Jay Rosen. Photo (cc) 2017 by the Moody College of Communication.
Jay Rosen has been one of the major thinkers in journalism since the 1990s. Younger followers may think of him mainly as a media critic, and there’s no doubting his influence in that field. Through his blog, PressThink, and his social media presence (especially back in Twitter’s heyday), Rosen showed an uncanny ability to frame issues in a way that made a lot of us think about what we were doing.
The “production of innocence” was his phrase for “a public showing by professional journalists that they have no politics themselves, no views of their own, no side, no stake, no ideology and therefore no one can accuse them of — and here we enter the realm of dread — political bias.”
South of Boston folks: I’ll be speaking on “News and Democracy in a Time of Crisis” at the Stoughton Public Library in Stoughton, Massachusetts, on Monday, Oct. 20, at 7 p.m. This free and open event is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Sharon-Stoughton. Hope to see you there!
The surveillance state has come to Brookline, Massachusetts. Sam Mintz reports for Brookline.News that Chestnut Hill Realty will set up license-plate readers on Independence Drive near Hancock Village, located in South Brookline, on the Boston border. The readers are made by Flock Safety, which is signing an agreement with the Brookline Police Department to use the data. The data will also be made available to Boston Police.
Two months ago I wrote about a campaign to keep Flock out of the affluent community of Scarsdale Village, New York. The story was covered by a startup local website, Scarsdale 10583, and after a period of months the contract was canceled in the face of rising opposition. Unfortunately, Scarsdale Village is the exception, as Flock Safety, a $7.5 billion company, has a presence in 5,000 communities in 49 states as well as a reputation for secretive dealings with local officials.
Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub reports that the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2020 that automated license-plate readers are legal in Massachusetts. Gaffin also notes that, early this year, police in Johnson County, Texas, used data from 83,000 Flock cameras across the U.S. in a demented quest to track down a woman they wanted to arrest for a self-induced abortion. Presumably Texas authorities could plug into the Brookline network with Flock’s permission.
Mintz notes in his Brookline.News story that Flock recently opened an office in Boston and that its data has been used by police in dozens of Massachusetts communities. He also quotes Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts as saying that though such uses of Flock data as identifying stolen cars or assisting with Amber Alerts isn’t a problem, “Unregulated, this technology facilitates the mass tracking of every single person’s movements on the road.”
The cameras could also be used by ICE in its out-of-control crackdown on undocumented (and, in some cases, documented) immigrants. This is just bad news all around, it’s hard to imagine that members of the public would support it if they knew about it.
I’m not ready to give a New England Muzzle Award to state Rep. Steven Xiarhos, R-Barnstable, just yet. But a proposal he talked about last week in response to so-called street takeovers in five Massachusetts communities raises concerns about freedom of speech.
In a story reported by John L. Micek and Heather Morrison for MassLive, Xiarhos said he planned to file two bills aimed at cracking down on participants. One would upgrade the penalty for assaulting a police officers from a misdemeanor in most cases to a felony. The other would prohibit street takeovers and, as the MassLive account puts it, would punish “spectators and participants alike.”
Spectators?
That second proposal is reportedly based on a 2022 Florida law that prohibits street takeovers. The relevant section of the law says:
A person may not: Drive any motor vehicle in any street takeover, stunt driving, race, speed competition or contest, drag race or acceleration contest, test of physical endurance, or exhibition of speed or acceleration or for the purpose of making a speed record on any highway, roadway, or parking lot….
A person may not be a spectator at any race, drag race, or street takeover prohibited under [the law as quoted above].
“You need to respect police officers. They’re risking their lives for us 24/7,” Xiarhos was quoted as saying. The MassLive story continues:
“I believe they’re part of a plan to cause havoc,” Xiarhos said of the takeovers, which are organized through guerilla-style posts on such social media sites as Instagram. “And when you allow someone to get away with things, it gets worse.”
“So we need to get tougher on them. And when they get caught, they need to be held in custody,” he continued. “Stop paying their bail and put them behind bars. That’s how you stop things. It’s not that hard. There’s only a few people that do wrong things. So get tougher on them.”
Now, the takeovers are clearly becoming a problem. As Molly Farrar reported for Boston.com, they popped up on Saturday, Oct. 4, in Boston, Fall River, Middleborough, Dedham and Randolph, in some cases accompanied by fireworks and, in the Boston incident, a police cruiser being set on fire. Gov. Maura Healey has vowed to take action.
