Jack Authelet, the legendary retired editor of the Foxboro (Mass.) Reporter, has died at the age of 90.
Category: Local News
How Rupert Murdoch saved the Boston Herald — not just once, but twice
As I noted Thursday, one of the few positive contributions Rupert Murdoch can take credit for is preserving The Wall Street Journal as a great national newspaper. Another is that he saved the Boston Herald — not once, but twice. Larry Edelman of The Boston Globe writes about the first time (he interviewed me). I tell that story as well as the tale of Murdoch’s second rescue in my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls,” which I excerpt below.
The Hearst chain, which had converted the Herald (known then as the Herald American) to a tabloid during the final years of its ownership, had run out the string by 1982. I remember one old-timer telling me that, with closure just hours away, workers came in to rip out the vending machines from the paper’s hulking plant in the South End. At the last minute, Murdoch reached a deal with the unions and the paper was saved.
Under Murdoch’s ownership, the Herald established itself as a feisty alternative to the Globe, sometimes beating its larger rival on important local stories. That continued in the 1990s after Murdoch’s protégé Pat Purcell bought it from him. To this day there are people who believe that Murdoch continued to pull the strings behind the scenes, but I never believed it. Murdoch just didn’t care that much about the Herald, and I don’t doubt that he let Purcell have it on extremely favorable terms.
Unfortunately, the Herald’s financial model pretty much stopped working in the early 2000s, and today it’s owned by the New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital, famous for sucking the life out of its papers. Alden owns two other Massachusetts papers as well — The Sun of Lowell and the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg.
At one time Murdoch also owned the Ottaway chain, which included the Cape Cod Times and some small weeklies, including the Middleboro Gazette, where I grew up. Murdoch is fondly remembered by taking a hands-off approach, but I honestly wonder whether he even knew those papers were part of his empire. The Gazette was later closed by the Gannett chain, and today Middleborough is served by an independent startup, Nemasket Weekly.
Here’s what I wrote in “Moguls” about the Herald and Murdoch’s TV station, WFXT-TV (Channel 25), which he sold off a few years ago. The “endless struggle” I refer to was the Herald’s long-time ownership of Channel 5, an existential threat to the Globe that was removed when the Globe reported that its rival had gained the broadcast license because of corruption at the Federal Communications Commission. The Herald was stripped of its license in 1972, and Hearst swooped in to pick up the pieces.
The Globe’s endless struggle with the Herald’s broadcast ambitions played itself out in one last, faint echo in 1988, when Murdoch, who then owned the Herald, purchased Channel 25. Ted Kennedy, by then a leading member of the Senate, quietly slipped a provision into a bill that made it almost impossible for the FCC to grant a waiver to its rule prohibiting someone from owning both a daily newspaper and a TV station in the same market. At the time, I was a reporter for The Daily Times Chronicle, which served Woburn and several surrounding communities north of Boston. I remember covering a local appearance by Kennedy as he was dogged by the Herald reporter Wayne Woodlief. “Senator, why are you trying to kill the Herald?” the persistent Woodlief asked him several times.
Murdoch chose to sell off Channel 25, thus saving the Herald; he repurchased the TV station after selling the Herald to Purcell. But the Herald columnist Howie Carr remained bitter. He told me years later that Kennedy’s actions were worse than [Globe ally Tip] O’Neill’s, since O’Neill was just trying to help one of several papers rather than destroy the Globe’s only daily competitor. “I think Tip was just trying to get an ally,” Carr said, “whereas Ted was trying to kill the paper in order to deliver the monopoly to his friends.”
The liberal reputation the Globe developed during the Winship era was cemented during Boston’s school desegregation crisis of the mid-1970s, when the Globe wholeheartedly supported federal judge Arthur Garrity’s order to bus children to different neighborhoods in the city to achieve racial balance. It was a terrible time in Boston, as white racism ran rampant and bullets were fired into the Globe’s headquarters and at one of the paper’s delivery trucks. The Globe took the right moral stand, and its coverage earned the paper its second Pulitzer for Public Service. Winship in those years enjoyed a reputation as one of the finest editors in the country. But it was also during those years that the Globe became known as the paper of Boston’s suburban liberal elite and the Herald that of the urban white working class, a dichotomy that has persisted to this day.
