On this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for my family, my friends, my community and my good health. I wish all of you the blessings of the day.
Author: Dan Kennedy
Soon-Shiong tries (and fails) to bully Oliver Darcy; plus, Israel and the press, and prison for a harasser
Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, in an interview with Oliver Darcy on Tuesday, comes across as an entitled bully who wields disingenuous hyperliteralism as a weapon. The billionaire medical-device entrepreneur answered Darcy’s entirely reasonable questions with absurd variations on the theme of How do you know that?
Example: Soon-Shiong has asked Trump-friendly CNN talking head Scott Jennings to serve on the new editorial board he’s assembling after killing an endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election. In response to Darcy’s asking about the wisdom of naming a truth-averse Trump defender to the board, Soon-Shiong replied:
Scott Jennings — you just said his job is to defend Donald Trump. Did you find that in his job description with CNN? I don’t know if you know that as a fact. I love to work with facts. So when you make that statement, just reflect on that. You just made that statement. Did you make that statement based on having Scott Jennings’ employment agreement with CNN?
Then there was this:
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, believes it is an “opinion,” not a matter of fact, that Donald Trump lies at a higher rate than other politicians.
“A lot of politicians lie a lot,” Soon-Shiong declared to me on the phone Tuesday evening, pushing back against the assertion that Trump is an abnormality in American politics.
As the Pulitzer Prize-winning project PolitiFact put it earlier this year: “It’s not unusual for politicians of both parties to mislead, exaggerate or make stuff up. But American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy.”
Then again, Soon-Shiong’s assertions were not meant as genuine answers. They weren’t even meant to obfuscate. Rather, they were intended to establish dominance over Darcy, an independent media reporter. The pattern is clear: Darcy asks a legitimate question; Soon-Shiong responds in a way that’s intended to belittle Darcy; and then Darcy has to choose between pushing back or moving on.
Soon-Shiong has proved to be a mixed blessing for the LA Times since buying it in 2018. At various times he’s both expanded and cut the newsroom, although even the cuts haven’t been as devastating as a corporate chain owner might impose.
But his respected executive editor, Kevin Merida, quit earlier this year amid reports that Soon-Shiong was interfering in news coverage on behalf of a rich friend (or, if you will, a rich friend’s dog). Then he killed the editorial board’s Harris endorsement. That was within his rights as the owner — but he handled it so badly with his last-minute timing and conflicting statements about his reasoning that the decision was greeted with resignations and canceled subscriptions.
Of course, The Washington Post is also dealing with the consequences of a high-handed decision to cancel a Harris endorsement just before the election. But whereas it’s not clear where the Post under billionaire Jeff Bezos is headed, the fate of the LA Times seems depressingly obvious.
Bezos, at least, compiled a solid track record as the Post’s owner from the time he bought it in 2013 until maybe a couple of years ago, when he seemed to lose his way, his interest or both. Soon-Shiong has been erratic from the beginning, and it’s getting worse.
Netanyahu, Trump and the press
In a possible preview of coming attractions, Israel’s government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is cracking down on Haaretz, a liberal newspaper that has been highly critical of the way that Netanyahu has prosecuted the war against Hamas. As CNN reported earlier this week:
Israel’s cabinet unanimously voted to sanction the nation’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, on Sunday citing its critical coverage of the war following the October 7 Hamas attacks and comments by the outlet’s publisher calling for sanctions on senior government officials.
Haaretz, which is widely respected internationally, has provided critical coverage of Israel’s war following the Hamas attacks on October 7, including investigations into abuses allegedly committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as military operations expanded across Gaza and into neighboring Lebanon.
The sanctions include a ban on advertising in Haaretz and the cancellation of subscriptions for government employees and people who work for government-owned companies. Aluff Benn, Haaretz’s editor-in-chief, wrote a defiant piece for The Guardian that concludes:
[W]e will prevail over the recent Netanyahu assault, just as we prevailed over his predecessors’ anger and shunning. Haaretz will stand by its mission to report critically on the war and its dire consequences for all sides. The truth is sometimes hard to protect, but it should never be the casualty of war.
The sanctions represent a considerable ratcheting up of Netanyahu’s campaign against freedom of the press. Earlier this year, his government closed Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, which was bad enough. Punishing a domestic news organization takes that one step beyond.
