On the Battle Road Trail in Lincoln earlier today.
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Author: Dan Kennedy
A smart though dispiriting conversation on how Israel should deal with Hamas
Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast is always worth listening to, and now he’s back at the mic following a break so that he could finish a book project. I recommend this conversation with Zack Beauchamp of Vox, who recently wrote a deeply reported article headlined “What Israel should do now.” I should go back and read it, though I doubt I’m going to learn anything I didn’t already learn from the wide-ranging, hour-long podcast.
I couldn’t possibly summarize everything that Beauchamp and Klein have to say, but the top-line takeaway is that Israel should stop its all-out war in Gaza and instead switch to a counterterrorism campaign aimed at rooting out the Hamas leadership — and that should include targeted assassinations. The reason (other than basic decency), Beauchamp explains, is that Hamas wants as many Palestinian civilians to die as possible in order to advance its propaganda efforts.
Even if Israel is successful at ending the terrorist threat, it’s not at all clear what should happen next. It’s a horrible dilemma with no good solutions.
The Colorado Sun donates its share of 24 suburban papers and urges they go nonprofit
One of the more innovative efforts at saving newspapers from chain ownership is winding down, although the papers themselves remain protected. The Colorado Sun announced Wednesday that it would transfer its ownership shares of Colorado Community Media (CCM), a chain of 24 weekly and monthly papers in the Denver suburbs, to the nonprofit National Trust for Local News, which led the effort to buy the papers two years ago. The Sun had been given a stake in CCM in return for helping to run the papers.
The reason given for pulling out was that the Sun is in the process of converting from a for-profit public benefit corporation to a nonprofit, which I wrote about recently for Nieman Lab. A story in the Sun that appeared Wednesday urged nonprofit status for CCM as well: “Just as we believe that nonprofit is the right fit for The Sun, we believe it’s a good fit for these weeklies, too. That will be a decision for the Trust and the board of directors of the Colorado News Conservancy, the parent company of CCM.” No money is changing hands. (The Conservancy is the entity established by the National Trust and the Sun to run the CCM papers).
Sun editor and co-founder Larry Ryckman said on X/Twitter: “We’ve been proud co-owners of Colorado Community Media for 2 years & wish it well in this new chapter. They’re doing great work & deserve your support.” Linda Shapley, publisher of CCM, was quoted in the Sun as saying: “I’m grateful for The Sun’s support at a time that was most critical for our future At Colorado Community Media, we’re excited to be part of the evolving Colorado news ecosystem, and we’re dedicated to serving our communities with timely, factual news and information.”
The Sun and CCM are the subject of a chapter in “What Works in Community News,” a book about the future of local journalism by Ellen Clegg and me that will be published in January. In September 2021 I spent nearly a week in Denver reporting on Colorado’s media ecosystem. Obviously that ecosystem is still in flux, but the period covered by our book ends in late 2022.
I believe what was taking place in Colorado back then is a story still worth telling: the founding of the Sun by 10 journalists who’d quit The Denver Post following deep cuts by its hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital; the Sun’s early hopes of raising money through blockchain technology; its unique governance structure; and its participation in the acquisition of CCM.
Ellen and I look at our book not as a standalone entity but, rather, as the hub of an ongoing story that also comprises updates to our website, a podcast (Shapley, National Trust executive director Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, and former Denver Post editor Greg Moore have all been guests, and we hope to have Ryckman on once the book has been released), and an evolving social media presence (we’re currently on X/Twitter and Mastodon, but that may change).
So of course we want you to read our book. But we also hope you’ll turn to our other platforms to keep up on the latest.
Using AI to tell a story about AI
Today at What Works, we have a story by one of our Northeastern graduate students, Ian Dartley, about Inside Arlington, a local news project powered by artificial intelligence. It’s no substitute for the human touch, and in fact the town already has a very good nonprofit news organization, YourArlington. But it’s an interesting experiment, and Ian does a great job of explaining it.
We also decided to have a little fun. The headline and the bullet points used to summarize Ian’s story were written by ChatGPT. So was the social media post we used to promote the story. Here’s how it looks on Threads:
How about ChatGPT finding that dog emoji? Good boy! I thought it was interesting that ChatGPT wrote fairly dull headlines and bullet points but suddenly developed a sense of fun when it came time to write a social media post.
The Christian Science Monitor finds hope amid the horror of the Israel-Hamas war
In my undergraduate media ethics class the other day, my students and I talked about whether coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas is contributing to a sense of hopelessness. There is, in fact, so much legitimately terrible news that it’s hard to be optimistic about the prospects for peace and justice. Yet it’s important that we try.