The nonprofit Worcester Guardian says it will be independent from the local Chamber
The governance structure of The Worcester Guardian, a fledgling nonprofit begun by the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, is starting to become clearer. A message by consultant Dave Nordman, the former executive editor of the city’s daily, the Telegram & Gazette, says that the Guardian will have an independent board of directors in addition to a community advisory board. The Chamber has committed $50,000 to the launch, but Nordman says the intention is for the Guardian to be a fully independent news organization.
The aim, Nordman told me by email, is “total separation.” He said that Chamber president and CEO Tim Murray will probably have one of nine seats on the board but will not serve as the chair. “The board’s main responsibility,” Nordman said, “will be to rally the community.” The announcement of an editor, he added, is imminent.
The original announcement raised questions about how closely the Chamber would be tied to the Guardian. Nordman’s assurances makes it more likely that the Guardian will be accepted by the Institute for Nonprofit News, or INN, which would be a crucial step for credibility and fundraising. The Guardian’s inaugural governing documents also tracked too closely with the INN’s policies as well as the mission statement of The New Bedford Light, a large nonprofit, as reported by Bill Shaner of the newsletter Worcester Sucks and I Love It. Nordman, though, is a pro, and his involvement suggests that the Guardian will get off to a strong start. (Nordman is also a colleague of mine at Northeastern.) Nordman writes in his message at the Guardian’s website:
I believe free, nonprofit, independent news could provide a dynamic new platform to tell the Central Massachusetts story and report on important issues impacting Worcester and the region.
I believe mistakes will be made and lessons will be learned along the way.
I believe nonprofit, for-profit and independent journalism can co-exist. I believe blogs and social media also provide a forum for healthy discourse.
And I believe Murray when he says he will allow the Guardian to tell the story of Worcester independent of the chamber.
The community will be watching.
The Worcester area is not exactly a news desert, although local residents have lamented deep cuts at the Telegram & Gazette under Gannett’s ownership. MassLive, part of The Republican of Springfield, publishes a fair amount of Worcester news. GBH News has a Worcester bureau. The 016.com aggregates news from the Worcester area as well. Still, a Worcester-based nonprofit, grounded in community values, would be a welcome addition to Central Massachusetts.
A nonprofit news outlet issues a caution about Press Forward
The Marblehead Current, a nonprofit local news organization that was founded in 2022, has published an editorial about Press Forward, the initiative announced by 22 foundations to donate more than $500 million to support community journalism over the next five years. I think this is key:
But while we are excited about what Press Forward or a new law might mean for our industry as a whole, we have a nagging fear that news of such developments will create the funding equivalent of the “bystander effect” in Marblehead, fostering the assumption that the Current will be fine, its needs attended to by someone else, someone from “away.”
There is no substitute for a strong funding base at the local level. National efforts should be seen as a supplement.
Questions and concerns about Press Forward’s plan to raise $500 million for local news
It’s been a week since Press Forward, a $500 million initiative to fund journalism, was announced by the 22 organizations that will contribute money. Because it’s not clear exactly how it’s supposed to work, I’ve said little about it. Now, is this a Good Thing? Yes. A half billion dollars is a lot of money, and, if applied properly, could accomplish quite a bit of good. Despite the rise of independent, community-based news organizations in recent years, the need remains great.
But a few cautions seem to be in order, too. For those, I refer you to Richard J. Tofel, who writes the Second Rough Draft newsletter and is the retired president of ProPublica — a large investigative nonprofit whose mission has been underwritten by large sums of donated money. Perhaps the most intriguing tidbit in Tofel’s piece about Press Forward is that the $500 million, to be spread out over five years, is not really $500 million. He explains:
The big press release claimed that the initiative commits “more than $500 million” to local journalism. But what it didn’t say is that not all of that funding is new. I know of at least four Press Forward funders out of the 22 announced who are in fact not making funding commitments beyond those they had already planned. To be fair, I have also confirmed that at least four other funders, including the two largest, are making incremental commitments.
Tofel does not offer any numbers on exactly how much of the $500 million isn’t new money, but it’s a little disheartening to think that the funders — which include some big names like the Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Lenfest Institute — decided that making a big splash was more important than laying out precisely how much money will raised.