Don’t think Donald Trump, a Netanyahu ally, isn’t watching.
Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 137 journalists have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, which began with Hamas’ horrific terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Another 74 have been imprisoned. The CPJ says:
The Israel-Gaza war has killed more journalists over the course of a year than in any other conflict CPJ has documented. Since the beginning of the war, CPJ has stood in solidarity with the affected journalists and their families. Palestinian journalists have continued reporting despite killings, injuries, and arbitrary detention at the hands of Israeli forces, none of whom have been held accountable.
Prison for harassment ‘ringleader’
The long-running saga of a frightening harassment campaign directed at New Hampshire Public Radio journalist Lauren Chooljian and others appears to nearing its end. The U.S. attorney’s office in Boston issued a press release Monday reporting that 46-year-old Eric Labarge, described as the “ringleader,” has been sentenced to 46 months in prison, fined and ordered to pay restitution.
The release quotes U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy:
Mr. Labarge was the ringleader of a targeted, terror campaign that caused the victims — journalists exercising the First Amendment rights and the families — incredible fear and emotional harm. Mr. Labarge’s terror campaign sent ripples of fear throughout the journalism community and violated the bedrock principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Although the release does not name Chooljian or the other victims, all the shocking details are otherwise included. Two other perpetrators were sentenced to prison earlier this year, and a fourth has pleaded guilty and is to be sentenced on Dec. 6.
You can learn more about the background of the case here.
How Scott Brodbeck built Local News Now in the DC suburbs into a for-profit powerhouse
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Scott Brodbeck, founder and CEO of Local News Now.
Many of the news entrepreneurs on our podcast lead nonprofits. Local News Now is a for-profit. Scott owns and operates local news websites in three big Northern Virginia suburbs: Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax County. He also provides technical and back-office support to three other news outlets.
I’ve got a Quick Take about a corporate newspaper owner that is making a big bet on growth at a major metropolitan newspaper. In Georgia, Cox Enterprises is making a $150 million bet that it can transform The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. If Cox is successful, it might serve as a model for other corporate newspaper owners.
Ellen has a Quick Take about a piece in the New Yorker by a writer named Nathan Heller. At first glance, it doesn’t seem to relate to local news. In fact, the title is pretty wonky: “The Republican Victory and the Ambience of Information.” But Heller has some smart observations about how information travels in a viral age.
You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
A collaboration in NJ foretold the GOP’s gains; plus, Linda McMahon, and more on public radio
A collaborative effort among local ethnic news outlets in New Jersey picked up signs of a shift to Republicans in advance of the Nov. 5 election at a time when it seemed unlikely that Black and Latino voters would abandon their traditionally strong support for Democrats.
The collaboration was overseen by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. Some of the stories were published in NJ Spotlight News, a statewide nonprofit that combines in-depth digital reporting and a daily newscast on public television. Ellen Clegg and I reported on both the center and Spotlight in our book, “What Works in Community News.”
The effort was highlighted recently by LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers in its newsletter. Stefanie Murray, who directs the center, told Chris Krewson, LION’s executive director, that “a few of the stories came out to be focused on how a Trump presidency was quite appealing to different ethnic groups in the state.”
For instance, a story co-bylined by reporters for Spotlight and Atlantic City Focus, a Black news organization, reported on Black Republicans “who said the Democratic Party has focused too much on social programs and government intervention without empowering individuals to achieve success on their own.”
Another Spotlight collaboration, with New Jersey Hispano, found that some Latinos were voting for Donald Trump because of the brutally high cost of housing, with one Peruvian immigrant, Gloria Candioti, saying she had not been able to buy after renting the same place for 20 years.
“I have thought about buying a property, but I have not been able to yet,” she said. “There is a lot of demand now, interest rates have gone up, house prices have been higher.”
Murray said Spotlight’s executive director, John Mooney, was concerned that reporting showing a shift toward Trump and other Republicans would not be borne out on Election Day. In fact, “they were spot on,” she observed, as Trump lost to Kamala Harris in New Jersey by just five points after trailing by double digits in 2016 and 2020.
Of course, forecasting the outcome of presidential elections is not the role of local news. What happened in New Jersey matters because what ethnic media and Spotlight found stemmed directly from dogged reporting on the concerns of Black and Latino voters. It turned out that was worth more than a bushel full of poll results.