One often-overlooked resource for times like this is located right here in Boston: The Christian Science Monitor, a 115-year-old publication that at one time was a highly influential news organization and that still does good work through its newsletters and website. As its homepage puts it, “the Monitor offers a story of our common challenges, and how we can begin to find solutions and credible hope.”
We listened to a 15-minute interview with Monitor journalist Ned Temko on why he thinks the current war, horrific as it is, might lead to a decent outcome. Temko certainly isn’t blind to the realities. This, for instance, is pretty bleak:
There is nothing, in my 40-plus years of covering both sides, that has been so wantonly violent against civilians, intentionally, as the October 7th attacks. It helps explain the ferocity of the intended Israeli response. I think psychologically and emotionally, it’s deeply changed how Israelis feel about their own army, their government, about the Palestinians, certainly about Hamas. And on the Palestinian side, as you point out, it’s kind of revived this sense of displacement because something like a million Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to the south of the Gaza Strip in anticipation of a major Israeli ground thrust into the north of Gaza.
But Temko adds that he is “hopeful” that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has reached such a terrible impasse that it may actually lead to a resolution — not soon, but in the years ahead. He explains:
I’ve had the good fortune not only to have covered this for a very, very long time, but to have covered both sides. I got to know both sides of this conflict on a human level. And if I can make the case for hope, unlikely though it seems now, I think it’s the following, that all the other options to this decades long conflict have been tried. Some resolution has sometimes been close, and I’ve covered that as well, but always ultimately failed. I think what’s different this time around is the immediacy, the visceral sense in which people on both sides have felt that this conflict is inescapably part of their lives, and not in a good way. That there is, for each of them, a dawning realization that their own interests in a stable, secure existence, in which they have a future, depends on some sort of resolution of this core dispute.
After we listened to the interview with Temko, we divided the class into five teams. Each was asked to find a story about the conflict that emphasized solutions, hope and optimism. Here is what they came up with:
• “‘I Love You. I Am Sorry’: One Jew, One Muslim and a Friendship Tested by War,” by Kurt Streeter, The New York Times, Oct. 22. An account of a friendship between two women in Los Angeles, one Muslim, one Jewish. “Their close friendship,” Streeter wrote, “signals that the ties that bind adherents of Judaism and Islam can remain strong, even as the war pitting people of their faiths against each other rages.”
• “Peace activists in Israel speak about their hopes for the end of war,” interview by Scott Simon, NPR, Oct. 21. Simon spoke with Sally Abed, an Israeli Palestinian, and Alon-Lee Green of the organization Standing Together. Green told Simon that “we see a lot of anger and a lot of feelings of revenge. And we do understand these feelings, but we do say in the clearest way possible, more killing of innocent people, more bloodshed, more feeding of this vicious circle of death and blood will not bring back anyone to life.”
• “‘Let Gaza Live’: Calls for Cease-Fire Fill Grand Central Station,” by Claire Fahy, Julian Roberts-Grmela and Sean Piccoli, The New York Times, Oct. 31. On the surface, this story doesn’t inspire much in the way of optimism. The protest that is described was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, an explicitly anti-Zionist organization, and it led to more than 300 arrests on charges of trespass and disorderly conduct. But it’s hard to disagree with the sentiment expressed in a sign that some of the protesters unveiled: “Never Again for Anyone.”
• “‘I hope it can endure’: examples of Jewish-Arab solidarity offer hope in Israel,” by Bethan McKernan, The Guardian, Oct. 15. Abed and Green of Standing Together make another appearance in this story, was reported from Jerusalem. Wrote McKernan: “Thousands of volunteers of different ethnicities are working to help victims of the violence and clean up neglected bomb shelters, amid many other efforts at calming the heightened tensions around the country.”
• “Opinion: We are a Palestinian and an Israeli in Los Angeles. We find comfort and hope in mourning together,” by Rana Shalhoub and Hila Keren, The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 17. These are not the same two Los Angeles women profiled by The New York Times. “Of course, our close connection does not mean we agree on all aspects of this catastrophic situation,” Shalhoub and Keren wrote. “But we feel grateful that our true care for each other has at least allowed us to unite around two things. One relates to the present: the value of mourning together all loss of innocent human life. The other relates to the future: the belief that humanity on both sides is key to breaking the vicious circle created by hate.”
Meg Heckman on the legacy of Nackey Loeb and how she helped shape the N.H. primary
On the latest What Works podcast, Ellen and I talk with Meg Heckman, a colleague of ours at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. Meg is an associate professor and author who’s had a long career as a journalist. She spent more than a decade as a reporter and, later, the digital editor at the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, where she developed a fascination with presidential politics, a passion for local news and an appreciation for cars with four-wheel drive.
