Author: Dan Kennedy

Following the shootings, two Maine papers drop paywall while the Globe goes all-in

The Sun Journal of Lewiston, Maine, and the Portland Press Herald have dropped their paywall for coverage of the mass shootings in Lewiston on Wednesday night, which claimed what’s now reported to be 18 lives. The two papers, which are owned by the same nonprofit trust, have also published a sensitive story about some of the victims — six at the moment, with, sadly, more to come.

Meanwhile, The Boston Globe is treating this as a local story, going all-in with multiple reports. Today’s print edition includes four front-page stories, ranging from a round-up of what we know so far to a story on Maine’s gun laws. There are two opinion pieces and four more articles in the metro section covering topics such as the fear experienced at nearby Bates College and how teachers should discuss mass shootings with their students. The Globe is also running updates on its homepage.

For journalists, this is difficult, harrowing work. I’ve covered some emotionally upsetting stories, but never anything remotely like this. While we focus on the suffering of the victims, think about the reporters, too. Like first responders, journalists are performing a vital role in keeping the public informed about an ongoing tragedy.

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CommonWealth, a policy-oriented nonprofit, will rebrand and expand

CommonWealth Magazine is about to unveil a rebranding and an expansion. The nonprofit website, which covers state policy and focuses on “politics, ideas and civic life,” will be reborn as CommonWealth Beacon on Nov. 1. I’m a member of the advisory committee, and we just finished a meeting at which the redesign was unveiled. It’s clean and minimalistic, and it translates well to mobile.

CommonWealth is part of the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, or MassINC, which I would describe as centrist and serious. The magazine ended its print edition in 2018, so the digital rebranding is long overdue. The journalism will remain free, though Beacon will offer various paid membership tiers with extra goodies.

The best part is that the project is staffing up, having added two reporters and two people to work on audience engagement and fundraising. Content will be available for free to other publications in the hopes that the local news startups that have sprouted in Massachusetts will use it to bolster their coverage. The email that went out to readers earlier this afternoon follows.

Dear CommonWealth reader,

We are writing today with exciting news:

On November 1, CommonWeath will become CommonWealth Beacon, a new name for a new era of expanded civic journalism for Massachusetts.

The decline in for-profit journalism, the rise in misinformation and the increasingly fractured and polarized civic culture underscore the need for a response. We believe independent, non-partisan, non-profit civic journalism is an essential antidote to these troubling trends.

That is why we have been working to develop a strategy and find the resources to fuel an expansion of our journalism. We took time to learn from our peers across the country, craft a business plan, and raise the seed funding that would allow us to hire more people and build a sustainable business model. In recent months, we have hired four new people — two reporters and two people to work on reader engagement and fundraising — to prepare for the launch of CommonWealth Beacon.

Rest assured, CommonWealth Beacon will retain much of what our readers love about CommonWealth — non-partisan, original reporting on the issues that matter to Massachusetts residents. As we grow, we can cover more stories, across a wider range of issues, with more detail and expertise:

    • CommonWealth Beacon will also feature a renewed commitment to long-form journalism through CommonWealth In-Depth and a rebranded opinion section called CommonWealth Voices.
    • Look for new polling about Massachusetts and our weekly podcast, The Codcast, kicks off with a live discussion at 3:15 pm ET on November 1 about the state of Massachusetts democracy with Harvard professor Danielle Allen.

We also intend to give our content away to other news outlets in Massachusetts to help strengthen local news coverage across the state. In the lifeboat of local journalism, no one is a competitor and everyone is a potential collaborator.

We see CommonWealth Beacon as a partnership among civic-minded people who understand that independent journalism is essential to a functioning democracy. As a subscriber to our newsletter, you are already a partner. We invite you to deepen your engagement by encouraging others to subscribe, by joining our membership program (details to come very soon), and by giving us feedback so we can improve. CommonWealth Beacon will be a collective enterprise and we need as many people as possible to get involved.

Thank you again for helping us to get to this exciting moment. We see this as just the beginning with much more to come in the months ahead.

JOE KRIESBERG
CEO

BRUCE MOHL
Editor

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Another mass shooting underscores why people are turning away from news

The front page of today’s Portland Press Herald

Earlier this week, the Pew Research Center reported the results of a survey that found news consumption fell significantly between 2016 and 2022: “In 2016, 51% of U.S. adults said they followed the news all or most of the time. But that share fell to 38% in 2022, the most recent time we asked this question.”

Now we are in a moment of real horror and crisis. From war in Ukraine to Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel to the retaliatory response that’s now under way; from chaos in Washington to another terrible mass shooting, this time in Lewiston, Maine — it’s no wonder that people are tuning out. Who can process all this?

With the shooter in Lewiston still at large, it’s a good time to take another look at “The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook,” compiled in 2013 after an earlier mass shooting. Given that initial reports are often wrong, there’s little reason to watch the story unfold in real time. Catch the top of the hour if you must, but otherwise wait for something more comprehensive and vetted.