Tofel offers a number of other cautions, including the hazards of top-down funding, the negative effect that the initiative has already had on other journalism fundraising efforts, and an announcement made with such haste that no one seemed to realize that there’s already a well-known organization in Canada called Press Forward that’s devoted to more or less the same mission. Let the confusion begin!
To Tofel’s concerns let me add a few of my own. My first worry is that a lot of money is going to be lost or wasted on local efforts that have not been well thought out and that were proposed mainly as a way of getting a piece of the pie. I’m not talking about corruption; I just mean that people are going to think that they’ll be able to do great things if they can land some of that money, and that they’ll sweat the details later.
My second worry is that, fundamentally, this is not the way to build a local news organization. It takes community-based planning and, ultimately, community-based funding from local institutions, members and advertisers. Big bucks from a national organization can be a godsend in supplementing that mission, but it has to be bottom-up, not top-down — and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. As Authentically Local, one of the early organizations of digital startups put it, “Local Doesn’t Scale.”
That said, Press Forward is welcome news, and I wish them all the best. We need more high-quality local journalism, and this seems like an ambitious effort to pay for some of it.
Paul Bass, a hyperlocal pioneer, talks about his national network of arts and culture reviewers
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Paul Bass, the founder and former editor of the New Haven Independent. Bass is originally from White Plains, New York, but he arrived in New Haven in the late 1970s to attend Yale, and he has been reporting on all the quirks and glory of his adopted hometown ever since.
Bass was the main subject of my 2013 book, “The Wired City,” and is one of the news entrepreneurs featured in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.” Bass launched the New Haven Independent in 2005 as an online-only nonprofit.
Last fall, Bass announced he was stepping aside as editor, handing the top job over to managing editor Tom Breen. But he’s continuing to play a role at the Independent and its multimedia arms, and he has just begun another venture: the Independent Review Crew, which features arts and culture reviews from all over, including right here in Boston via Universal Hub.
Ellen has a Quick Take on The Texas Tribune, the much-admired nonprofit news outlet started by Evan Smith and others in Austin. The Tribune has been a model for other startups, so it rocked the world of local news last month when CEO Sonal Shah announced that 11 staffers had been laid off.
I report on another acquisition by Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund that has earned scorn for the way it manages its newspapers. Alden acquired four family-owned newspapers in Pennsylvania. Worse, the family members who actually ran the papers wanted to keep them, but they were outvoted by the rest of the family.
You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
A nonprofit news outlet will launch in Worcester in an unusual partnership
Update: This is getting complicated, so let me give it another shot. Bill Shaner, who writes the newsletter Worcester Sucks and I Love It, reports that the Guardian has lifted its About page almost verbatim from The New Bedford Light, a large, well-established nonprofit. But it should be noted that the very first line of the Guardian’s ethics and practices policies — not the same as its About page — is this: “We will subscribe to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News and the New Bedford Light.” The attribution should be clearer and included in the About page, too.
New England’s second largest city will soon be getting its own nonprofit news organization — but there’s a twist. The sponsor behind The Worcester Guardian is the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, a business group whose involvement, on the face of it, is incompatible with the independence that accountability journalism requires.
I’m not dismissing this out of hand. The press release issued by the Chamber says that the Guardian will be governed by “an independent board of directors and a community advisory board,” and that the project will seek membership in the Institute for Nonprofit News. INN is not going to approve the Guardian’s application unless its leadership is satisfied that the Chamber will not be in a position to dictate or interfere with coverage. Here, for example, is an excerpt from INN’s model code of ethics:
Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.
In addition, Dave Nordman, the former executive editor of the city’s daily, the Telegram & Gazette, has signed on as a consultant to the project. Nordman is an outstanding journalist. Dave has been a Northeastern colleague for the past couple of years, serving as executive editor in the university’s office of external affairs.
The Worcester area has been something of a news desert for years, as Gannett has hollowed out the T&G. It sounds like the Chamber is trying to do the right thing, and I wish the Guardian well.
In his report on the launch for the Boston Business Journal, Don Seiffert writes that the Chamber will help the Guardian get started with a $50,000 donation. Below is the Chamber’s press release.