The text of Xiarhos’ two bills is not available on his website, and perhaps they’re still being drafted. But when it comes to freedom of speech, we do not need to emulate Florida. Xiarhos also told WFXT-TV (Channel 25) anchor Kerry Kavanaugh that similar legislation has also either been filed or enacted in 22 states, including California. It would be interesting to know how many others include a spectator provision.
No one should be at risk of arrest simply because they’re there. And let me state the obvious: Such a provision could be used against journalists as well. I’ll be watching to see what Rep. Xiarhos actually files.
Hat tip to Andrew Quemere for flagging this on Bluesky.
In the world of independent local news startups, 10 years is an eon. That’s how long John and Kristen Muldoon published The Local News, a nonprofit print weekly that covers Ipswich, on Boston’s North Shore, as well as several surrounding communities.
Now they’re moving on. Fortunately, they’ve worked out a succession plan. Trevor Meek, who’s worked as a reporter for the paper since 2023, is the new editor, and Eric Gedstad, who has a background in communications, marketing and government, will be the executive director (that’s nonprofit-speak for publisher).
“Yes, they’ll still be contributing to the paper,” Meek writes of the Muldoons. “And no, they’ll never be able to escape my desperate texts and panicked emails. But their day-to-day presence — their gallows humor, sharp instincts, and steady hands — will be sorely missed.”
As Kris Olson, a co-founder and consulting editor at the Marblehead Current, put it in an email to me, “John is essentially being replaced by two people…. That gives you a sense of how much John was doing.”
John Muldoon has written that The Local News began to find its stride in 2019, when Bill Wasserman, a North Shore journalism legend, became a supporter by donating $100,000 and by helping the paper with advertising, which enabled the operation to have a regular print edition.
Wasserman had previously owned The Ipswich Chronicle and a string of other weeklies only to watch them wither under a series of corporate chain owners that culminated in their acquisition by GateHouse Media, now Gannett. (I worked briefly for North Shore Weeklies under one of those chain owners way back in 1990.) Wasserman died in 2021 at the age of 94.
Somewhere along the line, the Muldoons decided to turn their paper into a nonprofit, with John explaining, “The key reason there was to protect the paper for the public from the depredations of any future corporate owner.”
The Boston Globe’s Billy Baker wrote about The Local News in 2024, reporting that the print edition was being sent to 9,300 homes in Ipswich and neighboring Rowley without charge.
John and I have corresponded over the years, and I got to meet him and Kristen last November at a local-news panel at an Ipswich brewpub, where all such events ought to be held. The Muldoons have made an enormous contribution to the North Shore, bringing real news coverage back to places that had largely been ignored for years.
Best wishes to both of them on their well-deserved retirement.
My What Works partner Ellen Clegg has written a new post on how the Memphis media are dealing with Trump’s troop deployment. She’s got updates from The Commercial Appeal, the Daily Memphian, the Tennessee Lookout, MLK50 and the Institute for Public Service Reporting and the Memphis Flyer.
The Boston Globe’s paid print circulation continues to fall, and the paper has stopped reporting numbers for digital subscribers — although a spokeswoman says that paid digital “is thriving and surpassing expectations.”
The print numbers come from the Globe’s annual “Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation,” which it is required to publish under postal regulations. The Sunday Globe numbers appeared this past Sunday and the weekday numbers were reported on Monday.
The Globe’s average weekday paid print circulation for the 12-month period ending in August 2025 was 51,626. That’s a decline of 5,824 over the previous year, when the figure was 57,450, and a total drop of 13,351 from two years ago, when it was 64,977. In percentage terms, daily paid print circulation is down 10.1% over last year and 20.5% over two years ago.
On Sunday, the most recent 12-month average for paid print is 89,809, down 12,894 (from 102,703) compared to the previous year and down 26,647 (from 116,456) compared to two years ago. The percentage drops are 12.6% over the previous year and 22.9% over the past two.
Of course, what really matters at the Globe, and at most other newspapers, is paid digital circulation. Unfortunately, I have nothing to share, as the Globe has stopped providing those numbers. Don Seiffert reported in the Boston Business Journal last June that the Globe was no longer including paid digital in the numbers that it makes available to the Alliance for Audited Media. He quoted a Globe spokesperson as saying that its digital-subscriber base “continues to grow at a steady pace” and that the paper will share those numbers “periodically, most likely around significant milestones.”
