I’m heading out on vacation, though I may post from the road if there’s any big news to catch up on. Meanwhile, here are three morning reads, including gift links for those of you who aren’t subscribers to The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.
The Journal has published a riveting behind-the-scenes look at the negotiations that led to the release of journalist Evan Gershkovich and others, including U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. Be sure to read the last paragraph.
Back before he came under the scrutiny of Scotland Yard, Will Lewis was hired as publisher of The Washington Post because of his supposed skill in attracting a younger audience. Now The New York Times reports that his side hustle aimed at doing just that is an embarrassing failure.
Norah O’Donnell, who’s stepping down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” later this year, will be replaced by two anchors: John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, who will be based in New York. Margaret Brennan, in Washington, will be a third anchor, sort of. The Hollywood Reporter has the story.
Mike Shapiro launched his first publication in New Providence, N.J., which is now the headquarters for TAPinto and the Hyperlocal News Network. 2012 public domain photo by Tomwsulcer.
If local news is going to thrive, we need a variety of business models, especially on the for-profit side. Yet, at least among news start-ups with robust reporting capacity, nonprofits are becoming more and more dominant. Indeed, three of the for-profits that Ellen Clegg and I write about in our book, “What Works in Community News,” The Colorado Sun, The Mendocino Voice and Santa Clara Local, have converted to nonprofit status in the past year.
One unique exception is TAPinto, a New Jersey-based company with about 100 franchises. The way it works is that local entrepreneurs start a TAPinto in their community and are able to — well, tap into the mothership’s tech, advertising and training resources. It’s not bad for an out-of-the-box solution, but there are limitations.
Recently, though, TAPinto chief executive Mike Shapiro launched a related business called the Hyperlocal News Network. It’s similar to TAPinto except that publishers have more flexibility to establish their own identity. Sophie Culpepper writes about Shapiro’s new venture for Nieman Lab, reporting that Shapiro told her by email:
There are … hundreds, if not thousands, of existing publishers who are really struggling with their digital presence and would benefit from our technology and back office services, yet want to keep their own branding. Our license model enables them to do just that.
Shapiro spoke with Ellen and me on our “What Works” podcast in April 2022. You can listen to it and read an AI-generated transcript by clicking here. We also wrote about TAPinto in our book, and I’m providing an excerpt below.
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TAPinto is a network of nearly a hundred hyperlocal websites, most of them in New Jersey, that employs an innovative franchise model. The network was begun in 2009 by Michael Shapiro, who back then was a New York lawyer looking to spend more time with his young son after he underwent open-heart surgery (he made a full recovery). Shapiro started a website that he called The Alternative Press in New Providence, where he lived, because he was dissatisfied by the lack of coverage in the local newspaper. As Shapiro tells it, he soon heard from residents of other communities asking him to expand, and a network was born. (The “TAP” in TAPinto stands for “The Alternative Press.”)
Although Shapiro is not a journalist, he said in an interview and on the “What Works” podcast that he takes journalistic objectivity seriously and requires his franchisees to adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. The way it works is this. For a fee of $5,000, a franchisee can set up shop with what is essentially a turnkey operation: a website based on a ready-made template with backend and technical support, training, and everything else they might need to begin covering local news and selling advertising. Publishers keep 80 percent of whatever ad revenues they’re able to earn, with 20 percent going to TAPinto. Advertising can also be shared across sites, and some editorial content is shared as well. Publishers are required to produce at least one original piece of journalism each day; stories typically cover such topics as neighborhood development issues, feel-good features, and public-safety news. A common arrangement, Shapiro said, is for a businessperson to become a franchisee and employ a journalist either full- or part-time.
Access to TAPinto sites is free, and Shapiro said the $5,000 franchise fee is far lower than what it would cost for a local media entrepreneur to get started on their own. “I think we’ve been able to demonstrate that you can have profitable local news sites that are 100 percent advertising-based, and that, to me, is really important,” he said. “People who are economically distressed shouldn’t have to choose between putting food on the table or buying medicine and finding out what’s going on in their town. So that’s very fundamental to us. And it’s also fundamental on the ownership side. In a lot of these situations, you have to be wealthy to start an online local news site if you want to have the technology and the functionality and stuff we offer.”
Observers we spoke with gave Shapiro generally high marks but said the sites tend to be of uneven quality, which is not surprising given the inexperience of many of the franchisees. Nevertheless, TAPinto represents a genuinely new way of providing local news and bears watching — particularly if Shapiro is able to build out his network nationally or inspires imitators.
There’s some very good news out of Russia this morning, as three U.S. citizens who have been wrongly imprisoned by Vladimir Putin’s government —Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva — are reportedly on the verge of being released.
Oddly, the Journal, which has been fierce in keeping the spotlight on Gershkovich, does not yet have the report. But according to BBC News, the three are part of a larger swap involving “at least 24 prisoners,” including eight Russians who will be returned to Moscow.
Authorities in the U.K. have begun a “special equiry” — I believe it’s fair to call it a criminal investigation — into accusations that Washington Post publisher Will Lewis ordered the destruction of 30 million emails related to the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal and then tried to cover it up. News of the investigation was broken by The Guardian.
After several weeks of thinking about it, I’ve switched to a new theme for Media Nation. (“Theme” is WordPress-speak for “design.”) I’m still on the lookout for something better, but for now I think this will be an improvement. Why did I do this?