An early Linda McMahon sighting
Way back in September 2010, I attended the fifth-anniversary party for the New Haven Independent, one of the original digital nonprofits. I wrote about the Independent in my 2013 book, “The Wired City,” and revisited it in “What Works in Community News.”
“It’s a powerful idea, which is that out-of-town corporations that could care less about us no longer own our news,” Independent founder Paul Bass told the crowd that night. “They no longer control our news. We the people control the news.”
The party was held in the offices of La Voz Hispana de Connecticut, the Spanish-language newspaper that is the Independent’s partner and landlord. Standing off to one side was Connecticut’s Republican Senate candidate in 2010 — Linda McMahon, the wife of professional wrestling mogul Vince McMahon and now Trump’s choice as secretary of education.
McMahon said very little. I was using a really crappy camera that night, but I did get one picture of her behind Bass that is sort of OK.
McMahon was handily defeated that November and then lost again two years later. Now, despite no obvious credentials, she will be joining the Cabinet, assuming she’s confirmed by the Senate.
More thoughts on public radio
Last week I flagged an article in Nieman Reports on the economic crisis facing public radio. In a response both to me and to Gabe Bullard, who wrote the Nieman story, Andrew Ramsammy argues that our prescription for reviving public radio — a renewed focus on local journalism — is not enough.
Ramsammy, the interim president of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, writes on LinkedIn:
The reality is this: it’s not about what’s delivering the news—it’s about who’s delivering it, and whether the audience connects with them. Public radio’s future depends on abandoning outdated models of institutional authority, embracing the personality-driven dynamics of today’s media landscape, and empowering the next generation of creators — not just as contributors, but as co-owners and collaborators in a shared vision of success. The days of legacy gatekeepers are over. It’s time to rethink everything.
Ramsammy’s essay is well worth reading in full.
The grim reaper comes for public radio. One possible solution? Doubling down on local journalism.
Something has gone wrong with public radio. After years of standing as the shining exception to an otherwise shrinking news landscape, multiple stations over the past year have implemented budget cuts and lowered their ambitions.
Locally, both WBUR and GBH News have laid off employees (most of GBH’s cuts were in its local TV programs). Elsewhere, operations such as WAMU in Washington, WNYC in New York and Colorado Public Radio have all been hit by a rapidly changing economic environment.
Pulling it all together is Gabe Bullard, a veteran of public media who has written an in-depth story for Nieman Reports arguing that the problem with public radio is that, well, it’s on the radio. The internet destroyed the distribution channels for newspapers. Radio seemed immune. But now, COVID-induced changes in commuting patterns plus the rise of podcasts mean that dramatically fewer people are listening to “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” while they’re in the cars. Bullard writes:
When COVID restrictions lifted, many listeners continued commuting, but they did it less — two days a week instead of five, for example. Others had grown used to new routines built around podcasts, and many were driving cars that defaulted to Bluetooth connections instead of FM radio. By 2023, the number of people listening to radio had dropped 21 percent from 2018. In 2024, Edison Research found that listeners spent more time with their phones than with the radio, and more time with on-demand audio (podcasts, audiobooks, playlists, YouTube) than linear (streaming or broadcast radio).
I am atypical, but when you put enough atypical cases together they can add up to a trend. I used to be a heavy public radio listener, spending long hours driving back and forth to Boston. After we moved closer to the city in 2015, I started taking public transportation and spent my commutes reading news on my phone rather than listening to the radio. We no longer even have a radio at home, although I do listen to GBH and WBUR (as well as podcasts and books) on my phone — but not nearly as much as I did when I was stuck in my car.
The upshot, Bullard writes, is that local stations and NPR have eliminated more than 400 jobs in the past two years, and sometimes they’ve gotten rid of digital ventures that seemed like the key to the future — such as WAMU’s decision to close down the DCist local website.
Fortunately, WAMU’s decision was something of an anomaly. Colorado Public Radio continues to operate Denverite, WHYY in Philadelphia still operates the mobile-first local website Billy Penn and Chicago Public Media’s acquisition of the Chicago Sun-Times has kept that city’s second daily newspaper alive. Which is a good thing, because, as Bullard argues, the key for public radio may be in offering more local journalism: “What stations can offer that’s different from podcasts is reporting from a listener’s own community.”
