 60s – her family is unsure exactly how old she was – of stroke-related complications in a nursing home bed. Family members said they were barely able to visit her or even understand what ailed their matriarch. [Note: I’ve added dashes that appear to have been stripped out when this was uploaded. Perhaps they were parantheses in the original.]

Former employees of the organization that resettled Mohamed in Everett, the International Rescue Committee, said the nonprofit failed her and dozens of other Somali Bantu refugees in the Boston area, saving them from squalid African refugee camps only to deliver them into an isolating and impoverished existence here.

“She was a hard worker; she was kind,” said Asha Mohamed’s son, Abdi Sabtow, who lives with his family in Everett. “IRC is the worst. They never helped like they promised.”

If you would like to judge for yourself, you’ll find the complete story in the Globe’s archives here. If you’re not a subscriber and don’t want to pay, you should also be able to find it online if you have a library card. The Boston Public Library and all the suburban library groups offer free access to newspaper databases.

Often, free links recent newspaper stories can be tracked down with just the right Google search – but not this one. Too bad. The Globe deserves some credit for setting the record straight. But without ready access to the original article, the goal of transparency is only half met.

It sounds like there’s a decent chance that art maven William Koch will not sue the Boston Globe after the Globe published an “Editor’s Note” yesterday offering some mitigating facts that had not found their way into Alex Beam’s Aug. 9 column. Mark Jurkowitz has the details. My earlier item is here. You can find all the links you need in those two items.

“The future of media will be nothing like what we think. Just consider what we thought the future would look like 15 years ago.” I’ve uploaded a copy of the remarks I delivered last night at the Ford Hall Forum, at Northeastern University, in a joint appearance with PressThink blogger Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University. Please have a look.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why the Boston Globe has failed to follow up on columnist Scot Lehigh’s revelation that WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) talk-show host Jay Severin has falsely claimed to have won a Pulitzer Prize – especially since Severin hasn’t appeared on the air since Lehigh’s column ran last Friday.

Today the Boston Herald’s Inside Track takes a stab at trying to figure out what’s going on. The Tracksters attribute Severin’s disappearance to his recently signed syndication deal with Infinity Broadcasting, which (God help us) could lead to his taking the late David Brudnoy’s old slot on WBZ Radio (AM 1030). (The syndication deal was first reported by the Globe’s Geoff Edgers, also last Friday.)

I suspect the Tracksters are right: a phony prize or two just isn’t a big deal in the world of political talk (just ask Bill O’Reilly), but signing a contract with a competitor is war. Still, it’s strange that the Track makes absolutely no mention of the Pulitzer story.

These are not the best of times for either of Boston’s daily newspapers. Three stories in today’s Boston Herald tell the tale:

– Following Monday’s announcement that the New York Times Co. will reduce its workforce – a move that will cost the Boston Globe 35 newsroom positions – the Herald’s Jay Fitzgerald reports that Globe union members are mad as hell. Not surprisingly, union president Dan Totten reserves some venom for James “King” Kilts, the mogul who sold locally owned Gillette down the river to Procter & Gamble. Kilts was named to the Times Co. board several months ago.

– The Herald’s Greg Gatlin indulges (link now fixed, thanks to Media Nation reader SMM) in some speculation about the future of Globe publisher Richard Gilman. Gatlin also dredges up a hardy perennial: the notion that the paper will cut costs by running material from the New York Times.

There are really two issues here. The first is that the Globe might use Times stories instead of material it currently buys from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. That might enable the Globe to save money, but it wouldn’t necessarily represent a downsizing of the paper’s ambitions.

The second, more serious issue is whether the Globe might substitute Times coverage for some of its own reporting on national and world affairs. This would be the big one, and would cement even further the idea that the Globe is just a satellite of the Times.

My guess: the first might happen on at least a selective basis (the Globe has occasionally published Times photos for the past few years), but the second won’t, at least not yet. What the pessimists overlook is that the Globe is one of the Times Co.’s most valuable properties. Speculation to the contrary, Times Co. executives do not want to persuade readers to drop the Globe and take the Times instead, because they want the Globe to be financially successful.

