By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Why an 18th-century slave and a witch-hunting minister knew more about vaccinations than RFK Jr. Plus photography, a roundup of the week’s posts and a tribute to the late, great Steve Cropper. It’s all in my supporters newsletter. Please sign up today for $6 a month!
Whether you’re a major news organization like NPR or a solo blogger like me, you know that converting readers into paid supporters is a major challenge. Since starting Media Nation in 2005, I have offered it as a free source of news and commentary, and that’s not going to change. I think folks working in academia have an obligation to freely distribute at least some of their work, and I’d lose a lot of reach if I put up a paywall.
But generating some income from this blog has proved to be an uphill climb. Nearly 2,500 readers have signed up to receive new posts by email for free, and nearly 108,000 visitors have accessed more than 186,000 pages so far in 2025. I don’t disclose my number of paid supporters, but I’ll just say that it lags well behind those numbers.
This afternoon I’ll be sending out my weekly newsletter to paid supporters in which I recommend a terrific book about how Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie overcame racism and helped create the culture we live in today. There are other goodies as well: a roundup of the week’s posts, photography and a song of the week. For just $6 month, you can become a supporter as well. I hope you’ll consider it. Just click here.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that more and more newsletters written by independent journalists are disappearing behind paywalls. It’s hard to know where it’s going to end. Subscription fatigue is real, and I can’t imagine that anyone except the most hardcore news consumer is going to pay for more than one or two newspapers, one or two magazines and a few newsletters. Even that’s a lot.
Since launching Media Nation in 2005, I have kept it free and open to all. That’s not going to change. Several years ago, though, I started a supporters tier so that readers who value my work could pay a small monthly fee in return for a weekly newsletter with exclusive commentary, a roundup of the week’s posts, photography and a song of the week. The newsletter is strictly an extra — a thank you. The real work continues to take place here, where anyone can access it.
I hope you will consider supporting this free source of news and commentary. The cost is $6 a month, and you can sign up by clicking here.
The Emancipator, a digital magazine covering racial justice that was launched with great fanfare four years ago, is leaving Boston.
The project was originally a joint venture of The Boston Globe’s opinion section and the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. The Globe ended its involvement two years later. The Emancipator will now be based at Howard University, the leading historically Black university.
The move was actually announced back in February, but it will formally take place on Monday, the last day of the academic year. Co-founder Ibram X. Kendi, the well-known antiracism scholar, is leaving BU to take a position at Howard, and The Emancipator is following him to Washington.
Amber Payne, The Emancipator’s publisher, announced on Thursday that she’ll be stepping down, writing:
After June 30, The Emancipator will transition from Boston University to Howard University as part of our co-founder Ibram X. Kendi’s Institute for Advanced Study, which will be dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of racism in the global African Diaspora. The Emancipator will be part of the institute’s larger mission to enhance the general public’s understanding of racism and evidence-based antiracist solutions through academic and publicly accessible research, public lectures, events, workshops, and outreach programs.
Payne was originally hired as co-editor along with Deborah Douglas, who now teaches journalism at Northwestern’s Medill School and is director of Medill’s newly created Midwest Solutions Journalism Hub.
I’m trying something new with Media Nation: I’ve embedded my Bluesky feed in the right-hand rail (scroll down), and I’m using it to post shorter items of news and commentary that aren’t worth a full blog post. I should say that this is what I used to do with Twitter before Elon Musk (1) turned the place into a toxic cesspool and (2) changed the API so that embedded feeds no longer worked.
Admittedly this will work best for readers who are using a computer. If you’re reading Media Nation on your phone, you’ll need to scroll to somewhere near the bottom. Of course, you can also follow me on Bluesky.
This might mean that I’ll write fewer multi-item posts, since the short items I was including often were the sorts of things I used to post to Twitter. I also realize it’s not of much help to folks who get new Media Nation posts delivered by email. But as I said, the solution to that is to join Bluesky and follow me there. I promise to try to be substantive.
The FBI got ahead of the story on Sunday, claiming that an outburst of antisemitic violence in Boulder, Colorado, was a “targeted terror attack,” even as local police were saying it was too soon to tell.
As it turned out, the suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, really did appear to be motivated by his hatred of Jews. But it wasn’t a good sign that Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip FBI was claiming to know what was behind the attack even as Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn was holding a news conference in which he said it was too soon to ascribe any motives.
Boulder Police: “we are not calling it a terror attack yet.” They say they are still identifying motive and would be irresponsible to say motive at this point FBI already claimed it’s a “targeted terror attack.”
— News Breaking LIVE (@newsbreakinglive.bsky.social) 2025-06-01T22:09:30.046Z
Soliman is accused of using what Chief Redfearn called “a makeshift flamethrower” to burn people who were walking in support of the Israeli hostages still being held by the terrorist group Hamas. The walks, a regular event in Boulder, are sponsored by an organization called Run for Their Lives.
Soliman reportedly yelled “Free Palestine!” as he carried out his assault at the Pearl Street Mall. Eight people were injured, ranging in age from 52 to 88. I haven’t seen much in the way of details yet, but The Colorado Sun reports that one of those injured is in critical condition.
When local news goes national, it’s always worthwhile to check in on what is being reported on the ground by journalists who really know the area. Here’s a quick roundup, starting with two news outlets in the city of 106,000 as well as a few statewide media organizations.