Not too many years ago, the economic outlook for public radio was so bright relative to newspapers that station operators were urged to look at their stations as though they were the No. 2 paper in their city — or, in some cases, the dominant news outlet. In 2023, Thomas Patterson, the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, wrote an essay titled “Can Local Public Radio Help Fill the News Gap Created by the Decline of Local Newspapers?” His answer: Yes, although new funding sources would need to be identified. (I wrote a response to Patterson for our What Works site.)
Now public radio is fighting for its economic life, and the return of Donald Trump to the White House may make the situation even worse. So what is the way forward? Truly local coverage is a non-starter because of the need to appeal to a wide audience. But doubling down on regional news (which is really what Bullard and Patterson are talking about) is a possible way out of its dilemma.
With journalism at major metropolitan newspapers disappearing behind paywalls, public radio’s advantage is that it’s freely available to everyone. Of course, it’s also heavily dependent on donations from foundations and ordinary listeners, and you should support your local station if you’re able. But as Bullard argues, the days of flipping the switch to national programming from NPR and watching the money roll in are over.
Independent news outlets track the latest ‘atmospheric river’ in Mendocino County
When Kate Maxwell and Adrian Fernandez Baumann launched The Mendocino Voice in 2016, they were hoping to bring some in-depth journalism to a county that was undercovered due to deep cuts at newspapers owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Indeed, both Maxwell and Baumann had left jobs at Alden papers before launching the Voice.
And yes, they were able to do some enterprising reporting. But they also found that they had to devote a considerable amount of attention to Northern California’s increasingly weird weather. When I visited in March 2020, they were keeping an eye on a wildfire that Baumann told me had sprung up five months before what was typically wildfire season because of the unusually dry conditions.
Well, now the Voice and other news outlets in Mendo County are keeping tabs on an atmospheric river that has dumped heavy rain on the region and that threatens to create yet another weather-related crisis. (Ellen Clegg and I wrote about the Voice in our book, “What Works in Community News.” Maxwell and Baumann have moved on, and this past June the nominally for-profit site was acquired by the nonprofit Bay City News Foundation.)
The Voice this morning is dominated by stories about flooding. The lead article reports that sand for sandbags is available for residents and businesses seeking to protect their property from rising waters. “Residents and businesses must bring their own bags and shovels, unless noted otherwise,” reporter Sarah Stierch writes.
Below that is a brief story about power being restored along the coast, and that’s followed by a lengthier update headlined “Storm expected to bring ‘life-threatening’ floods to Mendocino County.” All those stories, by the way, were written by Stierch, which shows how hard folks at hyperlocal news projects have to work.
The Voice is not the only independent news organization in Mendo County. MendoFever, started in 2020 by a local resident named Matt LaFever, leads with a story published on Wednesday headlined “First atmospheric river of the season set to soak Mendocino County.” The article offers some nuts-and-bolts guidance on how residents should prepare. Public radio station KZYX offers an in-depth story by Emily Cox and updates on road conditions and power outages.
Finally, Alden’s Ukiah Daily Journal leads with — yes — the ongoing count in the presidential election. The most recent story listed under “Latest Headlines” is a five-day-old article about an art exhibit. Scroll down, though, and you’ll find a story published Wednesday morning reporting that the National Weather Service was predicting floods emanating from the atmospheric river. It is behind a paywall.
Whenever there is a breaking story of national interest, it’s smart to check out what local news organizations are reporting. Like much of the country, Mendocino County has been all but abandoned by corporate journalism. Fortunately, independent outlets are doing a good job of keeping residents informed with “useful news,” as the Voice puts it.
Despite bipartisan support, a proposed federal shield law may fall by the wayside
Time is running out for the PRESS Act, which would protect journalists from being forced to identify their anonymous sources or turn over confidential documents. The measure is crucial to preventing the government from hauling journalists into court in order to identify whistleblowers who leak information.
Incredibly enough, the bill was passed unanimously by the House last January. But it has since stalled in the Senate, and you can be sure that it will die once that chamber flips from Democratic to Republican control and the press-hating Donald Trump returns to the White House.
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Earlier this week, Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, called for passage of the PRESS Act in an interview on the “PBS NewsHour.” She told co-anchor Geoff Bennett:
It’s really urgent that we pass this federal shield law.