On the other hand, speculation that the Times Co. will seek to squeeze the Globe as much as possible without actually driving readers away strikes me as being right on target. Unfortunately.

– Lest we forget, the Herald itself went through an incredibly painful round cost-cutting earlier this year, slashing its newsroom by about 40 employees, or 25 percent. And publisher Pat Purcell is still pushing to bolster his revenues by any means necessary. Today, in a non-bylined piece, the paper tries to put the best face on the fact that tabloid is starting to run page-one ads. The forced-cutesy lead:

HERALD: Future trivia question: Which advertiser was the first to land an ad on the Boston Herald’s front page? Answer: Sovereign Bank.

The story notes that such papers as the Times and USA Today have run page-one ads.

The Herald ad – a red strip across the bottom teasing a bigger ad on page three – is fairly unobtrusive. Nor do I think it takes away from the paper’s image or credibility. I’d go so far as to say it’s acceptable for paper as economically challenged as the Herald. But publishing ads on the front still falls into the category of Things You Don’t Really Want to Do.

To read the Boston Globe’s account of cutbacks announced by the New York Times Co. yesterday – including 35 positions to be eliminated in the Globe newsroom – you’d think that newspaper analyst John Morton believes they are the inevitable consequence of rising costs and a softening economy. The Globe’s Christopher Rowland writes:

ROWLAND: US newspapers have been taking a beating on the price of newsprint, which has been rising 10 to 15 percent a year with another price increase due to take effect Oct. 1, said industry analyst John Morton, president of Morton Research Inc., of Silver Spring, Md.

“That, combined with advertising revenue not keeping pace with inflation, puts a profit squeeze on companies, and one of the ways you can alleviate that is laying off people,” he said.

But wait. In an article published by the Globe’s corporate big brother, the New York Times, Morton sounds like a fire-breathing populist, ready to lead the oppressed workers in a round of “Solidarity Forever.” Here’s how Katharine Seelye ends her story:

SEELYE: John Morton, a newspaper industry analyst, said that one of the many business and social trends working against newspapers was public ownership of newspaper companies.

“Wall Street appreciates cost-cutting and improving margins and increased profitability,” he said. “Those are the things that make them dance a jig at night. They put that kind of pressure on publicly owned companies, and newspapers are no more immune to that than anybody else. These cuts and layoffs are known as dancing to Wall Street’s tune.”

Whoa! I like that John Morton. Hold on, though. Because Frank Ahrens, in the Washington Post, captures yet another side of Morton. To wit:

AHERNS: Newspaper analyst John Morton, however, said that all media are suffering from an ad slump and that yesterday’s cuts do not yet sound the death knell for newspapers.

“In terms of what it’s doing to editorial staff, these are not horrible cuts,” Morton said. “All three of these papers have fairly fat staffs compared with most other papers, if you take the rule of thumb of one editorial employee for every 1,000 [in] circulation.” [The three papers Morton’s referring to are the Globe, the Times and Knight Ridder’s Philadelphia Inquirer, which also announced major cuts yesterday.]

Gee, that certainly doesn’t sound like the guy who mocked owners for “dancing to Wall Street’s tune.”

So which John Morton should we believe? I’ve interviewed Morton a number of times over the years, and have always found him to be consistently hard-headed in his business assessments, yet also consistently concerned about the effects that corporate ownership is having on newspaper quality. What we’re seeing here are both Mortons, albeit with each paper choosing which Morton it likes better.

I understand the need to pick a quote and run with it, and I understand that Morton isn’t the story. But it’s too bad that the neither Globe, the Times nor the Post offered enough Morton so that readers could fully understand his views.

(A brief pause for credit: Although I’d come up with the Globe-Times comparison on my own, I hadn’t known about Morton’s remarks to the Post before my morning read of Romenesko.)