Her book, “Political Godmother: Nackey Scripps Loeb and the Newspaper That Shook the Republican Party,” documents the lasting impact of New Hampshire publisher and conservative activist Nackey Loeb. Loeb and her husband, the right-wing provocateur William Loeb, helped shape the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire presidential primary for many decades at their newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader. As you’ll hear, Heckman draws a straight line from Nackey Loeb’s support of Republican Patrick Buchanan in 1992 to the rise of Donald Trump a generation later.
In Quick Takes, Ellen calls attention to a piece in ProPublica by journalist Dan Golden about his history working for the local daily in Springfield, Massachusetts. Turns out the good-old-days in newspapering weren’t all good. Golden cautions against recreating them. ProPublica, a nonprofit, allows other outlets to republish its work, so you’ll find Golden’s essay on the What Works website.
I take a look back at an example of how diligent local news reporting can have an enormous impact nearly 45 years after the fact. Recently the EPA proposed a ban on trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent that’s been linked to leukemia, birth defects and other health problems. The road to that ban began in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1979, with a super-smart young reporter I had the honor of working with. I wrote about it for The Boston Phoenix back in 1998.
You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
Sahan Journal’s founder to step down; plus, news from Mendo County and New Jersey
With the January 2024 publication date of our book, “What Works in Community News,” drawing ever closer, we want to keep you up to date on new developments at the projects that we track.
The big news today is that Mukhtar Ibrahim, the founder of Sahan Journal, is stepping down as chief executive officer. Ibrahim launched the nonprofit (relaunched, actually; it’s complicated) five years ago to cover Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. He writes:
I am proud of the remarkable success story that our dedicated staff has built. We have grown from a four-person newsroom to an amazing and talented team of 20, covering a wide range of essential topics and producing innovative multimedia content. We have built an equitable, transparent, and responsive work culture that supports the professional development and well-being of every staff member.
Kate Maxwell, the publisher and co-founder of The Mendocino Voice in Northern California, has written a useful guide for the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri aimed at newsrooms looking to put together a kit to be used when covering emergencies. It’s a need that the Voice is experienced with, given that it covers an area frequently hit by wildfires. Maxwell begins:
For newsrooms preparing to cover emergencies, there are a range of material and operational considerations to examine such as necessary equipment, staff support and schedules, and how to stay safe in the middle of a disaster. Planning the practical ways you will communicate with each other and community members, and how to get crucial information out to the people who need it, is an essential part of preparing your newsroom and your community for an emergency.
Finally, Joe Amditis of the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University in New Jersey, tells us about a collaborative effort to put together ahead of next week’s legislative elections. The guide, NJ Decides 2023, was put together by the center; NJ Spotlight News, one of the media organizations that we profile in our book; and the NJ Civic Information Consortium, a publicly funded effort to bolster local news in New Jersey.
A number of other news outlets assisted with reporting, and the guide is available not only in English but also in Chinese, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu and Korean. According to Amditis:
The collaborative then split the races up, with journalists from each news organization claiming the candidates they would commit to chase down.
Collaborative members sent hundreds of emails, social media messages, text messages and phone calls trying to convince candidates to fill out the form. Many did so immediately; others needed to be reminded multiple times.
The Boston Globe hires a managing editor for local news
The Boston Globe has hired a managing editor for local news, according to a memo to the staff from editor Nancy Barnes. I received the memo earlier today from a trusted source. Cristina Silva, currently managing editor for national news at USA Today, will start work at the Globe toward the end of November. A reporting fellow at the Globe in 2005 and ’06, she has also worked at the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times), The Associated Press, the International Business Times and Newsweek.
According to a job description posted at LinkedIn, Silva will be in charge of business, metro, the express desk and the Rhode Island and New Hampshire bureaus. According to her LinkedIn bio, she is active in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, co-founding and serving as president of the Los Angeles chapter.
The move comes at a time when the Globe is expanding its local and regional news footprint, adding a New Hampshire bureau to its several-years-old Rhode Island bureau and beefing up coverage in the suburbs, especially in Cambridge and Somerville.
The full text of Barnes’ memo follows:
Dear all,
I am pleased to announce that Cristina Silva, a veteran journalist currently with USA Today, will join our newsroom at the end of November in the newly created role of Managing Editor for Local News.
In that position, she will report to me, and work closely with the Metro, Business, Express, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire teams.