So, some states have these federal protections, which essentially means that journalists’ information, journalists’ sources can’t be subpoenaed. Information from whistle-blowers can’t be subpoenaed. It’s really important that we have that federal shield law to protect journalists at the federal level.
We know that Trump is interested in going after whistleblowers, people who leak. And it’s absolutely essential that they are protected and that journalists’ sources are protected and that journalists are allowed to do their job.
As Ginsberg notes, 49 states have some form of shield protection for journalists either in the form of a law or a ruling in the state courts. The only exceptions are Wyoming and the federal government, although the shield protection in Massachusetts is so weak that a Boston magazine reporter may be forced to turn over audio of off-the-record interviews she conducted with murder suspect Karen Read. (The PRESS Act would not affect that, which shows why we need a state shield law as well.)
On Oct. 8, 107 news media and press freedom organizations sent letters to the Senate urging passage and to the House urging that it pass the bill again should it return to that body. Among the local signatories: Boston Globe Media, the Massachusetts Press Association and the New England Newspaper and Press Association. The letter says in part:
The PRESS Act is timely and critical. Absent a federal law, journalists’ protections in federal courts against the compelled disclosure by federal officials of confidential source information or sensitive newsgathering materials vary considerably by jurisdiction. And, in recent years, under administrations of both parties, the Justice Department and other federal agencies have sought sensitive records from or of journalists on multiple occasions. While the Department of Justice adopted new internal guidance in 2021 sharply limiting that practice at DOJ, the policy remains subject to change at the department’s discretion and other federal agencies are not bound by it.
According to the Society of Professional Journalists, the main obstacle at this point is Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. SPJ is urging supporters to write letters to Cornyn via his website, warning, “Time is running out. It is crucial that this bipartisan federal shield bill advances this week.”
Crucially, the PRESS Act would protect not just professional journalists but anyone engaged in acts of journalism. It’s also important to note that the act would not provide blanket protection — there are a few narrow exceptions involving terrorism, emergencies or instances in which the journalists themselves are suspected of committing a crime.
Here is more background on the PRESS Act.
In selecting Gaetz, Trump shoves open the Overton Window for his other terrible nominees
In today’s New York Times, we learn what Donald Trump is really up to with his nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general: he’s trying to shove open the Overton Window, choosing someone so far outside the norms that other terrible appointments he’s made (and will make) can slide through the Senate.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report (gift link):
He [Trump] is making calls on Mr. Gaetz’s behalf, and he remains confident that even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington.
In other words, Senate Republicans will have a chance to assert their prerogatives by rejecting Gaetz, who, among other things, has been accused of taking part in drug-fueled orgies and having sex with a 17-year-old girl — a minor in the state of Florida.
Meanwhile, Trump’s unqualified choices for secretary of defense, accused rapist Pete Hegseth, and for secretary of health and human services, all-around loon Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will win confirmation, according to Trump’s theory of the case, because Republicans will content themselves with rejecting his most egregious appointment rather than all of them.
The Overton Window is generally a term used to describe crazy policy ideas that are put forth in order to make other, slightly less crazy ideas appear to be more plausible. But it works for people as well. The only way Hegseth and Kennedy look good is by standing in contrast to Gaetz. And so it goes.
In Atlanta, a corporate owner bets on growth; plus, lying about lying, and a social-media meltdown
The list of major metropolitan daily newspapers that are doing reasonably well is short and dominated by independent owners. There are The Boston Globe, The Minnesota Star Tribune and The Seattle Times, all under family ownership. Next up: The Philadelphia Inquirer, a for-profit paper owned by a nonprofit foundation. (The Tampa Bay Times has a similar arrangement but is struggling.) And there’s The Salt Lake Tribune, which has gone fully nonprofit.
What generally doesn’t come to mind are chain-owned newspapers. One exception, though, is The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which is in the midst of a buildup overseen by its corporate owner, Cox Enterprises. David Folkenflik of NPR reports that Cox is spending $150 million over the next several years in the hopes that publisher and president Andrew Morse can figure it out.
Cox isn’t Gannett or Alden Global Capital. At one time it owned a fairly significant newspaper empire, these days it’s down to the AJC, as the Atlanta paper is known, and a handful of papers in Ohio anchored by the Dayton Daily News. Nevertheless, the privately held conglomerate has major holdings in cable television and broadband services, claiming more than $13 billion in revenues in its communications division. In other words, it would seem to be the sort of bottom line-oriented company whose leadership holds few romantic views about the struggling newspaper business.