Locally, Jay Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald has a rock-’em, sock-’em take on downsizing at the tabloid’s Expressway rival, writing:

FITZGERALD: The planned bloodletting cast a pall over the Globe’s newsroom. Some staffers were grumbling about Morrissey Boulevard’s news operation taking a far bigger hit, from a percentage standpoint, than the Times’ newsroom. The Times Co. will slash about 250 jobs from its flagship New York Times broadsheet, 45 of them within the Times’ newsroom.

This past spring, the Globe covered in endless detail a huge downsizing at the Herald, which cost that paper a quarter of its newsroom jobs. (So did I, mainly on Media Log at BostonPhoenix.com.) Now it’s payback time at One Herald Square.

A final observation: The Globe’s recently unveiled Sidekick section must cost something, no? Given that the daily entertainment guide still has virtually no advertising in it, wouldn’t it be a good idea to think about dumping it in order to save the jobs of a few people who cover actual news?

The Herald’s Inside Track goes after the Globe sports section today, claiming that the “Boring Broadsheet” favors the Red Sox over the three-time-champion Patriots because the Globe’s corporate owner, the New York Times Co., owns a share of the Sox.

“National Football League sources” are said to be upset. What prompted their dime-drop appears to be a complaint that Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan made about access to the Patriots during practice.

Sullivan denies stinting on Pats coverage, telling the Tracksters, “I don’t see how fans of either team could feel shortchanged.”

But Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media Watch thinks there’s more than a little something to the Track’s complaint.

ALLEN: Even the Inside Track is jumping on the Globe for their lack of Patriots coverage, and they report about Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan calling up the NFL to whine about access to the team during practice. As I mentioned in part II of my Globe Review last month, I thought that Sullivan had done some good things during his watch there, but lately he’s been taking a lot of hits over the paper’s Patriots coverage, and isn’t looking good for it. His adamant stand that the paper has the most Patriots coverage in the region rings false to anyone who reads through the papers on a daily basis. His failure to promise or even admit that they’ll try to do better continues to be a slap in the face to Patriots fans.

Here’s the direct link to Allen’s post today, although it wasn’t working as of this morning.

On July 29, the Phoenix’s Ian Donnis took a close look at the relationship between the Sox and the Globe.

Media Nation offers three not-very-original observations:

1. Baseball is more interesting than football.

2. Boston is and always will be a baseball town.

3. I’m a lot more concerned about how the Globe – and especially its editorial page – covers the Red Sox’ development plans in the Fenway neighborhood than I am about measuring column-inches devoted to the Sox and the Pats. That’s where the real conflict-of-interest potential is.

From Alex Beam’s Boston Globe piece on the new luxury magazine Boston Common and its owner, Jason Binn:

BINN: When Madeleine Albright talks about luxury lifestyle, that’s the kind of story an editor wants.

Madeleine Albright?

Please join New York University journalism professor and blogger extraordinaire Jay Rosen and me this Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. for a Ford Hall Forum program on “Who’s Talking?”, a 90-minute discussion about blogging and journalism. The moderator will be Stephen Burgard, director of Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

The program will be held in the Raytheon Amphitheater, which is on the first floor of the Egan Center on the Northeastern campus. Here is a campus map. The program is free and open to the public.

Day One, and I’m already peeved about TimesSelect, the disaster-in-the-making by which the New York Times will charge if you want to keep reading its columnists and a few other “premium” features.

I’m a paid-up, bona fide subscriber to the print edition, which right now is sitting on our kitchen table 25 miles away. So I tried entering the username and password I’ve had for NYTimes.com since those dark, long-ago days when I was running Lynx on a Unix account. No go: “Your ID must be either the e-mail address you used to register at NYTimes.com or your Home Delivery user ID, not your NYTimes.com member ID.”

So I tried to figure out how to get my “Home Delivery user ID,” only to be told it was either (1) the credit-card number we use to pay for our subscription (we pay by check); or (2) a number that’s on the delivery label. Our paper doesn’t come with a delivery label, so I’m not sure what that’s about. My last remaining option is to dig out an old bill. Which, of course, is 25 miles away.

Fie! Fie!