Author: Dan Kennedy

Disney’s role in fueling middle-class resentment was Media Nation’s top post of 2025

Photo (cc) 2010 by Myrna Litt.

1. How two-tier Disney is helping to fuel the rise of middle-class anger and resentment (Sept. 2). Taking your family to a Disney resort has always been an expensive proposition — but at least you had the sense that everyone was in it together. Not anymore. As The New York Times reported, Disney in recent years has embraced a two-tier system that shuts out middle-class and working-class families. You have to pay massive fees to avoid standing in line for top attractions. You have to stay at an expensive Disney hotel or other Disney-owned accommodations even to get access to the best deals. Our once-common culture has split in two, one for the shrinking middle class, the other for the rich.

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2. The Associated Press tells its book critics that it’s ending weekly reviews (Aug. 8). It’s always humbling when I republish a memo and attract more traffic than my own deathless prose is able to generate. Anyway, a Media Nation correspondent passed along a depressing note from Anthony McCartney, the AP’s global entertainment and lifestyle editor, that began:

I am writing to share that the AP is ending its weekly book reviews, beginning Sept. 1. This was a difficult decision but one made after a thorough review of AP’s story offerings and what is being most read on our website and mobile apps as well as what customers are using. Unfortunately, the audience for book reviews is relatively low and we can no longer sustain the time it takes to plan, coordinate, write and edit reviews. AP will continue covering books as stories, but at the moment those will handled exclusively by staffers.

3. Renée Graham quits Globe editorial board over Charlie Kirk editorial but will remain as a columnist (Sept. 18). The shocking public murder of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk prompted some disingenuous commentary from observers who should have known better — including The Boston Globe’s editorial board, which ran a piece whose headline initially read “We need more Charlie Kirks.” The editorial intoned that “his weapon of choice was always words,” making no reference to his doxxing of left-wing academics, leading to harassment and death threats. That prompted Renée Graham to quit the editorial board in protest. Fortunately for those of us who value her voice, she has continued writing her column and her newsletter.

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Presenting this fall’s final projects by my Northeastern opinion journalism students

For a larger view, please click here.

This past semester I had a small but mighty class of students who took my course POV: The Art and Craft of Opinion Journalism. They wrote personal essays, reviews, op-ed-style pieces and, as their final project, an enterprise story encompassing research, interviews and a strong point of view. Here is a presentation of their work. They did a great job.

Linda Henry aims to deepen the Globe’s neighborhood coverage and expand in New England

Photo (cc) 2018 by Dan Kennedy.

You can count on one hand the number of independently owned large metro newspapers that are doing reasonably well and continuing to grow. Among them is The Boston Globe. Today’s print edition features a full-page ad consisting of a year-end message from Linda Henry, the CEO of Boston Globe Media, in which she lays out a few intriguing hints about what’s to come in 2026. (I have not seen it online or in an email, at least not yet.)

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Among the goals she lays out for the coming year: “Deepening coverage of Boston’s neighborhoods and expanding our presence across New England.” More city coverage would certainly be welcome. But I’m especially interested in her focus on New England.

The Globe’s Rhode Island and New Hampshire coverage have been valuable additions to the paper’s mission. Its reporting on the recent mass shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, was not only comprehensive and well-executed, but it also helped inform its coverage of what turned out to be a related killing in Brookline. So what’s next?

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Founding editor Marc Levy has left Cambridge Day, the news outlet he launched in 2009

Cambridge Day’s founding editor, Marc Levy, has left the newspaper. His departure was announced in an email to Day contributors from editor-in-chief Michael Fitzgerald that was forwarded to me by a trusted source and confirmed by Fitzgerald. He writes:

Some changes are easier to share than others. I’m sad to say Cambridge Day’s founder, Marc Levy, has resigned effective immediately. Since re-starting the publication in 2009, Marc’s passion for community journalism has been unparalleled. He has been tireless, creative, resourceful, and dedicated to telling the stories of Cambridge and Somerville.

I know many of you, perhaps all of you, began contributing to the publication because of your admiration and respect for him and the publication he worked so hard to build. We are all part of his legacy. There’s still a great deal to do to achieve his goal in a sustainable way and I hope you will continue to work with me to make it so.

Levy has been a vital force for local journalism in Cambridge for 16 years, reporting on the city as the Gannett-owned Cambridge Chronicle cut back on its coverage and, at some point during the past several years, shut down almost unnoticed. The Day has also served as an occasional outlet for our Northeastern journalism students.

But it was always a bare-bones operation. That began to change in late 2024, when the Day — nominally a for-profit — was acquired by a nonprofit organization called Cambridge News Inc. At the same time, according to the Day’s “About” page, the Cambridge Community Foundation set up a Local News Fund to provide some assistance to the paper.

The Day is a digital-and-print operation; Cambridge Day is the name of the website, while the print edition is known as The Week.