But Morse, a former top executive at CNN, is pushing ahead. According to Folkenflik, Morse hopes to build the AJC’s paid print and digital circulation from about 100,000 to 500,000 by doubling down on political coverage and reaching out to the city’s Black community, among other initiatives. A downtown newsroom is opening this week after years of being stranded in the suburbs. The AJC is expanding its staff, too.
“Instead of reading story after story about the futility of this, why don’t we grasp onto notions of, ‘How do we build for the future?'” Morse told Folkenflik, adding: “Our mission is to be the most essential and engaging source of news for the people of Atlanta, Georgia, in the South.”
As Folkenflik observes, Georgia is home to several papers owned by the cost-cutting Gannett and McClatchy chains. If Cox can show that there’s another way to do business, maybe the executives at those chains will realize that there’s more money to be made by offering quality than through endless rounds of downsizing. But probably not.
Pants on fire
Bill Adair, the founder of PolitiFact, is on something of an apology tour as he promotes his book, “Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy.”
The problem is that neither PolitiFact nor other prominent fact-checking projects, including FactCheck.org or The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, have been especially willing over the years to admit that Republicans lie more than Democrats. Donald Trump’s gusher of lies has changed that equation to some degree, although anyone who reads those sites knows that Trump is often treated as a particularly noxious exception to their otherwise both-sides-lie orientation.
Adair spoke with public radio’s “On the Media” over the weekend, telling co-host Brooke Gladstone that, well, he lied about lying. Here’s part of what he said:
In 2012, I was on C-SPAN, national television, live, taking calls. And Brian from Michigan calls in. And Brian says, Mr. Adair, I read in The Nation that when you add up the fact checks, that Republicans lie more and they lie worse. And I answer Brian and I lie. You know, I can honestly say I don’t keep score.
Well, we did keep score. We kept score by person. We didn’t reveal the party total. But I knew that Brian was right. And instead, I gave him this dodge that I always gave people when they asked this. I said, asking me that question is sort of like asking an umpire who’s out at home more, you know, the Yankees or the Red Sox.
I don’t know. I look at every play independently. And I think it’s important that we do that. I want to find Brian so that I can apologize to him because Brian was right then and Brian is even more right now. But I was trying to show that I was impartial.
Adair is now teaching at Duke University and is no longer involved in PolitiFact. But I find it interesting that he’s making this admission just a few months after the fact-checkers strained so hard at the two national political conventions to be “impartial” that they nearly gave themselves a hernia.
PolitiFact is perhaps best known for its “Pants on Fire!” rating for especially egregious lies. Well, Adair may not be able to sit down again for quite some time. He owes an apology not just to Brian but to all of us.
Career on fire
Add Laura Helmuth to the long list of journalists who’ve blown up their career for the sake of a momentary cheap thrill on social media. Helmuth, the editor — make that the former editor — of Scientific American, resigned last week after posting a series of F-bomb-laden posts on Bluesky in which she expressed her outrage at Donald Trump’s election.
Among her posts, according to Maya Yang at The Guardian: “I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists.” She later deleted the offending posts and offered up the proverbial boilerplate that they “do not reflect my beliefs.” Apparently it wasn’t enough.
Now, you might think this wasn’t a big deal, but Scientific American is a pretty buttoned-down institution as well as an important part of the scientific establishment, which has been targeted by Trump and the people around him.
As I tell my students, your social-media posts should stay within the bounds of what you’re allowed to do in your day job. Helmuth clearly went well beyond that.
Bluesky is having its moment; plus, Soon-Shiong reverses himself, and a local-news event in Ipswich
From the moment that Elon Musk bought Twitter in late 2022 and took a wrecking ball to it, millions of appalled users have sought alternatives. Mastodon, a decentralized nonprofit, got some early buzz, though it failed to gain mass traction. Threads, part of the Meta universe, has enjoyed some success, attracting 275 million users; but many of those users are also disenchanted with an algorithm that plays down news and politics.