Today, the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce announced the launch of the Worcester Guardian, an independent, free, nonprofit digital news organization.
“The Worcester Guardian will deliver free civically oriented journalism on an array of topics important to Worcester and the Central Massachusetts region,” said Timothy P. Murray, the chamber’s president and CEO.
This announcement coincides with the public release of a white paper prepared for the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors in July titled, “Central Massachusetts: A story to be told – a new model for Worcester in delivering civic information and local news to Central Massachusetts residents.”
The white paper details the growing national trend of communities establishing non-profit news organizations. Successful nonprofit news organizations in New England include VTDigger in Vermont, the New Hampshire Bulletin and the New Bedford Light. In Maine, the nonprofit National Trust for Local News recently purchased five daily and 17 weekly newspapers.
The Worcester Guardian has applied for membership in the Institute for Nonprofit News, which has over 425 affiliates nationwide, including 38 in Massachusetts.
Readers will be able to access stories free of charge through the Worcester Guardian’s website, social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) – as well as free email newsletters.
“As is the case in other communities this will take time to scale and will require resources and support from the business community, various institutions and nonprofits, as well as everyday readers,” Murray said. “It will be work, but I am confident the community will respond and support this important initiative that will seek to tell our collective story locally, statewide and across the country on a daily basis.”
Since 2000, more than 2,200 newspapers across the country have closed, including over 360 alone since just before the start of the pandemic, according to the New York Times. In Worcester, the Telegram & Gazette has seen steady cutbacks under corporate ownership since being sold by the Stoddard, Fletcher and Booth families in 1986.
“The decline of local news both here in Central Massachusetts and across the country is unhealthy to our civic well-being,” said Christine Cassidy, the chamber’s board chair. “Consistent with the chamber’s role over its nearly 150-year history and our mission in seeking to better our region, the chamber will lead the facilitation over the next 18 to 24 months in establishing an independent and sustainable nonprofit news organization.”
This will include establishing an independent board of directors and a community advisory board for the new 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
To ensure the Worcester Guardian follows proper journalistic guidelines from the outset, former Telegram & Gazette executive editor David Nordman will serve as a consultant to the new nonprofit news organization.
“I am excited to assist with this important initiative,” Nordman said. “Free, nonprofit, independent news provides a dynamic new platform to tell the Central Massachusetts story and report on important issues impacting Worcester and the region.”
The Colorado Sun, a pioneering for-profit/ nonprofit hybrid, moves toward a fully nonprofit model
The Colorado Sun is going nonprofit. The five-year-old digital news organization, launched by journalists who’d left The Denver Post following round after round of cuts by the paper’s hedge-fund owner, Alden Global Capital, had operated as a rare for-profit exception in the universe of local news startups. Now the Sun is joining its tax-exempt peers.
“Whether I agree with it or not, whether I even like it or not, the reality is that many individuals, many institutions and philanthropic groups, have concluded that journalism should be nonprofit,” editor Larry Ryckman said in a phone interview on Monday. “I have my own thoughts on that, but that is reality.”
The move was not entirely unexpected. The Sun is one of the projects highlighted in a forthcoming book by Ellen Clegg and me, “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,” which will be published by Beacon Press in early 2024.
The Eagle-Tribune accidentally publishes a page-one memo
The Eagle-Tribune, which is based in North Andover and serves the Merrimack Valley, accidentally published its page-one memo for Aug. 3 on its website. An alert reader sent it to me. It has since been taken down, but I saved it in Evernote. Nothing scandalous, but I thought you might get a kick out of getting a look at the sausage-making process. Below is the front page that the memo describes.
Talking media trust, local news and AI with the folks at ‘SouthCoast Matters’
Thank you to Paul Letendre, the host of “SouthCoast Matters,” and state Rep. Carol Doherty, D-Taunton, for having me on for two recent episodes. We talked about media trust, the challenges facing local news, artificial intelligence and more. “SouthCoast Matters” is recorded at Taunton Community Access and Media and is carried on cable stations in Taunton and the surrounding area. You can watch the two episodes below. (If you’re an email reader, you may have to click through for the web version of this post.)