Fitzgerald, an experienced journalist whose most recent stop had been as editor-in-chief at Harvard Public Health, came on board as the Day’s top editor in September 2025, with Levy remaining on the masthead as well. Levy’s departure is not the only change that’s taken place. Recently Fitzgerald said the Day would cut back on governmental coverage in Somerville, explaining, “If we’re going to be Cambridge Day, we need to be doing a good job of covering as much of Cambridge as we can.”

Levy declined to comment when I contacted him Tuesday night. Fitzgerald told me by email: “I meant what I said in the note. I’m sad about his departure. He gave his all to keep journalism alive in Cambridge and Somerville, and we’re well-positioned to build on that foundation.”

Watch it while you can: Yashar Ali has posted a broadcast-quality version of that ‘60 Minutes’ report

Click on the image to watch “Inside CECOT.”

We have reached the let’s-hope-Canada-beams-in-news-that’s-being-censored-in-our-own-country stage of authoritarianism.

On Monday afternoon, the “60 Minutes” story on mostly Venezuelan detainees being sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador — canceled by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss — popped up on Canada’s Global TV app. It was taken down a short time later because of copyright issues, but it’s been showing up here and there on social media ever since. I’m hoping this broadcast-quality version, on Yashar Ali’s newsletter, The Reset, will stick around for a while.

As you’ll see, detainees, many of whom have not been accused of any crime other than being in the U.S. illegally, say there were subjected to beatings, torture and sexual abuse during their time in the CECOT prison. As for Weiss’ complaint that the story did not include any comment from the Trump regime, here’s what we hear toward the end of Sharyn Alfonsi’s report:

The Department of Homeland Security declined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador. The government there did not respond to our request.

We’ve been having a debate on Facebook over whether it’s fair to say that Weiss “canceled” the story given that she has said she wants to run it after it’s re-edited. I contend that it was canceled, not delayed, because it was scheduled to run on Sunday evening and it wasn’t. Also, Weiss has made it clear that if the story does run, it won’t be what you see here.

As Alfonsi said, to cancel the story for lack of White House comment even though they were given an opportunity to weigh in is to hand a “veto” to the very officials that “60 Minutes” was trying to hold to account. As I tell my students, you need to give people you’re reporting on a fair chance to respond — but you can’t let it drag on for so long that their silence is used to kill the story.

Jennifer Peter tells us about The Marshall Project, a nonprofit that covers criminal justice

Jennifer Peter

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Jennifer Peter, who was named editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project in September. The Marshall Project is a national nonprofit that covers issues related to criminal justice. She’s only the third editor in 10 years, replacing Susan Chira, a former New York Times editor. Peter started her career as a reporter, working for 12 years at newspapers in Idaho, Connecticut and Virginia before joining The Associated Press in Boston.

From the AP, she moved to the Globe, where she rose quickly through the ranks. She was regional editor, politics editor and city editor. As metro editor, she oversaw the Globe’s Boston Marathon bombing coverage, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. In 2018 she was promoted to managing editor, the number-two position in the newsroom. In our conversation, Peter tells us about The Marshall Project’s mission, including its foray into local news in Cleveland, St. Louis and Jackson, Mississippi.

A production note: I’m at Northeastern, but Ellen is beaming in from a studio at Brookline Interactive Group, which handles multimedia for the town of Brookline. BIG, as it is known locally, is also host to a class of Brandeis students who travel to Brookline to report and write stories for Brookline.News, the nonprofit newsroom Ellen is part of. BIG provides audio and video of Brookline civic meetings and also works with Brookline public school students on multimedia projects.  

I’ve got a Quick Take about yet another newspaper that’s gone out of business, although this one has an unusual twist. The devastating wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles area last January have claimed the Palisadian-Post, a twice-monthly newspaper that had been publishing since 1928. The problem is that many of the residents were forced to leave, and though rebuilding is under way, the community hasn’t come close to recovering.

One of my Northeastern students, Abbie O’Connor, is from the Pacific Palisades — her home is still standing. She wrote several times in my opinion journalism class during the semester about how the Palisades were affected by the fire. Among other things, an enormous number of Palisades residents moved to Manhattan Beach, re-creating the sense of community they had in their former homes.

Home in Altadena, still unbuilt earlier this month. Photo © 2025 by Abbie O’Connor.

Abbie’s final project was an enterprise story on racial and economic disparities in the rebuilding resources that are being made available to the mostly white, affluent residents of the Pacific Palisades and the lower-income, historically Black community of Altadena.

Ellen’s Quick Take is about Brian McGrory returning as editor of The Boston Globe in January. McGrory left in early 2023 to become chair of Boston University’s journalism department. He’ll replace Nancy Barnes, who announced earlier this month that she’d be stepping aside. Although McGrory’s departure from BU is not being described as a leave of absence, he says he expects to return to his academic post no later than 2027.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Two weeks after a hopeful sign from ‘60 Minutes,’ Bari Weiss cancels a story and trashes the brand

Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” interviews Marjorie Taylor Greene. Photo via Paramount.

A Dec. 7 “60 Minutes” interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene by veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl raised hopes that new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and her corporate overlords, Larry and David Ellison, wouldn’t destroy the legendary news program. Greene criticized Donald Trump, and Trump in turn complained that “60 Minutes” “has actually gotten WORSE!” since the Ellisons acquired CBS earlier this year, as CNN media reporter Brian Stelter writes.