Now Bluesky is having its moment. The most Twitter-like of the new platforms, Bluesky has experienced a surge of a million new users since the election, attracting the attention of The New York Times, The Associated Press, Slate and others. Its current user base of about 15 million makes it far smaller than Threads, but its customizable feeds, lists and starter packs, as well as its lack of an algorithm, have led many of us to conclude that it’s a better tool for sharing and discussing journalism.
As media writer Oliver Darcy puts it: “But while the masses might be joining Threads, power users in media and politics seem to now be preferring Bluesky. That is where the conversation is now forming. Even on Threads, one of the biggest topics of discussion this week is Bluesky.”
Bluesky got off to a slow start because for quite a long while you could only join by invitation. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s involvement was a poison pill for some, though he has since moved on. Today Bluesky is owned by a public benefit corporation — a for-profit company that nevertheless must adhere to some nonprofit-like principles such as “extending benefits to stakeholders like communities and employees,” as Kiplinger puts it.
In other words, Bluesky, unlike Threads and Twitter, is not under the control of an erratic billionaire.
Twitter/X still has nearly 500 million users worldwide, but it has been overrun by trolls, bots and various right-wing extremists, including Musk himself. The Guardian created a stir Wednesday when it announced that it was mostly leaving Twitter, calling it a “toxic media platform.” But many news outlets continue to make heavy use of Twitter.
Six to 10 years ago, when Twitter was at its most useful, it was a gathering place for liberals, conservatives and moderates. Unfortunately, neither Threads nor Bluesky has been able to replicate that vibe, as their user bases are overwhelmingly liberal and progressive. And thus our national discourse continues to become more polarized.
Soon-Shiong comes clean
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the other billionaire newspaper owner who killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the election, is now saying that his daughter was right all along when she cited Harris’ pro-Israel position in the war in Gaza as the reason that his Los Angeles Times did not weigh in on the presidential race.
“Somebody had asked me, ‘was that the reason?’ I said, ‘well, that wasn’t the only reason.’ Clearly, that was one of the reasons, and there are many other reasons, but I think that should be exposed really transparently about all the reasons,” he told CNN reporters Liam Reilly and Hadas Gold.
Soon-Shiong had previously denied a claim in The New York Times by his daughter, Nika, that the family had decided not to endorse because of Gaza. Instead, he said that he wanted his paper to move away from endorsements, and that he killed the Harris endorsement because the editorial board had ignored his directive to put together a nonpartisan guide to Harris’ and Donald Trump’s stands on the issues.
Now it appears that Soon-Shiong was being less than candid — or, as former LA Times journalist Matt Pearce writes, “Well, Patrick Soon-Shiong lied.” Pearce adds:
If you own large newspaper and have strong opinions about Israel’s war in Gaza, and those opinions about Gaza directly affect how you influence the newspaper’s engagement with politics and the public during an election, then you should probably print your opinion about Gaza in the newspaper you own instead of publicly dumping on your employees and claiming you’d asked them to do some other nonsense that you hadn’t actually asked them to do, and then lying to reporters about your opinions on Gaza not having influenced your political decisionmaking while publicly scolding your daughter for telling the New York Times hey my dad did this because of Gaza, which you followed by writing an internal email to your chief operating officer and executive editor to more or less elaborate at length that hey I did this because of Gaza (feelings which themselves have already gotten watered down in the only-sort-of-coming-clean interview with CNN).
The other billionaire non-endorser, of course, is Jeff Bezos, who canceled a Harris endorsement in The Washington Post at the last minute and claimed he had decided the Post should stop endorsing candidates.
There is a third billionaire non-endorser as well: Glen Taylor of The Minnesota Star Tribune, whose opinion editor announced back in August that the paper would no longer endorse. As my co-author and podcast partner Ellen Clegg wrote for What Works, that was enough to prompt outrage among former Strib opinion journalists, a group of whom published their own Harris endorsement independently.
Please come to Ipswich
If you’re on the North Shore, I’ll be moderating a panel of local-news leaders today at 6 p.m. at the True North Ale Company in Ipswich. The event is free, although donations are requested. Please register here.
The panel is being held to mark the fifth anniversary of Ipswich Local News, whose publisher, John Muldoon, will be a panelist. He’ll be joined by Kris Olson of The Marblehead Current, Erika Brown of The Manchester Cricket and Jack Lawrence of the soon-to-be-launched Hamilton-Wenham News.