And here are some Maine-based sources of coverage:

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T&G editor says he held Fattman story because it lacked ‘confirmation’

The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester published a story with some mighty odd timing. Like many media outlets, the paper reported Tuesday that state Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office had reached a settlement with state Sen. Ryan Fattman and his wife, Worcester Registrar of Probate Stephanie Fattman, to end a three-year investigation into campaign-finance improprieties.

But wait. The T&G story, by Kinga Borondy, includes quotes from an interview with the Fattmans conducted at Sen. Fattman’s Statehouse office last Friday. “There was no finding of liability, no admission of wrongdoing,” Ryan Fattman was quoted as saying.

On the surface, it looks like the T&G held important news about campaign-finance irregularities for four days. Lance Harris, who writes the Central Mass. Politics blog, wrote on X/Twitter: “Wait. The T&G knew Friday that the Fattmans were settling the case with OCPF [the Office of Campaign and Political Finance] and sat on it until today? The Fattmans gave an exclusive ‘our side of the story’ in exchange for the T&G embargoing the interview?”

I asked the T&G’s executive editor, Michael McDermott, why his paper held the story. Here was his emailed answer:

We did have an interview with the Fattmans on Friday afternoon and a story was filed. I felt that what they said needed to be confirmed by the attorney general’s office, so I decided not to publish until we got that confirmation. It came on Tuesday morning. Once we got the confirmation, we published. I’m glad we waited because the attorney general provided significant additional context that would have otherwise been missing.

You know what? That’s a good answer. If the T&G had rushed to publish as soon as the interview with the Fattmans was over, it would have only had one side of the story. By waiting, the paper was able to include the attorney general’s official disposition of the case, which covered both Fattmans, other members of their family, and state and local Republican committees. It’s a complicated story, but the bottom line is that the Fattmans owe several hundred thousand dollars in compensation and fines.

Borondy’s article includes a statement from Campbell that said: “Enforcing our campaign finance laws, and holding those who violate them accountable, are critical functions of our office. We will continue to hold accountable those who misuse positions of power, break the law and undermine the public’s trust.”

And I give McDermott credit for resisting the urge to press the “publish” button before the T&G had a complete account.

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NYT journalists who pushed back on that botched hospital headline were overruled

A disturbing new development has emerged in The New York Times’ botched initial headline about the Gaza hospital explosion. Charlotte Klein of Vanity Fair obtained internal Slack messages that show there was internal pushback in the Times newsroom, but that those raising concerns were overruled by senior editors. I don’t have a log-in for Vanity Fair, but Tom Jones of Poynter Online has summarized her story:

Klein wrote, “… senior editors appear to have dismissed suggestions from an international editor, along with a junior reporter stationed in Israel who has been contributing to the paper’s coverage of the war, that the paper hedge in its framing of events.”…

[T]he international editor wrote, “I think we can’t just hang the attribution of something so big on one source without having tried to verify it. And then slap it across the top of the [homepage]. Putting the attribution at the end doesn’t give us cover, if we’ve been burned and we’re wrong.”

No kidding. Please read Jones’ item in full; trust me when I tell you that it gets worse.

As we know, the Times and a number of other media outlets claimed Oct. 17 that an Israeli missile had struck Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City and killed an estimated 500 people, attributing the news to the Hamas-led Palestinian government. It took the Times at least an hour and a half to add that Israeli officials were claiming that the explosion was the result of a failed missile launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally. The Times published an Editor’s Note on Monday acknowledging that it fell short of its own standards.

Based on the best available evidence, it now appears likely that Israeli officials were correct; that the Islamic Jihad missile did not actually strike the hospital but exploded nearby; and that the death toll, though still uncertain, is considerably lower than 500. This BBC News assessment, which points in that direction, is now six days old, but The Washington Post reports that U.S. intelligence now believes with “high confidence” that Israel was not responsible.

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How one local reporter’s diligence led to a proposed EPA ban on a toxic solvent

Woburn Common. Photo (cc) 2012 by Daderot.

This week we learned that the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to ban trichloroethylene, better known as TCE, an industrial solvent that has been linked to leukemia, birth defects, reproductive problems and other health issues.

As Michael Casey of The Associated Press notes, TCE was at the center of a major story in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the late 1970s and ’80s, when six children died of leukemia and a landmark lawsuit was brought in U.S. District Court. The lawsuit alleged that those deaths and a range of other illnesses had been caused by exposure to TCE in the drinking water. But none of that might have happened if not for the reporting of Charles Ryan, then a young reporter at The Daily Times Chronicle in Woburn. I was working at the paper at the time, and I remember what an enormous impact Charlie’s reporting had on advancing the battle against toxic waste.

Charlie had already reported on the discovery of contamination in the drinking water as well as suspicions that it was linked to a cluster of leukemia cases in East Woburn. The question that had to be answered was whether the cluster was statistically significant enough that it warranted further investigation. In December 1979, the state was about to release the results of a study. Charlie was set to go into Boston and get a copy of the report. Somehow, the story leaked out early, and the Boston Herald American reported the findings: no statistical significance. “I was a little pissed,” Charlie told me years later. “But I went in there anyway.”