• The Daily Camera of Boulder is the city’s paper of record. It is also owned by Alden Global Capital, a cost-slashing hedge fund that has consolidated much of its operations at The Denver Post, the state’s major metro; Denver and Boulder are separated by about 30 miles. The Camera and the Post covered the story with a team of four reporters, three from the Post and one from the Camera. Their story was updated at 6:52 a.m. Colorado time. Notable:
Videos showed people rushing to pour water on one victim while others lay collapsed nearby.
“It’s almost like it was a gun of fire,” said Lynn Segal, who witnessed the attack. “It’s like a line of fire.”
• The Boulder Reporting Lab, a nonprofit newsroom, also reported on the attack. The story says it was updated today, but there is no time stamp on it. Notable:
Henry Bonn-Elchoness, 18, was inside Into the Wind, a toy store at 14th and Pearl, when the attack occurred.
“We walked by the crime scene right when it happened,” he said. “We saw smoke…. I didn’t see any fire, but I know that there was fire. They were clearing out people really fast and no one knew what happened for a while.”
He and his friends left and returned about 30 minutes later.
“We saw three older women being put in ambulances,” Bonn-Elchoness said. “It looked pretty bad. They were all awake and coherent, but it seemed worrisome. It was very scary. It was a shock.”
• The Colorado Sun, a large statewide nonprofit based in Denver, posted an updated story today at 6:47 a.m. local time. Notable:
Aaron Brooks, a Jewish Boulder resident, arrived at the Run for their Lives demonstration late Sunday — just moments after the attack. He found a grisly scene.
“I saw smoke on the ground. I saw blood on the ground. I saw smoke coming from a person — literally a human being burning,” he said.
• Colorado Public Radio, a network of stations that reaches about 80% of the state, posted the most recent version of its coverage at 11:06 p.m. Notable:
Boulder City Councilwoman Tara Winer has participated in past Run For Their Lives events and said several of the victims were friends of hers.
“The Boulder Jewish community is close,” she said Sunday. “We’re not monolithic, but we support each other and we’re close.”
Winer said she’s been cursed at and called a ‘Jewish supremacist’ during city council public comment sessions and that the level of vitriol has increased over the past six months.
On Sunday she planned to go ahead with a preplanned event that night marking the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, on the topic of “How our lives have changed since Oct. 7.”
• Axios started a Boulder newsletter late last year, and its story has a good roundup of what people are saying on social media — including a claim by President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, that Soliman had “illegally overstayed” a tourist visa.
We are in the midst of a frightening outburst of high-profile terrorist attacks in the U.S. As The New York Times notes, the Colorado incident follows arson on the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the murder of two Israeli embassy aides in Washington.
Regardless of your position on the war between Israel and Hamas, it is textbook antisemitism to use it as a pretext to assault people who are Jewish. We will see whether FBI Director Kash Patel has any intention of fighting this wave effectively — or if he is content to preen about it on social media.
More: This post has been updated to add Axios Boulder.
WNET, the New York public broadcasting giant, doesn’t want you to see this cartoon — at least not on public television.
The New York Times reports (gift link) that 90 seconds have been butchered out of a documentary about the artist Art Spiegelman that is scheduled to be shown as part of the “American Masters” series on PBS. It is, as you can see, wildly unflattering to President Trump, and it comes at a moment when Trump is trying to eliminate all funding for public media.
WNET vice president Stephen Segaller told Times reporter Marc Tracy that the 9-year-old drawing of Trump, with feces and flies on his head and a swastika superimposed over the image, was a “breach of protocol,” adding, “I don’t think we’d have made a different decision if it had been a year earlier.” Yeah, probably not. Last year at this time, Trump was leading President Joe Biden in the polls, so the incentive not to antagonize him was just as strong then as it is now.
Spiegelman was quoted as saying, “It’s tragic and appalling that PBS and WNET are willing to become collaborators with the sinister forces trying to muzzle free speech.”
But at least you can see Spiegelman’s cartoon in the Times. And here.
I’ve been deluged by comment spam the past few days, so I’ve turned on a toggle that requires users to be registered and logged in before they can comment. In case you are prompted to take an extra step to post a comment, that’s the reason.
Since 2005, I’ve been writing Media Nation as a free source of news and commentary about the media, politics, the First Amendment and, occasionally, other topics as well. I have never put up a paywall, nor will I.
But I do believe that writers should be paid for their work. And, so, a few years ago I set up a Patreon account for readers who wish to become voluntary supporters of Media Nation. Supporters receive a weekly newsletter with exclusive content — additional commentary, a roundup of the week’s posts, photography and a song of the week.
Still, I don’t regard the newsletter as a premium product that I’m trying to sell. Rather, it’s an extra for readers who understand the value of paying for the media they use. I hope you’ll join those readers by signing up today for just $5 a month. All you need to do is click here.
Thank you.
I’m getting multiple messages that The Boston Globe is shutting down its TV/digital newscast, “Boston Globe Today.” There’s also a bit of an uproar from the newsroom that a message from a staff member who’s been laid off was removed from the Globe’s Slack channel. More later, I’m sure.
Here is the somewhat skeptical post I wrote when the newscast made its debut a little more than two years ago. As I said at the time, the producers needed to find ways of breaking the newscast down into stories that could be consumed by younger viewers on their phones.
And here’s what I wrote last fall when newscast host Segun Oduolowu popped up on a Kamala Harris fundraising call and explicitly endorsed her presidential campaign, creating an ethical dilemma for Globe management.