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.
I tried something new with my iPhone camera during an (almost) 7-mile hike through the Middlesex Fells this afternoon — I used the Pano setting to take a panoramic view of the Middle Reservoir while standing on the south shore. I really like the results.
If you haven’t used Pano, you pan across a scene as if you were shooting video, and it stitches together a series of images into one seamless whole. Here is the original, non-Pano shot:
Click on image for a larger high-resolution view.
Here is the unedited Pano version:
Click on image for a larger high-resolution view.
And, finally, here’s the Pano version with some cropping.
Is Jonathan Capehart the most visible journalist to quit The Washington Post? With his roles on the “PBS NewsHour” and MSNBC, he is ubiquitous. And now he’s taken the buyout rather than stick around for whatever forced-optimism libertarian hell new opinion editor Adam O’Neal imposes on the opinion section that owner Jeff Bezos has destroyed.
It seems like it was only a matter of time once Bezos decided to take a wrecking ball to the operation, starting with his decision to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris right before the election. That was followed by other embarrassments, including the resignations of cartoonist Ann Telnaes after a drawing that mocked Bezos was nixed, of longtime Post stalwart Ruth Marcus and, finally, of opinion editor David Shipley after Bezos announced the section would be reoriented toward cheerleading for free-market capitalism.
Through it all, Capehart stuck with it, no doubt biding his time until the moment was right. There was one especially memorable moment when, during their weekly segment on the “NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks tore into Bezos while Capehart just sat there with a big grin. It was obviously rehearsed, with Brooks waiting until the end so that Capehart wouldn’t be put in the awkward position of having to respond. I wish I could find the segment, but I can’t remember when it happened.
I suspect Capehart will be plenty busy with his non-Post jobs, but I hope his writing pops up in another publication.
There is so much awful Trump-related news to make sense of today that I’m going to offer a roundup, though I doubt I’ll attain the eloquence or profundity of Heather Cox Richardson. I’ll begin with two stories that are puzzling once you look beneath the surface — CBS’s decision to cancel Stephen Colbert’s late-night show and The Wall Street Journal’s report on Trump’s pervy birthday greetings to Jeffrey Epstein.
First, Colbert. Late-night television isn’t what it used to be, though Colbert’s program was the highest-rated among the genre. Like most people, I never watched, and what little I did see of it was through YouTube clips. Still, it’s only natural to think that he was canceled because CBS’s owner, Paramount, which recently gifted Trump $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit, is trying to win favor as it seeks regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance. Colbert is an outspoken Trump critic, and he hasn’t been shy about taking on his corporate overlords, either.
If that’s the case, it seems odd to announce that Colbert’s show will run through next May. That makes no sense if the idea is to appease Trump. If it’s a contractual matter, Colbert could be paid to stay home. Now he’s free to unload on Trump and network executives every night without having to worry about whether his show will be renewed. And for those who argue that Colbert is on a short leash: No, he isn’t. I suspect we’ll learn more.
Now for that Wall Street Journal story (gift link). I don’t want to minimize the importance of Trump’s demented message and R-rated drawings that he gave to Epstein for his 50th birthday. There was a time in public life when it would have — and should have — been a major scandal. But I didn’t think the article quite lived up to its advance billing. Before publication, media reporter Oliver Darcy called it “potentially explosive” and wrote about Trump’s personal efforts to kill it, but I’m not sure that it is.