• My previous theme, Lovecraft, struck me as a bit too artsy for what I was looking for. The new theme, Twenty Sixteen, is more straightforward and newsier.
• As one of WordPress’ official themes, Twenty Sixteen receives regular maintenance updates. Lovecraft hadn’t been updated since 2022.
• With Lovecraft, you couldn’t see a link for commenting unless you clicked through to the individual post. As a result, I had to add “Leave a comment | Read comments” by hand to each post. Twenty Sixteen not only handles that automatically, but it gives you a count of how many people have commented. That way, you’ll know whether it’s worth clicking or not.
• Change is good.
Let me know what you think. If you have any suggestions for a better theme, I’m all ears.
Washington Post publisher Will Lewis. 2019 public domain photo by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Few media executives have benefited from the political chaos of the past month more than Washington Post publisher Will Lewis.
Before the presidential debate of June 27, Lewis seemed to be hanging by a thread over revelations that he was involved in covering up the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids back in 2011. He’s also come under fire for approving payments to a source while he was working at another paper and, more recently, demanding that journalists — including Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who later left the paper — not report on his transgressions.
Since the debate, which led to weeks of frenzied coverage regarding President Biden’s age and fitness, his subsequent withdrawal from the race, and the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris (not to mention an assassination attempt against Donald Trump), Lewis’ fate had been forgotten.
Until now.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, who earlier revealed that Lewis promised him an exclusive interview if Folkenflik would give Lewis’ ethical problems a good leaving-alone, reported on Tuesday that new documents show Lewis has been accused of making up a story 13 years ago “to shield evidence from police of possible crimes at Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids.” The accusations were leveled as part of a lawsuit brought against Murdoch’s tabloids by Prince Harry and other prominent political figures in the U.K.
Folkenflik’s story is filled with names and details, but essentially Lewis is accused of faking a security threat “to justify the deletion of millions of emails dating from the start of 2008 through the end of 2010.” Here’s the heart of Folkenflik’s report:
In July 2011, when police first learned of the deleted emails, Lewis explained that Murdoch’s company was compelled to get rid of them because of a tip that he and a senior executive received nearly six months earlier: an “outside source” told them that former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was conspiring with a News UK employee and another person to steal the emails of the CEO. That unnamed person was said to be Tom Watson, then a leading member of parliament and critic of the Murdochs. The IT person was later alleged to have been a former News UK staffer.
Brown has denounced the claim as false and outrageous. He’s asked Scotland Yard for a criminal investigation of the episode involving Lewis. Watson, who is among scores of litigants suing News UK alleging illegal invasions of privacy, has denied it. In court, the lead trial attorney for Watson, Harry and the others called the story “a ruse.”
Writing in The Guardian, Caroline Davies goes into detail about minutes of a meeting between police officials and Lewis in July 2011. In the excerpt below, “Rebekah” is Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of Murdoch’s News International company, and “BCL” is the law firm that was representing Murdoch’s interests. Here’s what Lewis reportedly told detectives:
We got a warning from a source that a current member of staff had got access to Rebekah’s emails and had passed them to Tom Watson MP.
This came to Rebekah. I was asked to meet the source. I will consult with BCL as to whether I can tell you the identity of the source. The source repeated the threat. Then the source came back and said it was a former member of staff and the emails had definitely been passed and that it was controlled by Gordon Brown. This added to our anxieties. We took steps to try and be more specific around her emails.
Folkenflik and Davies report that Lewis is also accused of leaking an audio recording aimed at harming a critic of Murdoch’s proposed acquisition of the Sky broadcasting service. That acquisition was nixed after the phone-hacking schedule came to light.
Lewis has denied any wrongdoing, though he would not speak with Folkenflik.
The Post, along with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, is one of our three great daily newspapers. We all have an interest in its surviving and thriving after several years of losing circulation and money. It’s been clear for some time that Lewis lacks the ethical compass needed to lead the Post.
Owner Jeff Bezos might have hoped that Lewis had survived the worst of it. But as the most recent developments show, this saga is not done playing out. It’s hard to see how it will end well for Lewis.
We watched Kamala Harris’ speech in Atlanta on YouTube, and it was extraordinary — her pitch-perfect message casting liberalism as patriotism, her taunting of Donald Trump, and the sheer joy she brought to the proceedings. I was impressed with her body language and comfort level as well. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this for a long time, and I just hope it can continue.
Gin Dumcius of CommonWealth Beacon reports on a ludicrous custom: legislators offering amendments to bills and then quickly withdrawing them, apparently for the sole purpose of drawing attention to a pet cause.
The New York Times has been doing tremendous work on the failures of the Secret Service and local law enforcement that led to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13. The latest (free link) shows that officials had multiple warning signs that should have led them to shut down the rally before Trump ever took the stage. It was truly a failure of epic proportions.
Last week the Times published a visual investigation with similar conclusions: the shooter had been spotted and seemed suspicious enough to have attracted the notice of security officers. They lost track of him. And they allowed the rally to go ahead, leading to the death of a retired firefighter and serious injury to two other attendees.
The idea behind having a weekly newsletter for paid supporters is to offer something extra. Today, though, I thought I would unlock my most recent newsletter so that you can see what you’ll get if you join for $5 a month. Every Thursday I send out a collection of commentary, photography, a round-up of the week’s posts and a song. I hope you’ll consider joining. To become a paid supporter, just click here.