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Well, hope springs eternal — or, in this case, two weeks. Because now the worst has happened. On Sunday, “60 Minutes” postponed a heavily promoted story about the Trump regime’s cruel practice of sending Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they have reportedly been mistreated and even tortured.

Liam Scott and Scott Nover report for The Washington Post that Weiss decreed that the story be postponed in order to give the White House another opportunity to respond, even though “60 Minutes” had already contacted administration officials in an unsuccessful effort to obtain comment.

CBS News said in a statement that the story “needed additional reporting.” But “60 Minutes” reporter Sharyn Alfonsi said in an internal email that Weiss was giving the White House a “kill switch,” explaining, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.” The Post story continues:

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

Weiss, lest you have forgotten, is a right-leaning opinion journalist with no experience in straight-news reporting or in television journalism.

Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum writes that CBS News announced the story would be pulled just three hours before airtime. Grynbaum also reminds us that the Ellisons’ path toward purchasing CBS was greased by the previous owner’s decision to settle a bogus lawsuit brought by Trump over the entirely routine manner in which “60 Minutes” edited an interview with Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election. Trump got $16 million from that corrupt transaction. And how’s this for condescension? Grynbaum writes:

One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.

Now the Ellisons are seeking White House assistance in derailing Netflix’ pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. There are lots of reasons having to do with antitrust law that WBD shouldn’t end up in the hands of either Netflix or Paramount Skydance, as the Ellisons’ company is known. But Netflix, at least, plans to spin off CNN from WBD, giving the news outlet a fighting chance of remaining an independent voice.

An Ellison acquisition, on the other hand, would most likely put Weiss in charge of CNN.

David Brooks tells the ‘PBS NewsHour’ that he didn’t know Jeffrey Epstein was in the room

The last thing I want to be doing on the Saturday morning before Christmas is writing about David Brooks’ undisclosed (by him) encounter with the notorious pedophile and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. But it’s in the news, and there are plenty of people, especially on social media, who are demanding that the New York Times columnist and “PBS NewsHour” commentator be held accountable.

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So let’s review the facts that have come out. As Jeremy Barr reported in The Guardian, photos released on Thursday by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reveal that Brooks attended a lunch or dinner where Epstein was present in 2011. Unlike photos of many other powerful men that have been released recently, there are no photos of Brooks actually with Epstein.

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Sign of the times: A witness in the Brown mass-shooting case went to Reddit first, then the police

Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez, in white shirt, before the start of Thursday’s press conference. Photo (cc) 2025 by Alexander Castro / Rhode Island Current.

With the suspect now dead in the mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor in Brookline, I want to call your attention to a very strange aspect of the investigation: the role of a witness who posted what he knew on Reddit before finally going to the police. The Boston Globe reports (sub. req.):

On Wednesday, officials released several images of someone they said was “in proximity of the person of interest” in the shooting. They had previously released photos and video surveillance of the person of interest himself, though none that included a clear image of his face. Video showed the two appearing to approach each other near the corner of Cooke and Benevolent streets, before the suspect turned around and veered the other way.

In an arrest affidavit released Thursday night, officials identified the witness as a man they identified only as John. They said he later led investigators to the car. When they released his photos, investigators didn’t realize John had already posted on Reddit saying police should look into a man with a grey Nissan with Florida plates, who was acting suspiciously, the affidavit said.

The New York Times has an entire story devoted to the Reddit angle, and the emphasis is slightly different. Whereas the Globe makes it sound like investigators were led to John after they saw photos of him, the Times reports that John contacted police on his own — but not until the day after he had posted what he knew on Reddit:

“I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the Reddit user posted, according to an affidavit filed by the police in Providence, R.I.

That tip would later lead to a breakthrough in not only the search for the campus attacker but also the suspect in the murder of a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It also ended the dayslong manhunt that had put both the Brown and M.I.T. communities on edge.

A day after the Reddit post was made, the writer approached law enforcement officials and told them about his encounter with a suspicious man in Brown University’s Barus and Holley building.

The information “blew this case right open,” Attorney General Peter F. Neronha of Rhode Island said in a news conference Thursday.

I don’t want to call John irresponsible, because he did come forward and provide information that proved vital to solving the case. But this is the way too many of us think these days. Rather than immediately alerting law enforcement about what he’d seen, he posted to social media. Perhaps he was assuming that the police should already know what he knew — oblivious to the reality that law enforcement in such a situation depends on tips from members of the public.

Moreover, by posting what he’d seen on Reddit, John might have harmed the investigation by tipping off the suspect, identified by authorities as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who had once attended Brown and who may have known MIT Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro when they took classes together in Portugal.

Law enforcement seems confident that Neves Valente, who died by suicide in Salem, New Hampshire, was the shooter. His victims were Professor Loureiro and Brown students MukhammadAziz Umurzakov and Ella Cook. The focus should now be on them and their families and friends.

Correction: I initially reported that the suspect’s body was found in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.