In the past, the Globe has shared its internal numbers for paid digital with journalists. But when I asked for them this week, Globe spokeswoman Carla Kath told me by email, “While I can’t share exact figures right now, our subscription business is thriving and surpassing expectations. We will continue to share our subscriber numbers at key milestones.”
Last fall, the Globe said that paid digital circulation had reached 261,000, up from 245,000 the previous year. Chief executive Linda Henry has set a long-term goal of 400,000 paid digital subscribers.
In the absence of any paid digital numbers, I’ll note that Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab recently reported that the Globe’s website received 8,691,001 visits in June of this year, making it the 13th most heavily trafficked newspaper site in the U.S. That was down 18.9% from the previous month, when the Globe was No. 7. (Large month-to-month fluctuations in web traffic are not unusual.) That’s impressive for a paper with an exceptionally tight paywall, something that limits casual traffic.
If Globe executives want to boost digital subscriptions, I’d suggest that they offer a few free shares each month, as many other papers do. If non-subscribers could have a chance to sample the Globe’s journalism, they might decide it’s worth handing over their credit-card information.
Nonprofit local news is on the upswing, according to a new report from the Institute for Nonprofit News. An INN survey of nearly 400 digital-first nonprofit news organizations showed that the median outlet raised $532,000 in revenue in 2024, up from $477,000 the previous year. That’s an increase of 11.5%.
In addition, local news organizations now make up 51% of INN’s membership, up from 48% in 2023. The remainder of the projects are regional, statewide and national.
INN is a vitally important organization in the world of local nonprofit news. Through its NewsMatch program, news publishers are able to leverage local donations with matching funds — one-to-one in some cases. The program has raised more than $400 million since 2017. INN’s ethical guidelines have been widely adopted by the nonprofit journalism community. The organization also acts as a fiscal sponsor for fledgling nonprofits that have not yet received IRS approval for full 501(c)(3) recognition.
In the Great Hall at the Massachusetts Statehouse for the Mass Book Awards.
I was thrilled to attend the Mass Book Awards ceremony at the Statehouse earlier today, when “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,” which Ellen Clegg and I wrote about possible ways out of the local journalism crisis, was recognized as one of the top dozen nonfiction books in Massachusetts.
Our book was one of nine that were longlisted. In addition, the top nonfiction award went to “We Refuse: A History of Black Resistance,” by Kellie Carter Jackson, with honors going to “Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit,” by Robin Bernstein, and “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border,” by Ieva Jusionyte. The awards are sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.
Unfortunately, Ellen wasn’t able to make it, but I was honored to attend and be recognized along with the other winners.
It was also great to reconnect with Gayatri Patnaik, the director of Beacon Press, who embraced our vision and helped bring it to fruition. Our immediate editor, Catherine Tung, has since moved on to a senior editing position at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, but she provided crucial support when we lost a year during COVID. She also gave us good advice that we tried to follow in our reporting — to assess how well the local news projects we were writing about were covering arts and culture, a crucial part of civic life. That said, most of them weren’t, with the New Haven Independent and its affiliated low-power radio station, WNHH, standing as notable exceptions.
I’m also proud of the professional partnership Ellen and I have developed as we’ve built out the book into a wider project, What Works: The Future of Local News, based at Northeastern University in the School of Journalism and affiliated with the Center for Transformative Media. What Works comprises a frequently updated website on developments in local news; an every-other-week podcast featuring news entrepreneurs and thought leaders; conferences and webinars; and a database of independent local news organizations in Massachusetts.
Larry Ryckman, co-founder and publisher of The Colorado Sun. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.
For at least 15 years, local-news visionaries have been thinking about ways to build a media organization owned and governed by its staff and members of the community. The idea is to create a news cooperative — that is, a co-op, similar to a food co-op or a credit union. Members might contribute money or labor, and in return they’d have a say in hiring and coverage.
I followed efforts to build such a co-op in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where longtime journalist Tom Stites wanted to test out a concept he called the Banyan Project with a site called Haverhill Matters. Unfortunately, years of anemic fundraising went nowhere, and in January 2020, the local organizers shut it down.