Some of you may be familiar with Cristy from her time as a reporting fellow here in Boston from May of 2005 to August of 2006. Since those early days, she has gone on to do exceptional work as a reporter and editor, with reporting stints at the St. Petersburg Times and the Associated Press. Her editing experience ranges from serving as Managing Editor of the International Business Times, News Director for Newsweek, and several enterprise roles at USA Today before being promoted to her current position of Managing Editor for National News.
During her tenure at the USA Today Network, she has overseen a wide range of coverage: the Surfside condo collapse in Miami, the Astroworld Festival disaster, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the Ukraine War. She has managed major projects that examined the failures of schools across the country during the COVID crisis, and ground-breaking work examining the discriminatory effect of COVID on communities of color.
Cristy has been a fierce advocate for promoting diversity in reporting and hiring not just in her own newsroom, but through her work with myriad national journalism associations. At Gannett, she helped create and run a Latino Leadership Academy and a Diversity Leadership Academy aimed at retaining top talent. Her colleagues told me repeatedly that she is valued as a generous mentor to her staff and peers alike.
Cristy will join the newsroom Nov. 28, when she will be here in Boston, and will commute between here and Los Angeles until Jan. 2, when she will relocate permanently. She is thrilled to be joining us.
“I am deeply honored to rejoin The Boston Globe, this time as Managing Editor for Local News. The Globe’s legacy of excellence and its commitment to serving the community have long shaped who I am as a journalist,” she said. “I look forward to supporting this talented newsroom and working closely with the community to deliver the exemplary news coverage Boston and New England deserve.”
Please join me in welcoming Cristina Silva back to Boston.
Nancy
Two daily newspapers in Rhode Island will merge
Sad news coming out of Rhode Island, where two daily papers are being merged into one. Ian Donnis of The Public’s Radio reports that The Call of Woonsocket and The Times of Pawtucket will become The Blackstone Valley Call & Times as of Nov. 1. “Our commitment to being a daily news provider for Northern Rhode Island has not changed,” according to a story Donnis cited that was on the front page of The Call. The article referenced “current business trends and increases in printing costs” as the reasons behind the merger.
In addition, The Call’s Sunday edition will be discontinued, to be replaced with a Saturday weekend edition in the merged paper. And get this: Donnis writes, “Between them, The Call and The Times have two news reporters, two sports reporters and a photographer.” Now that is small. The papers are owned by Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers, which acquired them in 2007.
As I’ve written here before, I was a Northeastern co-op student at The Call from 1976-’78, working full-time for about a year in three- and six-month stints. The way co-op works is that you’re replaced by another student when the semester ends and it’s time to return to school. I alternated with Karen Bordeleau, a future executive editor at The Providence Journal who’s now at Arizona State University.
The Call was excellent, a place where I learned a lot under great mentorship. It’s sad to see what’s become of the paper, as well as The Times, but Woonsocket and Pawtucket are economically depressed cities, and they no longer reach out into the more affluent suburbs to the extent that they did at one time. According to U.S. Census data, the median household income in Pawtucket is $56,427, and in Woonsocket it’s $48,822. Both of those figures are well below the state median of $74,489.
In the mid-’70s, The Call covered what we referred to as “Call Country,” which comprised more than a dozen communities in northern Rhode Island and southern Worcester County. I don’t know what the circulation area is today. Nor do I know how many paid subscribers the papers have because the Alliance for Audited Media has ended instant access to those numbers.
Donnis doesn’t mention any layoffs, and it’s hard to see how they could get much smaller. I just hope the Call & Times will be able to at least do as good a job of serving their communities as the two separate papers do now.
Note: Ian has posted a correction on the ownership of the two papers, and I’ve updated this post accordingly.
How I’ve tried to help my journalism students protect themselves from harassment
One of the most vexing, and even dangerous, issues facing journalists these days is harassment, both online and in real life. Among the best-known examples is New Hampshire Public Radio, whose reporter Lauren Chooljian, along with her editor, Dan Barrick, and her parents were the targets of vandalism to their homes, apparently in retaliation for Chooljian’s reporting. Four New Hampshire men have been indicted by federal authorities and face long prison terms and heavy fines if they are convicted.
Harassment has been emerging as an issue in journalism education as well. I’ve been trying to find ways of dealing with it in my undergraduate and graduate ethics classes. A year ago, I devoted just part of one 100-minute class to the subject. Now I set aside a week — two full classes.
Because I know other journalism instructors are dealing with this, I thought I’d lay out how we handled it in my class just recently. This is ever-evolving, of course, so please consider this one instructor’s attempt to wrestle with a difficult issue.