Charlie quickly realized that state investigators had made a math error — they were using Woburn’s 1970 population of 40,000, whereas by 1979 that had dropped to 36,000. Correct the denominator, and the leukemia cluster moved into the zone of statistical significance. “That story changed everything,” Charlie told me. His reporting didn’t set well with Woburn’s old-line establishment, and he remembered once being told, “Your father would be turning over in his grave if he knew what you were doing to his city.” Charlie’s response: “That means you didn’t know my father very well.”

Later on, I covered some aspects of the story and was in court for all but five days of the 78-day civil trial. I covered the appeals process, too. The trial was the subject of a terrific book called “A Civil Action,” by Jonathan Harr, and a not-so-terrific movie starring John Travolta. The trial didn’t end well for the eight families who sued. One of the three defendants settled out of court before the trial, a second was cleared by the jury, and the third, W.R. Grace, settled for a paltry $8 million after being found liable for contaminating the water. The jury never had a chance to determine whether the contamination had actually caused the illnesses that were at the heart of the case.

Charlie is now retired after a lengthy career in journalism and continues to live in Woburn. The proposed ban on TCE is long overdue, and it’s part of his legacy as a reporter. It’s also a testament to the vital importance of local news that holds powerful interests to account.

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Obama weighs in

Former President Barack Obama has posted an important message at Medium. Echoing President Biden’s approach, Obama calls on us to support Israel’s right to self-defense while at the same time calling on Israel to protect the lives of civilians and work toward a decent resolution of the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He writes:

[W]hile the prospects of future peace may seem more distant than ever, we should call on all of the key actors in the region to engage with those Palestinian leaders and organizations that recognize Israel’s right to exist to begin articulating a viable pathway for Palestinians to achieve their legitimate aspirations for self-determination — because that is the best and perhaps only way to achieve the lasting peace and security most Israeli and Palestinian families yearn for.

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A New York Times ‘Editor’s Note’ says it fell short on the Gazan hospital story

Photo (cc) 2011 by Tomas Roggero

The New York Times has published an “Editor’s Note” acknowledging that it shouldn’t have based its initial reports on an explosion at a Gazan hospital solely on the word of the terrorist group Hamas.

As I wrote last week, the Times’ initial coverage on its website and on the social network Threads took Hamas’ claims at face value in reporting that the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City had been struck by an Israeli rocket last Tuesday and that as many as 500 civilians had been killed. Nor was the Times alone in reporting those unverified claims. It later emerged that the evidence suggested the explosion was caused by a botched missile launch by Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally; that the death toll may have been much lower than 500; and that the hospital was not extensively damaged, as the explosion took place in a parking lot next to the hospital. Here’s the heart of the Times’ Editor’s Note:

Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified.

The incident set off anti-Israeli protests across the Middle East, in Europe and in the U.S. Of course, we can’t know what the effect would have been had the media shown more initial caution. But surely the early coverage helped establish the narrative that Israel had committed a war crime, helping to turn the tide of public sympathy against Israel just a little more than week after the country had suffered from a horrendous terrorist attack at the hands of Hamas, with some 1,400 people killed and more than 200 taken hostage.

The Times also has a follow-up story today on what we know about the hospital explosion. It begins:

Six days after Hamas accused Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza City and killing hundreds of people, the armed Palestinian group has yet to produce or describe any evidence linking Israel to the strike, says it cannot find the munition that hit the site and has declined to provide detail to support its count of the casualties.

That’s the sort of journalistic skepticism that should have been present right from the start. I thought Ben Smith’s comment in Semafor’s Sunday night media newsletter was right on point. He wrote:

I’ve never been more relieved to be late on a story than on the explosion at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, where our small breaking news team took a long pause before publishing even a carefully-hedged attempt to describe what happened and what Hamas and the Israeli government had said about it.

[F]ew … analysts are claiming to be absolutely sure what happened in Gaza five days ago. Most seem to have reached the consensus that it wasn’t the result of a direct Israeli strike, and many think it could have been a stray rocket fired from Gaza, but few are sure.

What’s left is a demand for patience. While reporters and analysts compare photographic evidence, heads of state make decisions and protesters protest.

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Friedman to Israel: Take a deep breath and don’t do this

When Thomas Friedman of The New York Times writes about Israel and the broader Middle East, he generally comes up with something worth paying attention to. So I recommend this excellent piece in today’s edition headlined “Israel Is About to Make a Terrible Mistake” (free link). He manages to encapsulate the immensely complicated dilemma over how Israel should avenge Hamas’ terrorist attacks without causing so much chaos that the world will be dealing with it for many years to come. Here’s the heart of it:

I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.

It’s not a matter of going soft on Hamas; rather, it’s a matter of what’s in Israel’s best interests. Friedman is convinced that the Netanyahu government is ignoring the advice that President Joe Biden gave them and is on the verge of making a historic, tragic blunder.

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